Design speeded by 3-D collaboration on the Internet

Electronic News, Feb 23, 1998 by Joe Dysart

The Internet Handicap

Unfortunately, one of the primary obstacles to the proliferation of 3D collaborative engineering is the uncertain future of the Internet, according to Roman Ormandy, president of Mountain View, California-based Caligari, a 3D software firm.

These days, the Web sometimes seems to slow to an excruciating crawl during hours of peak usage. And while the Clinton Administration has already released broad goals for a 'Next Generation Internet' hoped to be a thousand times faster, that's small consolation for Net users who will be logging on tomorrow. Today's 28.8Kbs modem users, still struggling with basic Internet functions, are not ready to believe that in five to 10 years, they will be able to freely frolic about cyberspace in fully immersive, fully animated, photo-realistic 3D, Mr. Ormandy indicated.

Meanwhile, Jo Ann Oravec, author of "Virtual Individuals, Virtual Groups: Human Dimensions of Groupware and Computer Networking," published by Cambridge University Press, is also concerned about the cultural paradigm shift that will accompany the emergence of 3D collaborative engineering. She warned that engineers may resist collaborating in real time on the Net if it's tougher to document their personal input into a project.

Ms. Oravec also wonders how the lack of human gestures like facial expressions ---which often speak volumes about an engineer's confidence or skepticism about an idea ---will impact the success of Net-based projects engineered with video-deficient interfaces.

Those caveats aside, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that engineers who are already E-mailing 3D models back and forth to each other, will be among the pioneers of 3D collaborative engineering, according to AMP's Patrick Alsedek, engineering systems integration services. And once others get wind of the time and money those engineers are saving, the lion's share of the electronics industry will follow, Mr. Alsedek indicated. "It's the next logical step," he added.