On Tue, 18 Jul 2000 12:18:57 -0400, "Norton, Chris"
<chrisn at Kronos.com> wrote:

> [Norton, Chris]  We've got a LONG way to go to the Metaverse!  Can you
> imagine the bandwidth it would take to have 10,000 or so avatars romping
> around in a virtually seamless 3D landscape?  I know that there has been
> significant work done with 3D imaging, but casually mapping a human to a 3D
> figure is not trivial.

You should check out what is happening in the real-time 3D gaming
community these days. They haven't quite reached that scale, but they
are certainly working towards it. Multi-player real-time first-person
games are a huge thing on the internet right now, and they're getting
better and better in terms of image quality, and number of players
supported.

The consumer-level 3D hardware is getting faster and more capable at
an incredible pace -- its really hard to keep up with what the
hardware is capable of doing, and the software is basically a
generation or two back in terms of fully exploiting the hardware.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon at huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
           http://www.huv.com