Darb Dabney's 3d GIS – OpenSim

I’ve been catching up on this week’s Google I/O 2011 via some videos.  Much of my interest has been on how Chrome is presented, and the video does not disappoint.

The most fascinating insight, in terms of 3D GIS, and shared (not yet multi-user) virtual environments, appears to be Web GL.   For the benchmark of performance that leads to hours of time wasting entertainment, would you care to see Angry Birds?  I’ve only tested this with Chrome 12 on the Cr-48 and Chromium 13 on Ubuntu, but here’s the site

And what’s (much) more, a vision of seamless integration of 2D animation, video, and interactive immersive 3D environments at 25+ FPS — the project at ro.me

If you’re like me, and can’t view it in full WebGL glory because you’re on a Cr-48 or some other earlier browser, here’s the trailer to help give you motivation to try out something new in the browser world.

And what really caught my ear, and hasn’t been a top note in yesterday’s blogs was this announcement: the Chrome Book subscription pricing of $20/user/month for education institutions is also for government institutions.  If this should include the same centralized web-based management of user cadre—it would seem a very attractive price point.  Right now, a typical well-endowed elementary school might have a cart with 28 MacBooks that gets wheeled around between classrooms.    If 30 Chrome Books weigh in at $600/month, they’ll get replaced under the upgrade program before the cost approaches that of the initial MacBook acquisition, won’t they?    Government offices might stand to get 60%–80% of their users off of Windows desktops and onto something less costly.

The initial pricing of the retail Chrome Books at $500 seems a bit steep, although the Samsung unit will probably have an Atom processor with four threads and some better GPU capability.  It’s the subscription pricing that really seems to be the main kick—because it sounds far more attractive than the retail option.

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