VActors, ScriptX, ICTV and Smart 3D

Digital World’s Neat New Stuff session provided an opportunity for demonstrations and explanations of new technologies. This session introduced four new technologies, and threw in a little fun besides.

SIMGRAPHICS VACTOR: FUN AND PROFIT WITH VR

The evening began with a little comedy. Waldo, a virtual actor created with the VActor (Virtual Actor) technology from SimGraphics, opened with a stand-up comedy routine. The animated character, generated in real time, was able to have conversations with and play off of the audience.

Waldo, and later another character called Hot Dog, were both played by Charles Fleischer, the actor known best as the voice of Roger Rabbit. Steve Glenn, vice president and director of the Entertainment Group at SimGraphics, gave the audience a peek at how VActors are created.

Fleischer, sitting in an off-stage room, donned a complex, and uncomfortable, headpiece that tracked the movements of his face as he talked. This information was translated by a Silicon Graphics Crimson workstation. Meanwhile, he watched and listened to the audience through monitors.

The VActor technology is being used extensively in trade show attractions and theme park environments. Now it is also being used to generate and record animations for use in virtual reality and three-dimensional environments.

So now, instead of creating synthetic animations and laying a voice over it, the VActor will create a role just as a live actor would in a movie. The first products using the VActor technology on a CD-ROM will be coming out by the end of 1993. A VActor-generated character will premiere on TV this year in a pilot show for The Disney Channel. In addition, Glenn said, SimGraphics will have a full-body armature for the VActor available in 1994.

KALEIDA LABS’ SCRIPTX: CROSS-PLATFORM TOOLS ARRIVE

The evening’s biggest event was undoubtedly the first public demonstration of Kaleida Labs’ ScriptX technology. ScriptX (described in Vol. 2, No. 10, p. 12) is a scripting language/software layer that sits between a multimedia player and its operating system and enables different hardware and operating software systems to read and play back the same media-rich files.

There was a lot of discussion about Kaleida’s software development slipping schedules, but as promised, Nat Goldhaber, then president and CEO, and David Kaiser, vice president of engineering, were able to provide an exciting demonstration for the audience.

There are two significant aspects of the ScriptX environment. The first is, obviously, its ability to play back the same multimedia files on diverse platforms, something that is mostly impossible today. The second is its robust, “object-oriented” programming environment. That’s a computer term meaning that any single piece of data, or programming tool, can be modeled as a single “chunk” of software with its own characteristics, and can be reused across different applications.

(For some more thoughts on object-oriented programming, please see Glen Hoptman’s remarks from the Saturday conference track on p. 55.)

For the rather dramatic presentation, Kaiser took a CD-ROM and loaded it into a Macintosh. He opened up a prototype application of an undersea exploration called Monterey Canyon. The application showed a number of different aquatic plant and animal species, and enabled the user to “capture” any of these and add them to one’s own personal journal.

Since each fish is an individual object, and therefore imbued with its own characteristics, traits, etc., the user can learn about the object by accessing the attached data. That information can exist simply by having a text database associated with the object or, more profoundly, by actually making that object appear and act as it should. For example, if you had two different fish on the screen, they would each appear to be the proper and proportional size to each other.

An application like this should have working scientific tools and the folks at Kaleida did not disappoint. They demonstrated an X-ray tool that enabled the user to see different layers of the physiology of a fish, such as its skeleton or musculature, simply by passing the X-ray “lens” over any area of the fish. Since the information about how to display the fish’s innards is built into the fish, the access to that information was a real-time response to the application of the tool, and not a canned animation.

Another tool, which was imported from a floppy disk (not built into the original application) was a tape measure, which allowed the user to measure parts of the fish in the most appropriate scale: centimeters. (This tool returned later in the demo.)

Kaiser then showed another demo, a template for multimedia classified ads for buying a used car. Each car listed was its own object, and therefore all of the relevant information was intact. Kaiser was then able to display graphically the different relationships between a selection of cars that met certain criteria: resale value, mileage charted against price, etc., which would enable a buyer to make a better selection.

The finale of the demonstration was moving the CD-ROM to a PC running Windows and having the same applications, and the same tools and floppy, working on both machines.

(When questioned later about whether this demo was in reality a single ScriptX file that ran on both platforms, Kaiser promised that indeed it was. This was not, he assured us, a “fake” demo.)

In a different application, running on the PC, the tape measure was again imported (from the same floppy disk), only this time it came up with an entirely different scale. The software understood that different environments, such as measuring a fish or measuring distances on a road map, require different units, and was able to adapt on the fly.

ScriptX was a real crowd pleaser. It is scheduled for release to third-party manufacturers in spring 1994.

ICTV HAS AN INTERACTIVE TV SYSTEM READY TO GO

Leo Hoarty and John North (president and vice president of strategic relations, respectively) explained the new interactive television technology developed by ICTV.

ICTV’s plan was to create an infrastructure for interactive television that could be installed with a minimum of effort and cost to existing cable television or any other electronic network, including a phone company’s central office.

