On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Jordan Reiter wrote:
> mean, as was said, if you're looking for a painting, you're not going to
> imediately think to type in "scanned image" instead, although that's
> exactly what your ultimate goal *is* (unless you have some kind of
> holodeck--like browser, where three-dimensional objects manifest themselves
> in real life (what a windfall *that'd* be for the porno sites! ;-> )
Don't laugh. An ex-colleague of my wife's is working on a 3-D display
(dual electron beams and a rotating phosphor screen, I think), and I'm
sure there are others. Meanwhile, one might create in VRML a 3-D walkabout
art gallery, complete with scanned images of real paintings and digitized
3-D models of real statues. Given enough CPU power, it would be perfectly
possible to texture map a video of an actor onto a 3-D model obtained by
sticking those little ultrasonic reflectors onto their joints or
something.
There's the question of the representation of something - whether it's the
real thing, a reproduction, a photograph, or even a written critique - I
suggest it may be reasonable for the website of an art gallery to be able
to indicate they have the real thing, not a reproduction.
Then there's the question of "can my equipment display/play
whatever-it-is?", which unfortunately in HTTP-land has been sabotaged
because everone sends "Accept: */*" even though their Apple II can't view
VRML2. I think this is the province of the FORMAT element.
Andrew Daviel
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