Intel Offers Vision On The Future Of Virtual Worlds

Second Life and World of Warcraft are only the beginning of what the chipmaker
envisions for new forms of entertainment, conducting business, and socializing.

By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Sept. 21, 2007
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201808046

Intel believes the Internet is heading toward a time when people will move across virtual worlds of
cinematic quality, enjoying new forms of entertainment, conducting business, and socializing.

And for chipmakers like Intel, this future will present unprecedented opportunities. "There's an
insatiable demand for computing power here," Intel chief technologist Justin Rattner told analysts and
reporters Thursday following his keynote on the last day of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
"We don't know what the limits are. That's a big incentive for manufacturers like us."

Intel wants to be sure that its microprocessors are driving the evolution of the Internet to 3D realism
from today's 2D graphics seen in virtual worlds like Second Life and online multiplayer games like
World of Warcraft. So the chipmaker wants to be among the first to rally the industry around the
development of standards and technology that would one day make it possible to move user-generated
content and avatars from one virtual world to another.

"That's why I wanted to do it today," Rattner said, referring to his decision to dedicate his keynote to the
rise of what he called the "3D Internet." "In six months or a year, everyone is going to be talking about
it."

Intel believes the move toward virtual worlds as a place for businesses and for people to socialize and be
entertained is an unstoppable force. Second Life, for example, has already created an economy in which
people can exchange virtual money for real dollars, an example of how people are embracing these
environments and creating an entirely new set of interactions, Rattner said.

Outside of the Internet, virtual environments are being used today in education. As an example of this,
Rattner brought onstage Aaron Oliker, co-founder of Biodigital Systems, which is building 3D
visualization systems for medical simulation. Oliker showed through animation the reconstruction of the
mouth of a child suffering from a cleft lip and palette.

In the future, as medical simulations become visually more real and less cartoon-like, they can be used
as interactive educational tools for surgeons, said Dr. Joseph Teran of the University of California, Los
Angeles, who followed Oliker on stage.

To reach the visual quality imagined by Teran, a 100-fold increase in today's computational power on
the server is needed, Rattner said. Virtual worlds today on the Internet typically use 70% of a computer's
processing power to render graphics, leaving little room for much else.

To introduce the next level of realism in today's virtual worlds, the computer industry needs to provide
general processors with three times today's power, and graphic processors with 20 times the muscle,
Rattner said. Also needed to achieve a natural experience is a 100-fold increase in bandwidth.

Beyond power, there's also the need for chips that support new techniques in rendering graphics. Intel
labs, for example, is working on technology that would support a rendering technique known as "ray
tracing," which supporters say will eventually take over raster graphics for interactive gaming. The
technique offers the ability to render such difficult simulations as water or fire, as well as realistic
lighting, shadowing, and reflections. "We really think that ray tracing is going to be a very important
technology in moving to the 3D Internet," Rattner told keynote attendees. "The physical correctness of
ray tracing gives you a very natural scene."

Intel showed a videogame that took advantage of the technique on a computer powered by two quadcore
Intel processors. The game used 100% of the processing power to deliver 100 frames per second at
visual quality of 1280 pixels by 720 pixels. Hollywood used ray tracing in developing special effects for
the movies Poseidon and two of the three Pirates of the Caribbean films.

As the 3D Internet evolves, Intel also sees the need for new devices for interacting with a computer,
Rattner said. A special 3D mouse, for example, would make it easier to move an avatar through a virtual
world, and haptic technology would provide sensory feedback to make the user feel more of a part of the
virtual world.

Beyond improving the interaction with digital environments, security technology will also be needed to
build trust between avatars conducting business, or taking part in some other social interactions.

Put it all together and the challenges in moving the Web to a 3D environment will require lots of
innovation, and a firm commitment by many tech companies in order to develop all the necessary
pieces. Because no one company can do it alone, Intel is not ready to call itself a leader. "We're not
leading anything yet," Rattner said. "We're out in the industry, judging the levels of interest."

Copyright © 2007 CMP Media LLC