Real web design
Published Tue 14 Jul 2009
With cloud computing possibly about to enter our living rooms, is such a concept no longer just blue sky thinking?
Whether we’re working, seeking entertainment, ordering groceries or planning holidays – it all leads to us spending an increasing proportion of our lives online.
We have quickly adopted digital lifestyles and now take for granted the impact the internet has on our lives. However, it’s still early days in the realm of web technology, and a recent news announcement got me thinking about how the internet could fundamentally change the way we use, access and pay for our design tools in the not too distant future.
While browsing the BBC news site I came across a story about a company called OnLive that caused a stir when it revealed its beta technology at GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco at the end of March. OnLive claims it will be ready to launch what sounds like an almost unbelievable online service to computer gaming fans later this year. The service will enable customers to purchase a wide number of games, in a variety of formats, and OnLive plans to host these on its top-of-the-range servers and workstations and then blast the graphics of the game being played to a web browser running on any operating system. This means that users won’t need to own a high-spec computer or a variety of consoles at home, yet OnLive claims users will still receive an equivalent graphical experience. Another benefit, of course, is never having to download the games. This got me thinking: if it can be done for a 60 frames per second, power hungry game, then it can surely be done for 2D and 3D CAD applications.
After some further reading on newswires and reputable games sites (with mixed responses to OnLive), I discovered that even the stock market seemed to take notice of the news (for once) especially when industry analysts claimed that if OnLive works it could amount to the death of such popular devices as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. With an OnLive account, gamers would never need to have a specific games console, or ensure they had the latest graphics card, oodles of RAM or an expensive processor in their PCs. OnLive, so it would seem, would give the same performance on an Atom-based ultra portable as it would on an Intel quad-core Xeon, as performance would only depend on the ‘breadth’ of the users’ bandwidths.
Current 3D technologies enabling web-based CAD
Web browsers are typically inept at dealing with 3D unless developers utilise a third-party plug-in. It’s perhaps not surprising that our industry couldn’t agree on a single standard for web-based 3D, however, there are five open-ish popular development tools:
• X3D – an evolved version of VRML
• 3DMLW – an open source 3D Markup Language for Web
• COLLADA (COLLAborative Design Activity) – a widely used XML schema
• OpenGL ES (Embedded Systems) – a variant of OpenGL which also supports mobile devices
• U3D (Universal 3D format) – developed by Intel, Boeing, Adobe, Hewlett Packard and Bentley Systems
Many small 3D applications utilise one of these standards but typically only to view and rotate basic 3D models which first have to be downloaded. The general consensus is that they lack the necessary ‘oomph’ to form the basis of a web-based CAD application. One CAD company CEO told me, “Most of the 3D plug-ins are either junk or too specific. An ubiquitous one may come along one day but there’s none available now.”
Having given short shrift to those emerging industry standards, I’m going to add in some more jargon and mention RIA – Rich Internet Applications. This is an industry buzzword for providing enhanced development tools for browser or web-driven tools. Among the enabling RIA technologies, Microsoft is pushing a .NET-based technology called Silverlight, while Adobe has AIR and Flash. These frameworks expand what it is possible to develop within browsers and provide web tools with most of the benefits of desktop development tools, such as data persistence, access to locally stored data and integration capabilities.
All these standards and programming layers add hooks so the CAD developers can get their web-based applications to access the 3D graphics hardware. Web applications are moving beyond the browser and now appear to be hybrid applications. A little known fact is that a lot of this is being driven by modern phone operating systems as developers need tools that will deliver applications for multiple target platforms, from low-power and thinclient to heavy workstation and servers.
OnLive technology
For those readers not passionate about games, bear with me – it’s only the underlying technology principle that’s really the point of discussion here. During the past seven years of OnLive’s ‘stealth development’ phase, the company claims to have perfected an interactive video compression technique, with ultra low latency (lag) – meaning it literally encodes live video streams into data in one millisecond. This algorithm has been hard coded into a custom processor that comes in a little black box users receive as part of their OnLive subscription, together with a software plug-in for browsers. If subscribers have a 1.5 Mbit connection speed, OnLive claims they will be able to receive real time games at Wii resolution (852 x 480 pixels). With a 4.5 Mbit internet speed, the company is promising to deliver 1280 x 720 at 60fps. The service is due to go live initially in the US in September, and OnLive boasts it has already signed up the major software vendors such as EA, Ubisoft, Eidos, Atari, Codemasters and THQ.
