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Why a Pixar-Invented Protocol Is the 'HTML of the Metaverse' (roadtovr.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD from the powering-the-possibilities dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Road to VR: NVIDIA, one of the tech sector's power players, is pushing the Universal Scene Description protocol as the foundation of interoperable content and experiences in the metaverse. In a recent post the company explains why it believes the protocol, originally invented by Pixar, fits the needs of the coming metaverse. Though the word metaverse is presently being used as a catchall for pretty much any multi-user application these days, the truth is that the vast majority of such platforms are islands unto themselves that have no connectivity to virtual spaces, people, or objects on other platforms. The 'real' metaverse, most seem to agree, must have at least some elements of interoperability, allowing users to seamlessly move from one virtual space to the next, much like we do today on the web. To that end, Nvidia is pushing Universal Scene Description (USD) as the "HTML of the metaverse," the company described in a recent post.

Much like HTML forms a description of a webpage -- which can be hosted anywhere on the internet -- and is retrieved and rendered locally by a web browser, USD is a protocol for describing complex virtual scenes which can be retrieved and rendered to varying degrees depending upon local hardware capabilities. With a 'USD browser' of sorts, Nvidia is suggesting that USD could be the common method by which virtual spaces are defined in a way that's easy for anyone to decipher and render. "[USD] includes features necessary for scaling to large data sets like lazy loading and efficient retrieval of time-sampled data," [writes Nvidia's Rev Lebaredian and Michael Kass]. "It is tremendously extensible, allowing users to customize data schemas, input and output formats, and methods for finding assets. In short, USD covers the very broad range of requirements that Pixar found necessary to make its feature films."

Indeed, CGI pioneer Pixar created USD to make collaboration on complex 3D animation projects easier. The company open-sourced the protocol back in 2015. USD is more than just a file format for 3D geometry. Not only can USD describe a complex scene with various objects, textures, and lighting, it can also include references to assets hosted elsewhere, property inheritance, and layering functionality which allows non-destructive editing of a single scene with efficient asset re-use. While Nvidia thinks USD is the right starting point for an interoperable platform, the company also acknowledges that "USD will need to evolve to meet the needs of the metaverse." On that front the company laid out a fairly extensive roadmap of features that it's working on for USD to successfully serve as the foundation of the metaverse. The newly formed Metaverse Standards Forum, of which Nvidia and thousands of other companies are members, has also pointed to USD as a promising foundation for interoperable virtual spaces and experiences.
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Why a Pixar-Invented Protocol Is the 'HTML of the Metaverse' More

Why a Pixar-Invented Protocol Is the 'HTML of the Metaverse'

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  • VRML (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @08:09AM (#62839281)

    Poor VRML, ahead of its time.

  • I am sure that Mark Zuckerberg hates the very idea and wants everyone to be only on his platform...

    • I am sure that Mark Zuckerberg hates the very idea and wants everyone to be only on his platform...

      He'll be raging right now.

      And that's precisely why we should all support it. His powerplay must fail.

      • I just figured he had watched Ready Player One and thought that IOI sounded like a great company to emulate.

  • Much like HTML.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @08:34AM (#62839359)

    Much like HTML forms a description of a webpage -- which can be hosted anywhere on the internet -- and is retrieved and rendered locally by a web browser, USD is a protocol for describing complex virtual scenes which can be retrieved and rendered to varying degrees depending upon local hardware capabilities

    That doesn't sound anything like HTML.

    If USD is anything like HTML, developers will use tools to massively bloat the USD in a vain attempt to make it render the same as the fever dream in their heads DESPITE the local hardware capabilities.

    I wonder who is working on what will become 'The shockwave/flash of the Metaverse' ?

    And all the textures will be treated like fonts, so you will need to download 97TB of textures before it will begin rendering anything.

    And some dipshit will introduce a way of executing arbitrary code locally (MetaActivex, MetaJavaScript etc)

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I would be enormously surprised if the larger protocol that USD fits into doesn't include a method for executing code locally.

