[vos-d] status and scheming

[Karsten Otto]

Hi everyone!

Being mainly a lurker myself, I regrettably haven't followed the  
recent design discussions too closely. However, when considering the  
topics of scripting and animation, I believe it is very important to  
keep the aspect of world semantics in mind. There are lots of 3D  
engines out there, supporting worlds that look cool and have great  
interaction capabilities for human users. However, they severly lack  
semantics, which makes it very hard if not impossible for computer  
programs to work with them; computer programs do not have the human  
cognitive abilities! VOS is currently much better in that respect  
than other engines, and I would hate it to loose its fairly unique  
capability.

Here are three examples to illustrate my point:

- A bunch of texture mapped polygons is just that. It is *not* a dog,  
even if it looks like one.

- A bunch of *animated* polygons is just that. It is *not* a dog  
barking, even if it looks like that.

- A script that opens a door when a user clicks a button is neat. It  
is far less so for a program that does not know how to "click", or  
that this bunch of polygons is supposed to be a button and that bunch  
of changing polygons is supposed to be a door.

VOS design should really ensure that exchanged information is  
meaningful even to programs.
I believe this is much better for human-computer interaction in the  
long run.

Regards,
Karsten A. Otto (kao)