If the technology proves a success, this really could be the first industry changing implementation of so-called ‘cloud computing’. Cloud-based solutions are really in vogue at the moment, although not so much in the actual delivery of anything, but more as a discussion topic and future application development area. The basic principle offers dynamically scalable and virtualised (operating system independent) computing resources that are delivered over the web. There’s no infrastructure required on the client side of the equation and everything is ‘on-demand’. The ‘cloud’ vision SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) are all seen as key future business models. OnLive, if it succeeds, would deliver on all three.
There has been similar technology delivered on a local level by Hewlett Packard with its Blade workstations, which operate in a thinkclient manner. The workstations can be kept at a remote location but accessed via a simple terminal over a TCP/IP network. So, while the designers may be in India, the workstations they use plus the licenced CAD software could be in Copenhagen. OnLive expands this concept by providing it over the public network (the internet).
For a few years now, there have been conceptual ideas to try to utilise the internet for running and hosting design applications but all have been limited by bandwidth and, more fundamentally, the lack of native support for 3D in the standard browser applications. To get around this problem there have been attempts to develop and incorporate add-on 3D libraries for browsers but none have helped create a killer 3D app for the web. And should there be a 3D application running in a browser, it would still rely on the internet bandwidth available, the graphics card in the machine and the grunt of the workstation’s processor to run the application locally. The OnLive concept removes this barrier from the user by only streaming the video of the application.
CAD online
So surely OnLive’s technology is of interest to CAD developers who all have some experimental web-based solutions in various stages of development. It so happens, I’m just back from Autodesk’s offices in San Francisco where I raised OnLive as a talking point to the AutoCAD development team, to which I was told that Autodesk is one of the ‘less visible’ strategic investors in the company. Knowing the numerous web tools Autodesk has been experimenting with (see the Labs website), OnLive seems to me to be a perfect fit and this is potentially a decent financial investment for the company.
With regards to the actual delivery of a workable design application from any developer, everything at this stage seems quite experimental but eventually I’m pretty sure the right combinations will create firm standards and open up rich web-based applications. That is, of course, unless cloud computing and video compression systems such as OnLive don’t bypass these current software development limitations. On that subject, Autodesk’s CEO Carl Bass told me: “OnLive allows for all kinds of compute-intensive applications to run well on fully powered servers and low-power clients. I think applications in the near future will continue to run on a number of platforms and it’s hard for me to guess in the long run which will emerge as dominant”.
Although OnLive isn’t available yet (outside of beta), there are already some impressive web tools that show what’s capable with today’s cutting edge, add-on 3D web technology. Autodesk’s Project Dragonfly appears to be one of the more advanced web-based Labs applications that I’ve seen so far, where users can design interior layouts and spaces using drag and drop, and axonometric views. While its interiors’ focus is limited, it is well worth trying out to see how fast it works as a browser-only based application on your own system. There are a number of other tools in development including Project Showroom – a cloud-based rendering tool for visualising interior fittings and colours, as well as Project Freewheel for DWG viewing in a web browser.
Other vendors have showcased experimental online drafting and file viewing software based on Microsoft’s .NET Silverlight technology but this too has limitations as it requires a download and has performance issues. The general consensus from the market is that ‘the cloud’ is the next big thing in computing and CAD applications will have to be there, as it will be a bigger fundamental jump than DOS to Windows.
Conclusion
Currently, I’m not aware of any company seriously attempting to provide a commercial 2D drafting tool on the web, let alone a proper 3D solution. With OnLive, the whole browser vs desktop, cloud vs client-based computing has suddenly hit home, so the fundamental transformation may be in store for us in the coming years. We may not need to have workstations but share part of a super computer that’s situated somewhere in the middle of a desert. With a distributed model, the hassle of upgrading workstation components may completely disappear.
There are also cultural issues that such a change would need to overcome. For example, it’s still an issue for companies to store their mission critical data externally, let alone stream it live, via the web, around the world – while relying on the security and stability of third parties.
However, before I get too carried away, this concept is all based on one thing: the reliability of fast, cheap internet bandwidth. Countries that don’t possess the technological infrastructure are sure to suffer. Even if each session took 1.5 Mbit of bandwidth, in a room of 20 engineers you would need at least a 30 Mbit pipe and while our internet providers promise us much, they rarely, if ever, deliver the bandwidth they advertise. For instance, I currently pay for 20 Mbps but am lucky to get 7 Mbps.
As with most technologies, the games industry will lead the charge and the rest of us will follow. The concept that everyone gets the hottest hardware running their games irrespective of what they have at home seems incredibly liberating. While developing with allthe new web tools, it could be that Autodesk is ahead of the curve with its interest in OnLive.
