The 3D Cellphone

Big computer companies like IBM and HP are developing software that allows you do view highly detailed 3D worlds on modest client machines (see DCV and RGS links below). This is accomplished by doing the rendering on the server side and sending the screen to a number of smaller clients.

Companies like Vollee and OTOY are doing something similar, but targeted at the cellphone. Imagine that you are running a 3D world like Second Life on your cellphone. But, since your phone does not have the compute or storage resources to really do this, all of the rendering is being done on a server and the results streamed to your phone in the form of a digital movie (MP3, Flash video, etc.). Your inputs on the phone are commands to move through the virtual world and interact with the objects there. These commands are carried to a server where the simulation and graphic rendering are done and the finished video frames are streamed back to your phone for you to see. Clearly there will be some video lag between the command and the visual results as the key entries travel to the server, are simulated and rendered, and the results travel back to your phone. if you are old enough you will remember that this is how text entry and order execution worked with the old terminal windows back when "the Internet" meant textual applications on a command line and there was no such thing as "the Web". You may also have seen the gradual evolution of that primitive interface into rudimentary graphic menues as clever people showed that the text could acrually drive a menu system rather than just showing up on a command line.

High-def rendering on all devices will become a reality. A few years ago we thought it would happen through the miniaturization of the GPU so that all phones had an Nvidia or ATI chip in them. But faster networks are making this possible while the GPU remains on the server machine. The connection between the client and server is fast enough that the two seem to share the visualization capability. There may be several technical hurdles to work through, but the community have solved bigger problems than those to get where we are now. Keep looking for great things on small devices.

IBM: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/visualization/
HP: http://h20331.www2.hp.com/hpsub/cache/286504-0-0-225-121.html
Vollee: http://www.vollee.com/secondlife
OTOY: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/20/the-truth-behind-liveplaces-photo-realistic-3d-world-and-otoys-rendering-engine/

Server-side Rendering - Sun and Nvidia

Sun has been working with Nvidia to create a capability to do both the computation and any associated rendering on the server side. Then they stream the screen image to the client device. This is significant switch from what we do with the DIS and HLA federations now. But Sun’s goal is to make it possible to experience rich 3D scenes on lightweight client devices because all of the rendering is done on the server. They are also working on a capability to use new graphic chips to render “Pixar quality” images in real-time for display in CAVE environments.

If Sun is successful then it is an indication that network bandwidth is becoming plentiful enough that we can change the model we have used for decades of creating very small data packets and doing all of the scene generation on the client side. This is valuable for customers who do not want to have to hold a powerful graphic machine in their hand (like a cellphone). Instead, customers will be able to see rich 3D worlds on very minimal computing clients, e.g. something that is capable of playing MP3 movies today. This brings down a significant commercial barrier. Even the cheapest cellphones and pocket PCs would be able to play a rich 3D game because the game would really be running and rendering on the server. It is hard to imagine a world in which bandwidth is that plentiful for the consumer. Probably it would be rolled out to industrial customers for limited applications and private bandwidth first. Their product name for this is TurboVNC.

On the military side, we would be able to tap into any scene that anyone in the training event is seeing. We could see it on a regular cellphone (if/when it becomes available through a cellular network) or a wireless pocket PC.