Introducing Advance Software / Infinity ...
Hi all,
Advance Software is developing a new 3D web browser called Infinity and associated content authoring tools (Infinity Professional).
3D websites work best when authored as high quality optimized low poly scenes. Rumour has it you guys are familiar with this subject ...
Our tools are currently available for 3DS Max (6->2011 32/64) and include an exporter & real-time shader for wysiwyg 3D website content creation directly in the max viewport.
Our real-time shader is accessed via the DirectX Manager in the max material rollout (it shows up as Infinity Shader when installed). The DirectX Manager interface bypasses some of the many limitations of the DirectX Shader interface discussed in other threads on this forum.
Infinity Professional beta can be downloaded from here :
http://advance-software.com/products
(A limited number of unlocks are available free of charge whilst we're in beta.)
There's also an introductory 3D website tutorial pdf on that page. The tutorial is included in the Infinity Professional download so doesn't need to be downloaded separately.
We don't have a tutorial for Infinity Shader yet but it should be pretty self explanatory.
Numerous 3D web type products exist with their associated strengths & weaknesses. Infinity is a full 3D web browser (not just a page plugin) built from the ground up in C++. It can seamlessly integrate fully interactive webpages into real-time 3D web environments. This innovation allows the web to be seamlessly extended into 3 dimensions.
Please look beyond our prototype placeholder art. We'll get that upgraded soon.
Comments / questions welcome.
Best regards,
Steve Williams
Director
Advance Software
<><> Infinity is coming ...
Edit : Thanks to polycount moderators for allowing this topic to be discussed.
Infinity authorisation codes are available office hours UK.
Advance Software is developing a new 3D web browser called Infinity and associated content authoring tools (Infinity Professional).
3D websites work best when authored as high quality optimized low poly scenes. Rumour has it you guys are familiar with this subject ...
Our tools are currently available for 3DS Max (6->2011 32/64) and include an exporter & real-time shader for wysiwyg 3D website content creation directly in the max viewport.
Our real-time shader is accessed via the DirectX Manager in the max material rollout (it shows up as Infinity Shader when installed). The DirectX Manager interface bypasses some of the many limitations of the DirectX Shader interface discussed in other threads on this forum.
Infinity Professional beta can be downloaded from here :
http://advance-software.com/products
(A limited number of unlocks are available free of charge whilst we're in beta.)
There's also an introductory 3D website tutorial pdf on that page. The tutorial is included in the Infinity Professional download so doesn't need to be downloaded separately.
We don't have a tutorial for Infinity Shader yet but it should be pretty self explanatory.
Numerous 3D web type products exist with their associated strengths & weaknesses. Infinity is a full 3D web browser (not just a page plugin) built from the ground up in C++. It can seamlessly integrate fully interactive webpages into real-time 3D web environments. This innovation allows the web to be seamlessly extended into 3 dimensions.
Please look beyond our prototype placeholder art. We'll get that upgraded soon.
Comments / questions welcome.
Best regards,
Steve Williams
Director
Advance Software
<><> Infinity is coming ...
Edit : Thanks to polycount moderators for allowing this topic to be discussed.
Infinity authorisation codes are available office hours UK.
Replies
Also post examples(more then one picture) and not just text(at least links).
You should write a little introduction post instead of asking 14 questions from which at least 4 are just needless.
An introduction to your programm IS NOT A FAQ!Just state what it´s good for, what are it´s advantages and so on.
Nobody wants to scroll all the times for 3-4 chunks of important information.
And why should i install another browser just to have 3D? Other browsers can do it to(Chrome,Firefox,Opera etc.) and they only need plugins like.Just take Unity 3D for example you can make 3D games and display them in the web player.
I know yours is supposed to do that without plugins...
Sorry if this sounded rude or something, but i just couldn´t resist.
Not rude at all - frank & to the point. Nothing wrong with that.
To address your points :
1. There isn't much point showing off prototype placeholder art other than to demonstrate concepts to site designers.
2. The html site design is early placeholder too. Sorry to hurt your eyes.
3. Yes, you're right, it's probably time to switch out that landing page to something a bit more sophisticated.
4. The intro's currently on the investor relations page - been thinking of moving that for a while as the information applies to everyone not just investors.