        According to the TFA: It's based on python 2.7, with NVIDIA adding support for python 3. They also want to make a bunch of webassembly modules to get it running in web browsers. So the support is definitely there to run it locally.

        The last thing you want is for every interaction with an object to require network traffic to a centralized server.

        Again, According to the TFA they actually do want to require centralization:

        Real-time streaming of IoT data: Industrial virtual worlds and live digital twins require real-time streaming of IoT data. NVIDIA is working on building USD connections to IoT data streaming protocols.

        Not surprising of course. Real time tracking of live reactions to ad placement, err... "experiences and impressions" *vomits*, is a key money maker for them. Of course they'd want to centralize it.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          According to the TFA: It's based on python 2.7, with NVIDIA adding support for python 3.

          Great. It's being developed by impossibly short-sighted people.

      • A turing complete language that is remotely sourced IS a bad idea, in all cases. You need to limit it to something that doesn't end up in infinite loops as a bare minimum, and once you have managed that, it is no longer Turing complete.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          A turing complete language that is remotely sourced IS a bad idea, in all cases.

          Nonsense! It's the foundation of much of our world today.

          In case you haven't puzzled this out, the alternative is not to "run everything on the server", that would be horrible. The alternative is to download local applications, which is far, far, more dangerous than whatever security problems you imagine JavaScript has.

          Or maybe you don't know what people mean by "Turing complete"? It doesn't mean "without restriction". It's actually a pretty low bar. Conway's game of life, for example, is Turing complete

          • No HTML + CSS is not turing complete. While JS in theory is, a browser will not let it run in an infinite loop, if it does too much processing it gets killed. SVGs are turing complete, but there are always hard limits to how many recursions implementations will allow to not provide a DoS attack surface.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by narcc ( 412956 )

              No HTML + CSS is not turing complete.

              It absolutely is. This has been proven, by implementing rule 110 [accodeing.com]. Rule 110, as you know, has been proven to be Turing complete.

              While JS in theory is

              There is no question that JS is turing complete.

              Do you even know what is meant by the term "Turing complete"?

    • That doesn't sound anything like HTML.

      ok. Why?

      If USD is anything like HTML, developers will use tools to massively bloat the USD in a vain attempt to make it render the same as the fever dream in their heads DESPITE the local hardware capabilities.

      That sounds like... literally all content created on one machine and rendered on another? Accuracy is a spectrum that will always be affected by hardware on both the creation side, and the rendering side. Even static raster images-- a grid of pixels with precise RGB values-- get stymied by a lack of consistency in screen aspect ratio, resolution, brightness and darkness capabilities, color space reach, color calibration, ambient lighting... If you've ever seen a workstation for people who do things

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Joviex ( 976416 )

      That doesn't sound anything like HTML.

      Because it's not. And the person who wrote this didnt understand and tried to make an analogy that they also dont understand.

  • Maybe I'm just getting older, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wildstoo ( 835450 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @08:59AM (#62839415)
    Whenever I see the word "metaverse" I feel an overwhelming urge to punch something. Then I calm down and mentally file it somewhere between "NFTs" and "blockchain".

    • Because it like Web3 is a just a random collection of scams. No reason to take it serious as anything other than a threat.

    • To add to that, "Cyber", always gets me that way.

    • Whenever I see the word "metaverse" I feel an overwhelming urge to punch something.

      Really? I get all hot and bothered and want to "cyber."

    • ME TOO!

      Amazing how a big PR campaign has distracted the planet away from facebook's amplification of antisocial behavior. Not just a name change but old failed worn out tech ideas from 20 years ago to go with it!

      I wonder if VRML had a big backer like this if we'd all have Ape-arms and padded VR rooms today? I imagine we'd have another anti-science PR campaign over the young adults today with vision problems due to growing up with heavy use of 3D illusions during the development of their visual cortex.

  • what USD is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by snowshovelboy ( 242280 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @09:02AM (#62839425)

    Allow me to explain things like USD.

