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Posted by jojo on 07/07/06 15:16
Chris Tomlinson wrote:
<snip>
>> It is obvious that you have settled upon your conclusions before doing
>> your research. You are not respecting your medium or your potential
>
> Sorry you feel that way. What we decided on was a niche in the market.
> Sadly one cannot create niches, they are either there or they are not. The
> only question we had was whether or not to fill it. We are rising to that
> challenge...
I wish you had decided not to fill the niche... I think a virtual street
just for going shopping is really the last thing we need. What do you
think is the reason almost every shop which can deliver their goods to
the customers has got his own online portal? Because people use it! So
why do you think people need a virtual street to go shopping? They just
have to google the name of the store they want to visit to buy
everything they want - without any slide show or sound.
>> Do you really know how many of your potential customers have
>> access to broadband? Also even 3D gaming on the Internet does not push
>
> At least 50%.
I personally do not believe this figure.
>
>> bandwidth as your site. Firstly they don't push whole images but use
>> compressed texture samples and build their environments. Second most of
>> the work is done client-side on a compiled, optimized application (the
>> game) and the interactive communication is optimized and coded to be as
>> minimal as possible, many even use speculative routines to help with
>> bandwidth problems. HTML is not problem and a web browser is not at all
>> like a game.
>
> Perhaps we could add aliens and laser fire to the streets ;)
Yes, not a bad idea at all. And the aliens than can destroy the street
and the customers have to stop them... sounds like a nice idea for a
computer game! Perhaps you better invent games than virtual streets, I'm
convinced that would draw more people's attention.
And I think this is not what Jonathan wanted to say... He just pointed
out your exaggerated high waste of bandwidth.
>
>> Now the suggestion was made that your project might be possible with
>> Flash. I'd say much better that the way you are attempting. If you reduced
>> your images to smaller texture bits and reused to build the scenes Flash
>> has the advantage reusing a images so that each would only have to be
>> downloaded once but with scaling, inverting and clever recombining can
>> give the appearance of large scene of unique object at a faction of the
>> bandwidth. The multimedia events handling is also superior to want can be
>> done with plain markup.
>
> We researched Flash thoroughly, however sadly recreating Oxford Street in
> photo-quality as you will see in our site over the next month would simply
> be close to impossible, and incredibly painstaking using texture bits. And
> that's just one street! We wish to add dozens.
Sounds like: As far as we do not have much work everything will be fine.
> So, we looked at the
> evidence, the fact that broadband continues to grow and is now in many cases
> free for life, and that our site will grow into that market.
I advise you to take a little more time to improve your site. Maybe, if
you work hard on it, it will be fine before broadband spread that much.
> This was a
> decision made intentionally and knowingly, to preserve the ease of building
> new streets using photo-realism instead of Flash simulations.
And why?
> Remember, we are aiming this at people who love real high streets but have
> not yet delved into web-shopping. They do not want computer game visuals,
> they want the real thing. You can trust us as we did the market research :)
So why almost everybody here tries to stop you developing that kind of
page if all people could not wait for it?
> Sadly downloading it as a game would be much worse than the current 12
> seconds it takes to load at the very slowest broadband speeds.
As I said before: I've got DSL 2000 (so it's not the lowest speed), but
the site still takes about have a minute up to a minute to load.
> Next time you install a game, or drive into town, time how many seconds
> that takes you. Could you fly to 5th Avenue in 12 seconds? Or even 1
> minute (dial-up)? For this reason, whilst we appreciate your input, we
> are not seeing any faster suggestions here than the one we chose for
> that very reason.
When I install a game that takes maybe 5 minutes (if it isn't to big
which a street simulation certainly is not). And after installing I can
use it as often as I want to.
>
>> I am not being negative, but realistic.
>
> The realism of the situation is 12 seconds on a site designed for broadband
> is not at all bad,
....if it were 12 seconds...
> and we are here to try to speed that up even further by controlling image
> loading.
As I said before: the thing which takes the most time to load at my
computer is the sound.
> We have some great ideas from other contributors here, so thanks to them
> for their can-do attitude.
Of course you *can* do. all we are about to tell you is *please don't
do*. (or at least not this way)
>
>>> But we don't accept that waiting a minute for a page to load would be
>>> quicker for people than getting in the car and driving into town,
>>> parking, maybe getting out the umbrella, pushing through crowds, carrying
>>> heavy bags, etc. We hope you appreciate our point. But we agree, we
>>> need to make the page loading better and more acceptable to the user,
>>> which is the entire reason for our question.
>> 1 minute, hell it is not even possible with dialup. And it better be
>> *good* fat pipes.
>
> By controlling image loading, you will see the first part of the street
> faster. The rest will load in the background before you need to scroll or
> cross to it.
And if you scroll before the rest is loaded the browser crashes...
Really nice!
> That is the idea - to present the start of the street to the
> user quicker.
And if someone does not want to buy anything in the first shop he has to
wait. Nice, too!
<snip>
> Our sound is 25% the volume of those games,
> and can be turned off in an instant.
Why don't you do it the way round: first it is off, and if someone
really wants to have "street atmosphere" he can switch it on. I'm quite
confident that this feature will remain almost unused than... Wtf wants
to hear cars and all the noise? I think this is the last thing I anybody
would miss in a street (OK, maybe the smell is last. Why don't you apply
smell to your site?).
> But market research and testing showed
> that the user is more likely to stay and have their interest 'caught' if
> they 'arrive' at a full sensoral version of a high street, with the senses
> they would normally experience, namely the photo-realistic visuals, and the
> sound of being there. Silent streets did not impact on them as greatly.
Again: What would be the advantage of a virtual street to a "ordinary"
online-portal?
> We're sure you understand, although we are still toying with the idea of
> starting with the sound off. It is a dilemma as we could lose visitors
> either way.
If you really get much visitors you can loose...
>> Good luck!
>
> Thanks. We are already getting great reviews from those in the Google Maps
> communities, and commercial interest from other 'local info' web sites.
> Sorry you thought it was so awful, but you can't please all the people...
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