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best language for 3D manipulation over web ?

TGOS tgos at spamcop.net
Sat Jun 2 16:34:10 EDT 2001 
On Fri, 1 Jun 2001 13:46:15 -0400, "Bart Kowalski" <me at nospam.com> wrote:

>> I mean, how many webpages are there that say "You NEED IE 5.5 to watch this
>> page"? Too many. The fact that this means 50% (or more) of all surfers will
>> simply skip this page is a risk they are willing to take.
> 
> More, actually. By doing such stupid things they are completely ignoring all of
> the Unix world

I know. Whenever I surf through the Net at University (Sun Ultra Spars Solaris
PCs, SGI Irix PCs, HP-UX PCs or Intel Linux PCs), I'll have to realize how
little people uphold official standards and how many pages won't work because
of this.

Instead of using lots of JavaScript, people can use simple CGI scripts. Instead
of using most plugins that exist, people could simply use Java (I heard a rumor
that there's even a Java FlashPlayer applet, which will render Flash animations
in your browser without the help of any plugin).

> and technologies far superior to anything that Windows users
> could ever dream of using.

To quote from my Unix book:
"All operating systems are limited in one way  - many even in more than one way
- but Unix is standing above the other systems, since it's a reliably platform
for beginners and experts like no other existing one.
For more than 20 years, Unix got improved by over hundred thousands of people
all over the world [...]"

Often if a new technologies is introduced to Window PCs (either through
Micro$oft or via a private company), it usually was developed and tested on
Unix PCs several for years before. 

> It's amazing how some people are so easily influenced
> by commercial propaganda.

I'm not better than them. I store all my videos in RealVideo format, which is
no open standard either (it belongs to RealNetworks). The problem is: There is
no other video standard that would create decent videos with only 450 KBit/s

ASF is worse in quality (both, picture and sound quality) and it's also a
Micro$oft only standard, meaning it will never exist for other platforms
(RealPlayer also exists for Linux and maybe also for other platforms).

DivX is a hacked ASF version, which is even worse in quality (as it's a hacked
version of an old ASF codec, not of the first one that was officially
released). Despite that, when using DivX, I'll have to use MP3 for audio and
MP3 with 64 KBit/s sounds worse than real audio with 32 KBit/s.

The only open standards are MPEG1 and MPEG2, but both need a lot more bandwidth
than 450 KBit/s to produce decent results. And since I must get 10 videos onto
a single CD, I can't use more than 450 KBit/s for picture and sound together.

MPEG4 will be the first open standard that will produce decent results with
450 KBit/s (DivX isn't really MPEG4, the final MPEG4 standard will not be
compatible with DivX anymore), but right now it only exists in theory.

What's left? Quicktime...but Quicktime is no audio/video codec, it's just a
file/protocol standard like ASF or AVI and you'll still have to use some kind
of codec.

-- 
TGOS
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