    Have you ever heard the old adage that says if you don't give your senior developers interesting problems to work on, they will make their problems interesting? Well, that's what this is. Interoperable file formats are not an interesting problem to solve, but they are required when you work at a company like Pixar where you have many different rendering and content creation tools built in house and also a bunch of proprietary ones from outside vendors. This problem has been made interesting a number of times in the past, as well. For example, with the collada file format. File formats for data exchange is an evergreen area of boring code that comes up again and again, and probably will forever.

  • first thought just after reading the headline:

    since when is HTML a protocol?

    Whatever this is about, shouldn't it be described as the lingua franca of the metaverse or compared to http if it is an actual protocol?

    I saw that some comments mentioned VRML, yeah, dabbled into that too around 2000....

    OK, I'll be back after reading the actual news :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      Maybe a bit earlier than that? As far as the web goes, I had long moved on from VRML and was getting into WAP around 1999/2000. I figured VRML was dead, and that the future was mobile. (It was getting hard to find plugins. The writing was on the wall.) I'm thinking around 1996 or 1997? Or maybe 1998 ... I had put a VRML tour together for a school sometime around then.

      It was actually pretty good. I don't remember any needless complexity. Simple things were trivial, if you knew a bit about 3d graphics,

      • Probably. It was at university, so any time between 1997 and 2003. It was in one of the courses for about a week.

  • USD ?! Think of a better acronym (Score:4, Insightful)

    by poptopdrop ( 6713596 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @09:53AM (#62839557)

    "USD" is widely used for "US dollars", so Googling it won't find you help with 3D formatting.

    Just like 'Go', it's a BAD name for something new.

    • "USD" is widely used for "US dollars" . . .

      By the time it catches on, this protocol may be the primary USD.

      So . . . any takes on whether the naming is a Chinese plot?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Utterly Stupid Description.

      Seems USD is correct, though!

    • Any three letter acronym if searched for without further qualification is going to return results from multiple domains.

      What fool would deliberately withhold known relevant qualifiers form a search and expect relevant results?

      • What fool would not realise that USD is not just "any TLA" but a very popular TLA that will pollute the results of any qualified search ?

  • When I first heard about the "Metaverse" back when it was announced, I was actually kind of excited. I imagined it as protocols and standardized technologies that would allow any org or individuals to add to it, just like how the internet works.

    Since then, I've been disappointed because, as far as I can tell, Facebook sees the Metaverse as a glorified VR chatroom for... work meetings, or something. And the media has turned "Metaverse" into a buzz word that they'll slap on anything 3D.

    So, I'm glad to see tha

  • Until the "metaverse" becomes real it's pure gimmick.
  • Itâ(TM)s great to have a standard like this⦠Any concept if a multi-ecosystem metaverse is going to need it. Unfortunately, this format in itâ(TM)s current form doesnâ(TM)t support radiance fields in any way, which is looking to be the real breakthrough metaverse technology.
  • It's not that I'm just not interested in Meta, having spent enough time in Second Life that I'm good on VR worlds, thanks. Its that Facebook is a cockwomble of a company and I have no interest in supporting them. And I'm an old dude, which I'm told is pretty much the only people going to Facebook these days. I'll be more interested in this when its used by something I actually care about.

  • X3D (Score:2)

    by kbg ( 241421 )

    Why not use the royalty free ISO standard X3D?

    I guess someone is always inventing the same shit over and over againg never even checking if it already exists.
    Here is a hint to everyone, what ever you can think of it has already been tought of and implemented.

  • You ask me to support a format extended by nVIDIA?
    Given their history of using any means possible to corner and make people captive of their standards, I do have a problem with that.

  • USD isnt anything like HTML.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joviex ( 976416 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @11:07AM (#62839807)
    Stop trying to boil technology down to shit you understand since you obviously cant explain it in the first place.

    USD is not changing/hasnt changed much of anything over almost a decade of using it IN STUDIO.

    The problem is not DESCRIPTION of SCENE -- IT IS SIZE AND WEIGHT.

    Talk about problems you understand; not push articles on shit you have zero clue.

  • Hasn't this been a part of macOS since 2019's macOS Catalina?

  • I never ... (Score:3)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @04:39PM (#62841291)

    ... met a verse I didn't like.

  • It's a description language.

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