Dear all,

Advance Software announces the opening of the Infinity 3D Internet browser and associated 3D website content creation tools, Infinity Professional public beta programme.

If you’d like to extend your website into 3D and you have a license to 3D Studio Max version 6, or later, you are welcome to experiment with our software, at your convenience.

Please see http://advance-software.com for further details.

Best regards,

The Infinity development team.

<><> Infinity is coming ...

You guys are funny!....Cute entry page with a self-interview.

Hi threedeejay,

Well, it beats boring old FAQs !

You might find this thread of interest :

http://maxforums.org/thread.aspx?tid=527189

Best regards,

Steve Williams
Director
Advance Software

<><> Infinity is coming ...

Frankly, nobody is going to “install a new browser”. You may, at a real push, get a few people to agree to installing a plugin for IE/FF/Safari, but that’s it. If they’re corporate, they probably don’t have the user permissions even to do that without a visit from their IT department.

The days of asking your client to change their platform in order to view a website are long gone - they died even before VRML had a chance to get a foothold. People are rightly paranoid about browser security, and trust only the Big Three (or more realistically, one of them). Attention span is so short, by the time someone’s read the popup saying “you need to install XXX to see this site” they’ve already left. Besides, you can achieve embedded 3D with existing frameworks (Flash, PDF, etc.).

:: UVSAR :: Dave Merchant :: Adobe Community Professional ::

> Frankly, nobody is going to “install a new browser”.

That’s right. No-one has installed Firefox or Opera.

> If they’re corporate, they probably don’t have the user permissions even to do that without a visit from their IT department.

In many cases, this is true. Hence the reason the software needs to be solid before we push it commercially.
IT departments can vet our software as suitable for use on their networks before making it available to their users.

>The days of asking your client to change their platform in order to view a website are long gone

3D websites require a 3D browser.
Older browsers have no understanding of 3D hyperlinks.
The browser needs to understand 3D content is being navigated in order for the forward/back/bookmark browser features to work correctly when navigating 3D websites.

> People are rightly paranoid about browser security.
Agreed.

>Besides, you can achieve embedded 3D with existing frameworks (Flash, PDF, etc.).

See above. You cannot, as far as I am aware, embed live html content within flash 3D.

I’m not saying the idea of an immersive 3D website isn’t valid, and that in years to come they’ll probably become commonplace - but that it’s been tried before and failed because consumers wouldn’t agree to install anything unless it came as a certified-and-safe part of “their” browser of choice. Even VRML died, and that was a plugin - because the click conversion rate benefits never justified the labor in creating 3D content - even sites whose core business was 3D didn’t use it. Web users are used to seeing their world in 2D, and I don’t deny that 3D has uses (heck, I make a living from it) - but it’s extremely rare that it offers something so unique, people [I]have[/I] to use it. Myspace in 3D = no ‘better’ than Myspace in 2D. Different, for sure - but users will expect “Myspace 3D” to mean their browser suddenly becomes full-on gaming-quality Second Life - not just a bit of perspective.

As to comparing FF/Opera - remember that FF and the Mozilla Project took over 10 years to grow beyond a microscopic user base, and only made it where they are today because of millions of dollars of investment from Netscape before the release, and the community trust possible from open-source. Once a million people are using something and able to talk about faults and see them addressed, others will try it with confidence. Getting the first 100,000 users for a new browser is next-to-impossible if the browser’s hook is that it allows people to view websites which only it can display. You enter a permanent catch-22 where commercial designers won’t make the websites (as they don’t have the audience to justify the budget), and people won’t see the point in the browser (as they aren’t finding any websites). A plugin would be IMO a far better solution, as has been proved by every successful rich-content platform in the last decade. If Flash needed its own browser, we’d all still be using animated GIFs.

I wish you well with your project, but I wouldn’t bet a dollar on it. Sorry.

:: UVSAR :: Dave Merchant :: Adobe Community Professional ::

VRML died because it wasn’t powerful enough and support for 3D content was not fully integrated into the browser. The browser needs to understand a series of 3D scenes is being navigated so that users can bookmark interesting locations and so that the forward / back buttons function as expected. Without these core browser features, regular users gets confused and avoid ‘quirky’ 3D sites.

> the click conversion rate benefits never justified the labor in creating 3D content.

Second Life seems to indicate otherwise.

> Web users are used to seeing their world in 2D,

Web users are used to seeing their world (the real one) in 3D. They are used to seeing video games in 3D. They make do with websites in 2D because they have yet to be offered much in the way of an alternative. I appreciate that 3D is not the be all and end all of everything. There are many situations when 2D does just fine. Technical manuals, reading email, etc.

Offer users something unique and if they like it, they will use it . 3D social networking sites is a real business opportunity.

Most end users cannot create 3D content. Make it easy for them to select from a list of reguarly updated templates, give them the ability to change some textures and basic parameters so they can customize and I rekon you’ve got yourself a nice little earner. We can’t do this - we’re too busy developing the browser, but the opportunity is there. You will be able to make it full-on gaming-quality over time.  Start simple and evolve it. Generate revenue from in site advertising.

We’ve put around 6 years of R&D into Infinity to date. Infinity can display live webpages seamlessly intergrated into the scene. These pages are currently delivered using Mozilla/Gecko technology - the same layout engine used in Firefox 3.

Most people use Internet Explorer, which is not open source.

Infinity is the only browser that is able to display XSG (extensible scene graph) format at this time. The format is open, and we intend to work with standards bodies to ensure it remains so.

A small user base does not mean that there is no business case for using the technology. Interested parties can purchase a distribution license to ensure their user base has access to the content they wish to deliver. Examples include magazine/newspaper cover discs, ISPs and a wide range of promotional campaigns. There is no catch-22.

3D plugins for html browsers already exist. Re-inventing the wheel isn’t very interesting.

Thanks for the feedback.

Best regards,
Steve.