Bill Gates is spending on 3D globes too

DCCCafe Weekly reports on Bill gates’ vision for the future, and it contains some intriguing tidbits relevant to 3D virtual globes. (Sourcing is not clear in the article as to when and how Gates’s opining was recorded):

Gates explained his vision of a 3D future as the ability to access distant places from your living room: “You’ll be walking around in downtown London and be able to see the shops, the stores, see what the traffic is like. Walk in a shop and navigate the merchandise,” he said. “Not in the flat, 2D interface that we have on the web today, but in a virtual reality walkthrough.”

In fact, according to Gates, Microsoft is already spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to create a photorealistic 3D map of the whole world in which we can all interact.

It seems that Google and Microsoft are on to the same thing. They want to make it so your web surfing experience is focused to a geographical location. That way, we can get the benefits of both the web and real life ÇƒÏ the web has the ability to take you anywhere instantaneously, and real life is, wellǃ∂ real.

So are we now looking at three contenders for next-generation browser? I wonder what Microsoft’s will be called, now that obvious candidates “Explorer” and “Earth” are taken.

5 thoughts on “Bill Gates is spending on 3D globes too”

  1. Gates Invests in Photorealistic 3D Map of the World

    Stefan Geens at Ogle Earth reports on a reference to some interesting tidbits about Bill Gates plans for virtual globes. It reads to me like using a geographic interface to visit places and explore and I suppose buy merchandise. “Hundreds of millions of d

  2. I don’t know. This sounds like some pie in the sky bull to me. That level of information detail might exist for central London, but it definitely doesn’t exist in rural Iowa, let alone anywhere in South America or Africa. And what’s the point of modeling the shopfronts in Senegal just so people can have an immersive shopping experience in London? And why would someone want to navigate through virtual traffic to buy a sweater, when you can just go to a website? The whole thing seems rather foolish to me. I’m all for creating a metaverse, one where people can build their own buildings, like websites; there’s obviously money in selling that kind of virtual property if it becomes widespread. But why tie it to what’s already there in the real world? And I think unless it’s open source it’s doomed from the beginning.

    Although, I could see a day when Microsoft ransoms virtual properties — pay us or we’ll bulldoze your virtual storefront and sell the space to the highest bidder.

  3. hey

    I just wantd to tell u that i’ve heard about a room in bill gates’s home that can change to suit your mood and that is also equiped in a smell sensor that can give the smell hope for ! for example it can give a hawaien screensaver and so …

    I was kind of hoping you would provide with picture and more informations about this room

    thank you very much

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