5. Unity is a page plugin. You can't put live webpages into unity environments. Ditto flash, etc.
6. html browsers don't understand 3D environments, they just have the concept of a page plugin region. Click from on environment to another in a unity plugin for example, then hit the back button on the browser. What happens ? You go back to the page you were on before you loaded the unity plugin page. Not very intuititve. 3D browsers understand 3D scenes are being traversed and navigate accordingly.
Blogspot.com would allmost look moore serious and proffesional than this. So basicly its a web browser in 3ds max?
Up to this point, the focus has been technology not graphics.
Advance Software is an Autodesk registered developer. You're welcome to verify this with them.
Autodesk Developer Network ID : GBGB1306
I understand your concern. You could use a virtual machine (VM Ware Workstation) or a second hard drive to test/run unknown software & a virus checker to detect known malware signatures. It's not in our interests to ship infected software.
Our site needs significant refinement. Both the 2D & 3D interfaces.
The browser UI & sites are designed in 3dsmax with support for other packages (soft,maya,blender, etc.) to follow.
We have a white label browser which can be rebranded to fit a client's corporate image. An example 3dsmax UI template is available.
Here's an example of our current real-time shader running in max.
Note the mix of lights types. Up to 25 lights are currently supported per mesh in a single pass (though practically you'd probably never want that many). Lights are automatically configured, so no need to select them per material in the shader rollout.
The example above also features normal mapping & a reflection map.
Nothing too fancy, but hopefully this will give you some idea of the quality of content that can be produced using our current tools for viewing in our current browser. Our existing prototype content is more basic - mainly diffuse only placeholder.
SpeCter - no offence taken. Most of that's fair comment. HTML browsers don't understand 3D content so if you navigate from one scene to another in a unity plugin window for example, then hit the browser back button, what happens ? You go back to the page you were on before visiting the unity plugin page, breaking the flow. Infinity understands when it's navigating 3D scenes so the browser controls work as expected.
Unity, flash, etc. cannot seamlessly integrate interactive paged content into their 3D environments. They can only put 3D on a page, not a page into 3D. I appreciate you might not always want to do that, but it's nice to have options.
Ahhhhhhh I love this site so much
obviously yes the website needs a overhaul as it looks like early 90's and even the writing has a very bad taste (to much wasted words, to much crap). Just don't waste peoples time and write in short what it is, what it does what it requires, alongside with a screenshot or 2.
Here is my suggestion for the intoduction page (first page or whatever): Thats short and sexy and makes sure that 90% of the people actually read and care about it. Even the screenshot doesn't scream to much bloat, so its not pushing away the text or vise versa.
Quote from your site, and my entry into this discussion: No, it failed every time (X3D, Java 3D, VRML97, Microsoft Chrome, Adobe Atmosphere,...) mainly because of some proprietary plugin requirement - and just a hype that never proved to be valid. Even Computer games still use 2d navigation structures in order to navigate users, neither did windows or Mac OS ever turn into 3d - because it doesn't work.
I see some potential in WebGL because its pushed by several browser companies (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari), but even that is still in the future atm. as only some dev. builds support it right now.
Also apparently Adobe is about to announce on their next Max conference fully hardware 3d accelerated support for the flash Player 11. Anyway just want to point out that I don't think its the best idea right now to start a VRML plugin right now.
So if I were you I would have a close look at the WebGL development of the 3 big browser pushers and see how you can create a middle ware or supporting library around that. Because most certainly once that stuff is ready to use (within a year or 2 perhaps) there will be certainly a demand of tools and exporters.
The html interface needs some work, 'tis true. Brutally honest & frank is cool. Thanks for the input, I will improve those html landing pages soon.
Infinity doesn't require proprietary plugins - it introduces a new XML based scene description format I invented called XSG. It's a lot cleaner than X3D though is not W3C approved yet. The format is open, but our implementation (browser/tools) is commercial closed source.
Re: hype - Second Life is still fairly popular, even with its quirks & weirdnesses. Our informal market reseach has shown significant end user demand for 3D web done right.
