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The Avalon Team Introduces 3-D Features | |
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| Time: 06:32 EST/11:32 GMT | News Source: Microsoft | Posted By: Jonathan Tigner | ||
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The WinHEC 2004 build of Avalon contains new features that enable you to easily add three-dimensional (3-D) content to your Avalon applications. This article introduces you to the 3-D functionality currently available and how it may evolve in the future. Finally, this article addresses the differences between Avalon and DirectX and discusses which technology may be best for your application. | ||
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| #1 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 7/18/2004 2:49:52 PM |
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While one can do that - run in a classic mode...I have to ask why?
The new interfaces are designed to do much more than compell and entertain. The marketing people who use the term, "a compelling new interface...." should be re-educated about what an interface is and why its observable and measurable characteristics are evolving the way they are. Not nearly enough analysis, or comment is presented opposite Microsoft's real strengths in this area - what I mean is this, XP and most especially Longhorn follow design criteria that make any task, "Discoverable." A discoverable operating system is based upon using known starting points, which have known and desired end results and are populated with either familiar objects or objects which can be easily understood in the context of the task being performed. This discoverable task based design is what drives the OS's UI at every level and very much behind Windows' success. I do not assess any OS - however powerful fundamentally, comes nearly as close to Windows in this regard. Now, Avalon goes well beyond what any UI has ever attempted. It is not about appearance, it is about discoverable presentation - or "what" is in all of these open windows, and which are relevant to what I want to do, or need to know... This "Presentation" allows for accelerated consumption of desired information, or the ability to assess whether that information is needed at the moment. The UI is designed to allow for a far more rapid assimilation of information - allowing one to look into many more windows at one time - without having to tab to them or open them fully. In this same context, the new UI and developer tools for allowing others <like us> to develop similarly powerful and discoverable applications. |
| #2 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 7/18/2004 2:50:00 PM |
| The next part is obvious....how well does this layer <presentation> allow the passage of information between tasks. This is where both common elements and WinFS truly distinguish Longhorn from all other OS'es - regardless of UI. We have to start [or re-visit] business processes. We have to treat them as commodities - where competitive parity is driven by large and strong external influences that normalize data - e.g., RFID tags, smart receipts etc... Now, Longhorn and all that it is....is designed to allow users and developers to build solutions that restore competitive advantage and competition within a world that is being exposed to ever increasing competitive parity. Competitive parity is the real danger - it is to say that there is no basis for competition. This ought to scare the lights out of all of us and cause us to embrace any idea that allows for the continued creation of advantage - that is what drives true innovation and progress. It isn't nor has it ever been about technology - it is and I hope, always will be, more about what we do with it. Microsoft, its .NET Platform and certainly Longhorn and all its tools, are designed to provide for this ability. Apple is an excellent example of the failure of pure innovation - despite designs, much less is done with its technologies and that is why, no matter how compelling Apple's physical construct may be, too little is done with it and competitive parity limits it. Microsoft and Windows remain so powerful, not because of marketing - in fact, I think their marketing expresses too little about what their technologies actually are - a system of integrated systems designed to allow for individual innovation that sustains the ability to create an advantage. This is why Jobs is such a tragic figure and arrogant - where arrogance is accurately defined as dogmatic beliefs which are unsupported by fact. Mr. Gate's on the other hand fully understands what advantage is - it is about providing for competition and advantage. It is ironic - they most accused of reducing competition, are those most responsible for sustaining the ability to provide for advantage. That is what Avalon and the UI is all about - one more arrow in a quiver of arrows designed to allow "you" to create unique value and sustain competition |
| #3 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 7/18/2004 11:58:17 PM |
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Chaining or slipstreaming was done the same way in DOS as well.
What I am speaking to is the role of each wihtin one architecture. Since one is a monolithic design [no invitations to invite a debate about mach, here], and one is a micro-kernel design, it is very difficult to compare the two. We'd have to examine all three layers in Longhorn - as they work in unison on top of fundamentals in order to address how the OS will handle I/O and the FS. The thread though is about one layer, and how it will be used to deliver a better series of experiences and how these are enabled in part by WinFS. Piping one set of instructions into another isn't even close to what will be possible. Also, the development community has had and will have years to build applications that take advantage of the new OS - many, including ourselves, have begun already. I don't want to continue developing for the Unices, Linuces, or any version of them - I want to do more than what the tools available within that group will allow me to do. I want and will build a new generation of "Value Added Networks [VAN's], less the dependencies that they once had and use web services to connect business processes. I just don't see how sticking with any Unices will allow us as a smaller shop to do that. Further, I don't see any of my clients as being satisfied with one can economically produce with the tools available to the Unices or Linuces. It is not just about the interface, it is the product that processing generates - once people get a taste of visually consumable business intelligence product, they cannot go back to being flooded with data - they require product that can be used to make rapid decisions that are supported by the aggregate results of millions of dissimilar processes. As a small shop, we have to have tools to allow us to address that and the Linuces just don't - I know, we tried it and tried really hard with the best that community has to offer - I watched in horror as the companies we were/are supporting burned cash trying - they ended up unable to pay us! I mean, just because x, or y is free, does not mean that the people using it are - and trust me, these guys have the best I have ever seen. All the while, in .NET we see small groups producing thousands of very useful applications that are combined to form business systems that work for all concerned. I don't want to be restricted to > or | any more than I want to revisit the 1960's [UCSD at PT Loma], and I sure don't want to see good people and great developers fail because their development costs are through the roof and for what - the ability to bury people in data - not product. |
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