Firstly, let us get the lie out of the way - it was last Friday when I went up to York University to talk to Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, whom I have known for some years now but we have not had a strong enough connection to work together directly yet even though we have circled many similar ideas.
He updated me (and showed me brilliant demos) on his CoViD - Collaborative Virtual 3D Design immersive workdesk which is very compelling, and fits well with the Immersion Cinema and Media Lab work I’ve done in the past. While he focuses upon direct SHARED collaboration, I’ve always liked to offer more PUBLIC/PRIVATE options through networked user stations. Both have their place and in the shared space, CoViD is pretty impressive!
Further, we demo’d and discussed the potential for integrating ideas from his SESAME sketch-style solids modelling/manipulation tools into the new Pwl Client app OrbisRT that we are starting to develop with contributions also from the University of Toronto and University of Waterloo.
Hopefully this will yield exciting collaborations! In any case look at his website/papers - they are worth it. Also of interest for the UI geeks out there is the work on Facades.