You don't have to use 3D to navigate a 3D environment if you don't want to - you can use it for 2D interface eye candy instead if you prefer a fixed viewpoint.
WebGL isn't the solution because you end up with the graphics engine being written in JavaScript on top of the WebGL interface. Result - slow and limited functionality. You need 60 fps constant on as many systems as possible. For that, you need a hardcore optimized graphics engine at the core, not javascript. Javascript has its place, but it's high level scripting, not low level engine development.
Infinity is a full 3D browser, not a VRML plugin. Technically we're ahead of Adobe, though they obviously have a much larger install base.
> most certainly once that stuff is ready to use (within a year or 2 perhaps) there will be certainly a demand of tools and exporters.
Our XSG format could be used in this configuration if anyone wanted to implement a JavaScript / WebGL solution. I'm focused on delivering a high performance solution so will avoid this interface for the time being.
Re: website image. We're a small startup. I'm the only developer right now & I'm a programmer. I think my time is best spent working on our Linux/OpenGL port than graphics.
This is normal artist/programmer friction. I understand the site needs improving but it's functional if not pretty. You've got everything you need there to get started if you're interested in experimenting with a next-gen 3D web browser.
Not running Windows, so I have no critique on the software itself.
The real world is 3D. Delivering content in a format people are familiar with can increase ease of use (if done right) and accessibility. Other uses include exhibitions, online museums/galleries, scientific, arch/vis, portfolio visualization, etc., etc. 3D is a superset of 2D, so it gives you everything you've got now and then some. Removing a technical constraint seems like a good idea. Quite where that takes us, honestly, I'm not sure. Guess we'll find out.
Working on Linux/OGL port with Mac to follow so hopefully I'll have some software for you to critique soon.
I'm not really marketing anything just yet. This is a pre-release introduction. Infinity is an excellent marketing tool in of itself.
Once polished, it should largely self-market.
For example: target realtors by setting up extremely easy to use tools for mocking up virtual houses. Something very simple and easy for nontechnical people to use might be able to attract some interest if the results were pretty enough.
Also dont assume that anything will market itself.
I'm trying not to focus too heavily on any one niche as we're developing generic technology for all sectors. Others can run with it in the various verticals if they want to as Advance Software can't focus everywhere.
Co-marketing enables the brand to develop. As third parties create sites, we can promote them whilst your content simultaneously promotes our tech. Everyone benefits. Once the copy protection's taken off the free browser we can get it distributed on download sites (download.com, tucows, etc), via p2p, newpaper/magazine cover discs, pre-installed with new systems, on ISP & hardware vendor install discs, etc.
3d browsers give non-gaming/non-creative end users a reason to upgrade their systems so hardware vendors have a reason to co-promote. This category of software can help them reach a new user base (regular end users / business requiring high performance / advanced 3D). Hence increased sales potential.
I wish you the best of luck
I fully agree with renderhjs, you are waayyyyy too small to do what you intend successfully, when even the big ones failed so far. I'd also suggest you better focus on providing middleware, editors... for future 3d tech (flash or webgl).
The competition with 3d plugins in browsers (you suggest your own browser? not gonna happen, I rather install some plugin for my browser than entire app) is pretty fierce (just look at Unity).
as for to javascript or not, how complex do you think that website is gonna be? will it need crysis like graphics, then it will be so costly to make that you might as well sell the app itself. It's not gonna require that much complexity in code, so the script engines will handle it. Besides with multi-core and whatnot we will see faster jit compilers anyway (e.g have a look at luajit2 it's faster than java in several benchmarks, despite being an interpreted language)
This is the most ambitious project that I stand a realistic chance of delivering. The software works and a beta is available to enable you to verify this claim. Sure, it ain't pretty yet, but technical realization comes before art visualization. Others can focus on middleware & editors. I'm making a 3D web browser.
We're currently using 3dsmax as an editor. Sure it has its faults but it also has the largest install base of all commercial 3D modeling & animation packages.
I do suggest a 3D browser. It is happening. A plugin for your existing browser is still a downloaded & installed binary 3D engine executable.
