| Our very first televirtuality prototype. It
    dates back to mid-1993, actually, which is long before there ever was any talk of VRML
    etc. It really is Mr. Stig Fagerborn, Director of the strategy dept. of Ericsson Business
    Networks at that time, who has to be credited for having the courage to let us produce a
    prototype of our vision for a highly user-friendly interface to on-line commerce and the
    presence of companies in 3D cyberspace. We were way ahead with this stuff... The project was realized in one of the early versions of
    RenderWare, the then revolutionary -and today still amazing- real-time software-based
    renderer from Criterion Software. In spite of RenderWare's then record-shattering
    capabilities, we still had to keep our rendering window pretty small. This prototype
    worked completely as an off-line, single-user stand-alone application. The prototype showed a town square -featuring trees and a
    fountain- with around it a collection of shops, services and Ericsson's own office
    building. Over half of these could be entered: an art shop with some 3D artifacts -like a
    glass vase and a textured wooden bowl- on display with which the user could interact (and
    examine the sticker -- some of which were shocking indeed); a bank featuring a working
    mock-up of an indoor ATM and a travel agency featuring a 3D globe of the Earth through
    which users could interactively specify and book their trips. Ericsson's office building
    featured a reception, a water cooler, two furnished meeting rooms and an office supplies
    & productivity software shop for employees that featured interactively manipulable
    boxes of the software as well as of the office supplies. A dialog system embedded in the
    3D world showed the price of these items and demonstrated how employees might order them.  The prototype was demonstrated with suitable effect to
    executives and decision-makers throughout Ericsson. The goal was to confront them with one
    of the shapes of the future of telecommunications. The projected was not followed-up due
    to Mr. Fagerborn's promotion to still higher responsibilities at another of Ericsson's
    many companies. |  |  
 
 
 |