Chris - First of all, I want to make it clear that I am guessing quite a but. Furthermore, I'm leaving out a great deal of info regarding the low-level "stuff" that Perceptronics' IC3D is doing and it is EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE. With that said, you can tell a lot from looking at a company's architecture diagrams!
Your Win 98 analogy is close, but off a bit. Let's say as a developer I wanted to build a custom E-Mail client, i.e., HotMail. I could start by developing a protocol that clients/servers would use to communicate with one another. Once my protocols were complete, I could develop a messaging server to manage messages/communication. Likewise, I could write a client API that applications could use to access/manage my messaging server. Finally, I could develop my custom E-Mail client that would access my custom messaging server (running my custom protocols) via my custom client API.
Or, maybe not. An alternative would be to buy a messaging server (Netscape Messaging Server, Microsoft Exchange, etc.) and develop my client using its provided API. The messaging server already handles all of the message management/communication and protocols (POP, SMTP, IMAP, MAPI, etc.).
While the above example does not truly describe a Framework, it's sufficient to describe the benefits of an IC3D. The point is, A GREAT DEAL OF CODE HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN FOR YOU, YOU JUST USE IT INSTEAD OF WRITING IT YOURSELF!
With IC3D, this is no small matter. IC3D is abstracting from the developer a huge amount of complexity. As a result, the process of developing real-time collaborative 3D apps is EXTREMELY SIMPLIFIED. Developer's don't have to write protocols for communication, nor do they have to write code to implement the protocols. IC3D does all that (and quite a bit more), they simply write to IC3D.
I hope this description is a bit better than my last... I need to work on shortening my novels:)
JN |