Unity is cool, but it doesn't support integrated interactive webpages within 3D web environments so it can't extend sites, it can only augment them by adding 3D content into pages.
From small acorns ...
@perna : hi
> but then you start hurling abuse at people who may not like your idea. Not so good
Not really hurling abuse, more looking at the argument from all sides, but that's a fair point. I agree we should probably drop the overly chatty intro & replace it with something more concise.
Could you record a video how how the browser works right now in action and upload it to youtube? Something like camstudio might do the trick. That way its easier for people here but also on your site or other places to get a impression of what actually is going on.
I was reading somewhere interesting rumors that Unity3D is actually releasing a version of their solution in the future that runs within a WebGL and JS environment within any standard browser that supports webGL. It was a snippet of a Google Talk on a google youtube channel. It was some kind of collaboration with Google and a lego star wars game was shown with it.
Should that remain true then webGL might be a hot candidate, and yes I believe that the JS engines will be fast enough, some of them these days already execute faster as the JIT compiler in Flash.
Go tell Tim Sweeney & John Carmack that they should code their next gen engines in Javascript and let me know how you get on. You can't beat downcoded assembly tight inner loops in critical sections no matter how effective your JIT compiler is. Sure they're getting better but native code wins everytime. With the increasing popularity of multi-core designs you need to tune to get the best out of a system, then there's memory management. Automatic garbage collection isn't as efficient as standard C++ object construction/destruction. I'm an expert in my field and I've chosen the best architectural solution. You are welcome to compare & contrast with other proposals of course.
On top of that - do I want to code in Javascript ? No thanks. C++ is my language of choice, but if I'm coding scripted stuff, C# looks to be a better choice. I'm no JavaScript (or C#) expert, but are the OO capabilities of JS really a match for Java or C# ?
Sorry, my turn to be frank. Hope you guys are ok with this.
Here's an example JavaScript engine for the interested.
http://github.com/mrdoob/three.js
So is the custom browser needed in order to view these 3d sites? That would be a major major turn-off for me (and probably anyone who wants their site to be in 3d).
The latest id engine cannot render & interact with seamlessly integrated interactive webpages in real-time 3D environments, Infinity can. I will bang on about this point as it's one of our key technical advantages.
The reason for the comparision is to look where real-time 3D engine tech is headed to illustrate that javascript engines are not performant leading edge solutions.
> So is the custom browser needed in order to view these 3d sites?
An xsg compatible browser is required to load xsg format 3D websites. Right now ours is the only one and right now it's installed as a standalone browser.
Would love to hire an art team to upgrade our demonstration content, but right now that's not possible. I'm working on bringing in next round funding but until that's in place we can't move that work forwards.
[ame]
The navi 2 demo
This is the direction I would personally head in if I was creating a 3d web page viewer. You could maybe head down this direction and add some multi-user support, which could also be interesting for people wanting to do a live-stream conference for companies and etc..
Whatever you decide to do I wish you luck with the project.
Beyond what has been discussed, I think you should make it clear what a "3d web browser" is. You sort of go on as if everyone already is familiar with what you're talking about, but I personally have never seen one in action. Possibly a youtube video of you navigating a 3d web browser would be the easiest solution.
A 3d web browser might seem like common sense to you since you have worked on this so much, but to the average person it is a unclear term. Seeing it in action would certainly clear things up, and prove if it is useful or not.
[edit] surfa sort of beat me to it with that example.
I haven't seen their demo before so I'll go do some research.
3D websites / browsers are new tech. Different companies are approaching the medium from different perspectives.
If you visit that youtube page, you'll see links to some other approaches.
We can already do everything I've seen on the NaviDemo.
They're using WebKit, we're currently using Gecko.
Link to their tech demo here : http://www.khrona.com/products/awesomium/demos/
Edit: Technically awesonium's in approximately the same class as Infinity. Fully integrated webpage support in a real-time 3D engine on the primary commercial platform (Windows).
Their high level content manipulation interface is a little different, but that's easy enough to refine in either engine. Now things get interesting - we've got some competition. Thanks for the heads up. You can't do this kind of stuff in Javascript/WebGL.