NG Design Document/Future Directions

From Rex community wiki

Virtual reality as a technology offers practically unlimited possibilities for a multitude of use cases. In the near future there will be significant advances in both software and hardware that support each other and create opportunities for interconnected 3D applications we can't even imagine today. We do, however, have some idea of the directions the future of the Immersive Web will take; social environments, games, education, online meetings, 3D music experiences and information visualization are only some of the potential use cases.

The future will bring along technologies such as lightweight and stylish personal displays that can be attached to or worn as glasses, for example. Mobile devices, wireless networks and location finding technologies will create applications for contextual display of information. Portability will also allow augmented reality to be used in a number of ways. The first steps towards mobile realXtend will be a light client for IM, chat and VoIP. Going to mobile 3D is an exciting prospect as the modern devices already have plenty of computing power for a host of applications and input devices like acceleration sensors offer interesting prospects for user interface design.

Practically, the most important developments at the moment are the ongoing standardization operations that make avatar mobility between different worlds possible and standardize 3D content formats. Entry cost for applications is still too high for many use cases and the risk is high, because there are no guarantees of content reusability thanks to proprietary formats that might be forgotten in a year or two. realXtend's goal is to be involved in standardization efforts as the opportunities arise and drive standardization and avatar mobility where possible.

We expect the Immersive Web community to come up with thigs too fantastic to imagine right now once the platforms reach the required level of maturity. Right now the challenge is to create a platform that is freely available for everyone to use and modular enough to make it possible for people to fulfill their dreams and ambitions with it and change the way we interact with technology forever.