The Underscore Archives

Pete Fairhurst wrote:

> Ah, it wasn't clear that you were after the computational power which access
> to the 3D APIs would give you.  I can see that being relevant to casual
> games, i.e. things like Armadillo Run, Blast Miner, etc.

Absolutely - just look at some of the awesome content on XBLA, probably 
only 50% of which is '3D' (in a perspective nature). Millions of people 
have GPUs sat in their PCs (many of which I bet own them even without 
choice.. i.e. embedded motherboard GPUs, or Dell boxes that just had 
them anyway), and they're sat idle barely fulfilling their potential, 
while some JavaScript framework tries its damndest to render a bloody 
sliding bar in the browser :) Or a provide a dragable transparent image, 
or similar.

Like I said, SO many possibilities, utterly ignored.

> I'm not deliberately being a troll here (lotta love for you, Richy!) but
> moving SL online would only serve to encourage a few more dabblers, who're
> too intimidated/confused by the software download to try the thing
> otherwise.  Again, SL would fall into the non-casual bracket because it
> requires perseverance to get into and stick with.

I agree, SL isn't 'casual', and you don't have to move the app itself 
into a web browser - but my point really was that if the plugin itself 
was powerful enough, if it used the system resources well or allowed 
acces to them, then would anyone really care if they had to 'download 
install run' or just 'run'? :) Take it truly into the web and access to 
the content via your own web site, your own apps, etc - ahh, so much easier.

> *nudge*  I think we may ultimately be at crossed purposes; Silverlight has
> been designed as a traditional application framework for the web.  I doubt
> there's much to stop MS extending it to offer more diverse capabilities once
> the technology begins to mature.  Nor am I ignorant of the fact that, in
> their perfect dream, MS wants everyone gaming on their platforms at all
> times.

Heh.. true. Put it this way, I just wish they had taken that step 
already. It's like the tip of an iceberg, which right now is just a bit 
too dull to be worth exploring any deeper. Mind you, if they can get 
users onboard with video, get that demand going, then maybe one day it 
will evolve. I guess by then my nephew will be 12 years old and coding 
(he's currently 1!) ;)

Cheers,

Rich
-- 
Zend Certified Engineer
http://www.corephp.co.uk

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out of a window"