Symmetri Developer Blog

I have been doing research in finding a good set of universal symbols - pictograms that can be used to represent objects and concepts in the place of language. I am hoping to be able to use these to create a rudimentary semantic search engine that is entirely free of text - the idea being that this might ultimately prove to be a tool for finding information on the Web for users with low literacy. Anyway, hopefully more on that later. But for now - during my research, I came across this endearing little video - a history of the internet animated in simple icons by Melih Bilgil. Very cool and visually arresting. It has generated a lot of interest, and was even listed in TIME magazine’s Best 50 websites of 2008.

I’ve put together a simple experiment using Papervision3D and the jiglibflash 3D physics engine. I have been working the WOW engine, but I have realized that the jiglibflash engine is probably a little better at this stage of development - the WOW engine is great for modelling the motion of particles, but it does not lend itself to working with rigid bodies.

Click and drag the photos or use the buttons to reset, arrange and move the camera. Both of these open-source libraries are still under development; there are still bugs in the rendering, and this is not a particularly useful interface. But it’s a nice little demo of what is now possible with these new tools.