The system does not require that the entire structure be rewired for high-speed digital transactions immediately, but can be upgraded when the market requires, and can pay for, enhanced services.

The system works this way: ICTV’s proprietary hardware and software is installed in the neighborhood “nodes” of an existing cable television system. (The node is a local delivery point for a limited number of homes in a cable television system, downstream from the headend.)

At this node is installed a computer-based switching system, and the facilities to install a number of hardware interface cards, which enable access to digital servers, satellite downlinks, communications networks, etc. This node then becomes a switching station, between you, the TV viewer and the different facilities offered by the system. Your home cable tuner would require a small additional piece of hardware (which the cable operator would install), and would not require a settop box, as is required in other systems under development or discussion.

Let’s say the cable television system in your neighborhood is limited to 37 channels. That is, the cable network is physically able to send 37 channels of analog video simultaneously to your cable tuner, which enables you to select the particular channel of your choice for viewing.

INGENIOUS WAY TO PROVIDE CHANNELS AND SWITCHING

The cable system is a channelized architecture. But once the ICTV system is put in place, tuning to channel 37 would transfer you (though you wouldn’t notice it) into a switched architecture — using only the bandwidth of a single channel, as the channel switching is happening at the node. The number of “channels,” or choices, is limited by the number of interface cards, or services, offered by the cable operator. (See Mitch Kapor’s keynote, p. 14, for more on channelized vs. switched architectures.)

The system could be upgraded as the networks improve; as fiber-optic cabling in the network moves closer to the home, and the more advanced the cable tuner becomes, more sophisticated services could easily be offered. The system could begin by offering near video on demand, as well as catalog advertising, online classifieds, etc., over this single virtual channel.

Ultimately it could offer full digital interactive services, including true video on demand, interactive multimedia, electronic messaging, transaction and online services and all of the other applications that have been talked about during the past year. (See Interactive TV series, Vol. 2, No. 12, and Vol. 3, No. 1, for discussion of ITV services, and how they might be deployed.)

The system’s focus on a “cage” of hardware cards makes it, in the words of ICTV’s Hoarty, “future-proof.” Each card acts as the interface to a particular kind of server or switch. Thus, people who want to offer a service can use their own technology, and keep control of their content (providing, of course, that the cable operator feels there is enough of a market to invest in that particular service). The ICTV system is merely acting as a switch and billing system.

Since the system is added to existing infrastructure, and does not necessarily require that all operators use the same exact tuner architecture or software (it just needs to match a card in the node), the system is relatively inexpensive to deploy.

Hoarty demonstrated a number of applications, including a classified buyers’ guide; a movie theater interface for pay-per-view (complete with concession stand); local restaurant menus; and catalog advertising. These were all prototype applications (in this case running in Macromedia’s Director). The final applications and interfaces would be created by the people who offer those services for the system.

Digital World attendees saw a number of concept demonstrations of home shopping systems (from Apple, IBM, Viacom, Time Warner, etc.). The developer of a shopping channel would be able to use the best technology and plug that system into the ICTV switcher.

ICTV has built and installed this system in its offices in Santa Clara. Although a number of discussions have been taking place with many of the major cable operators, the system has yet to be deployed in a consumer environment.

MACROMEDIA SMART 3D: ALL OBJECTS, ALL THE TIME

Macromedia demonstrated a new software technology that will enable people who create 3D models to add properties to those objects. While the Kaleida architecture supports objects in its system, this technology will enable the creation of those objects.

Macromedia fellow Young Harvill, who created the software, demonstrated two different environments, each with different kinds of objects. The first was a very simple desert landscape, with three standing rectangular towers. You can navigate around the desert at will. If you bump into one of these rectangles, however, you will knock it down. You can even push it along the ground. Since it has the properties of balance and gravity built in, the towers respond to the environment around it.

By holding down the option key, a big pink pig appears. Releasing the key throws the pig in the air. (All right, it’s a little strange. But after all, this is still in the realm of software engineers, not product marketing managers.) If the pig lands on the ground, it will bounce a few times before settling (following the laws of gravity, as well as the pig’s own properties of bouncy-ness). If, however, you throw the pig at the rectangular structures, it will explode. Inherent in the pig is the knowledge that the ground will absorb the shock of the throw, but the towers will not. By the way, while the pig explodes, the tower falls to the ground.

The second environment was more advanced and detailed. It was a prototype of a racing game, in which you are driving a car through a town. There are obstacles in your way, including other cars, signs, buildings, etc., and your effect on those obstacles, and theirs on you, will depend on the particular properties of those objects. Of course, those attributes you assign to a particular object do not have to follow any known laws of nature. Harvill, having gotten fed up with traffic, decided that he would let his car fly.

This was purely a technology demonstration; Smart 3D is not yet integrated into any available products, and won’t be until 1994. However, Macromedia was able to print a number of CD-ROM demonstration discs of the technology, complete with the environments demonstrated, for some conference attendees.

David Baron