If I had to gamble I would put my money on Adobe any day of the week. This almost seems like Microsoft’s version of Director to me and from past experience, Microsoft’s practice of taking everyone else’s awesome ideas and reinventing the wheel never really pans out too well(Post Windows that is). I don’t know I’m just not ready to free myself of non-Flash prejudices yet.

I do agree though that an arms race will be good for not only the industry but Adobe as well. They will need to step up their game if this little application, SilverRay, GoldspeckSparkle or whatever it’s called, does indeed take off.

D

I think investment in platforms is directed towards the market value for the main commercial software vendors (whether Microsoft, Adobe or whoever) so it makes sense to focus where most people are or are going. The great news about Silverlight (that you’ll have picked up from the conference) is that it expands the platform and browser targets for XAML to include Macs and all Linux distros as well as the major browsers on those platforms – there some 3rd party 3D implementations layering on Silverlight too so the wider community is already taking the opportunity to build on it.

I think quality is absolutely vital. Yes you want as much reach as possible but for the best user experience you eventually need to focus on some platform specific capabilities. For many jobs taking the lowest common denominator platform approach just doesn’t make sense – if it did we’d all still be writing HTML 3.2. What I like about the current Microsoft direction is the whole spectrum of UI technologies that work together – from the reach of HTML/DHTML through ASP.NET AJAX through Silverlight to the quality of browser hosted WPF (XBAP) and full rich client WPF.

As zenbullets says… it’s great that Microsoft is now in the race. Let’s see how it pans out.

I’ll let Alex answer the brain scan in more detail – but it was over 1000 vertices per frame from what I recall.

Cheers,

Richard

Don’t worry about the fan-boy tendencies, I spent the entire conference resisting mine!

Re anti-aliasing : I was actually referring to the examples you guys showed at your presentation! I guess I should have known it was a hardware setting.

But I just can’t tell you how disappointing that it’s windows only. It’s so against the spirit of the web, and with Director in some kind of weird limbo, we’re desperately in need of a cross-platform, web delivered, hardware rendered 3D system.

So much as the quality of WPF is better, currently PaperVision3D in Flash 9 is your best most supported bet. In this case, penetration rate is more valuable than quality.

And I’m also interested how many vertices you’re rendering in the brain scan and do you have that example online?

cheers

Seb

It was great to meet you at Mix! Glad you like our app and yes, sorry for the fan-boy tendencies I probably displayed – I don’t get let out very often and the M$FT chip was implanted over 8 years ago

3D anti-aliasing works fine on Vista with a bog-standard WDDM driver and tier-2 card – and video RAM is virtualized so you don’t have to worry about WPF being forced into a software rendering mode because it’s run out of video memory headroom.

Given that, I’m not sure of the reason for your poor page turns – is anti-aliasing turned on? We tested it before it went live on 3 year old laptops and got a good anti-aliased experience. I must admit that 3D perf on my personal Macbook isn’t great though so maybe its a driver thing?

Anyway… thanks for the enthusiasm you brought to the conference and I wish you luck with your page-turner project!

I’m glad you liked the volume viewer! If I seem a little fanboyish, it’s just because I get excited at all these lovely new content-delivery options. Regarding aliasing in the TTP application itself, have you got anti-aliasing switched on in your graphics card driver settings? I usually work without anti-A to keep my 3D tools working quickly, but for fun I switched my GeForce 8800 to 16Q Anti-Aliasing in it’s options panel, and took the following screen-grab:

http://www.imaginetix.co.uk/Images/book_for_seb.jpg

As you can see, there isn’t much visible in the line of aliasing on the edges once the card driver has been told to use antialiasing. I didn’t see a noticable performance hit either, but admittedly I use quite a lot of computer.

All the best,

Mark H-B

It’s a big disappointment that the 3D support is not native to the Silverlight plugin. Let’s face it having to download the .net framework 3, then Silverlight, then WPF plugin is not exactly what I would call a seamless user experience… I’d also be interested to see what the support for this stack is going to be cross-platform & cross-browser.

Looking forward to see how you get on with your Flash version of the ‘Book page turney thing’!

A decent arms race between Adobe and MicroSoft will be healthy for the industry. As long as Adobe win of course