Interview of Peter Schickel Chief Executive Officer of Bitmanagement Bitmanagement is developping BS Contact MPEG-4, BS Contact VRML and BS Contact J, the most advanced VRML / MPEG-4 plug-in on Web3D market. Lire la version française

Mr Schickel is CEO and founder of Bitmanagement Software GmbH. He has worked for blaxxun interactive AG as head of the research unit. He joined blaxxun interactive AG in January 1999 where he rapidly acquired seven long-term international R&D projects in a volume of several million dollars to form his own unit.

Bitmanagement's history

Bitmanagement Software GmbH is founded by former employees of Blaxxun Interactive AG. The company was founded in July 2002. Bitmanagement saved the former client-team of blaxxun and will continue to develop and market the Client Concept.

Description of your products:

.. "BS Contact MPEG-4"

The most advanced product of Bitmanagement Software GmbH is a complete MPEG-4 player with full 2D and3D support.

More than 80% of all MPEG-4 Nodes have been implemented so far. This makes BS Contact MPEG-4 one of the most complete MPEG-4 players today and the first truly integrating 2D and 3D player. The player is already used across Europe in several R&D projects. The MPEG consortium has requested to use key technology from Bitmanagement Software as reference implementation for this ISO standard.

The predecessor 3D engine blaxxun Contact developed by the Bitmanagement Software GmbH team was the first VRML viewer to introduce DirectX 7 hardware acceleration support (one year before the competition), and introduced several advanced 3D features (particle systems, multi-texturing, Nurbs, Character animation etc.) and interactivity features (keyboard, device and advanced input device sensors).

Truely integrated multimedia streams in MPEG-4

The experience gained by integrating several multimedia and data formats (Windows Media, Real, Text-to-Speech, animations, ..) in Contact enables Bitmanagement Software GmbH to optimally integrate future MPEG 4 stream formats in the shortest possible timeframe. Support for the MPEG-4 standard means the support of an industry multi-platform standard covering devices from 3GPP UMTS phones, PDA’s, personal digital media devices to set-top boxes and classical PC’s. MPEG-4 enables Bitmanagement Software to add long awaited features like 2D/3D Streaming, streamed animations, compressed scenegraphs and standardized interfaces for Digital Rights Management and Encryption.

.. "BS Contact VRML"

BS Contact VRML is a 3D multimedia client, already used by many companies and individuals around the world as a 3D viewer and communication client based on the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) . BS Contact VRML, satisfying the standard VRML97, is the most universal and performant VRML client on the market.

As a proven, valuable and powerful client, BS Contact VRML is used for the visualization of interactive 3D content, in the area of CAM, Manufacturing, Simulation, Training Virtual Worlds and 3D product presentation.

The web-browser plug-in is compatible with the standard web browsers Netscape 4.x and Microsoft IE (version 4.01 and higher). BS Contact VRML runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000 and XP. BS-Contact can be easily embedded in custom applications written in frameworks supporting COM like Dot.Net C#, VB, C++, Java.

.. "BS Contact J"

BS Contact J is a Java Applet that was designed for quick visualisation of a subset of the VRML standard. This subset was contributed to the Web3d and MPEG as a 3D core profile. As the implementation requires no download it is a good tool for small interactive visualisations of products and services.

BS Contact J can be used for E-commerce, education, data visualisation, entertainment, web animations and other applications. It integrates into a standard web page like any other Java applet. It is completely transparent to all web page visitors and is displayed with the other page content.

Picture generated with BS Contact J

It requires no download or installation, does not depend on 3D graphics hardware and loads automatically when a visitor opens a web page that contains the applet.
All authoring tools that generate VRML code can be used for producing BS Contact J content. In addition there is a wizard program to build optimised code for BS Contact J.

For extending BS Contact J functionality there is a built-in API that is capable of connecting BS Contact J to databases or use Java's network capabilities. In addition a development kit is supplied which contains tutorials, quickstart-guides, code samples, already written extensions and the BS Contact J optimisation wizard.

BS Contact J is one of the smallest and fastest products for interactive visualisation at the market.

What is Bitmanagement's objective ? What market do you plan on ?

Video, audio and graphics streaming is going to experience an explosive growth in the coming years. The MPEG-4 standard has recently raised interest in all related industries especially in the E-Business, Television broadcast and Consumer Electronics arenas of the IT industry.

As BS Contact MPEG-4 is the first truly integrated 2D/3D player on the MPEG-4 standard, all of the 130 member-companies of the M4IF (http://www.m4if.org) and every company in the world supporting MPEG-4 is a natural customer depending on their business model. However we intend to keep BS Contact VRML free for non-commercial use.

Our focus on Graphics and Interactivity will enhance visualisation and customer experiences for many branches.

What is the roadmap of Contact VRML's development ?

We will probably add XML/X3D support, Shader language intergration and optimisations/enhancements for specific markets.

What is your commercial policy ? What are your types of prices ?

Bitmanagement Software is focusing on OEM deals with companies who license the player and our technology for their own products and projects. Pricing depends very much on the respective volume of the OEM customer's products and projects.

Is Contact VRML free for non commercial use ?

Loft-3d.com is using a large number of graphicals extensions of Contact 5.1 LightsMaps Particules Reflection Mapping ...

Why do you aim to MPEG4 ?

MPEG-4 is the third standard developed by the Motion Picture Expert Group. MPEG-4 has benefited from the huge R&D investments made by participating companies and provides a harmonised range of responses to the diverse needs of the digital audio-visual industry, including compatibility with other major standards such as H.263, VRML and SMIL. Especially in the VRML modelling and graphics domain Bitmanagement Software GmbH’s team hold leading expertise in MPEG-4 standardisation and development.

MPEG-4 offers a lot more of just Audio / Video compression. It offers complete multi-media descriptions, such as 2D and 3D graphics, allowing more interactive presentations, streaming, compression and quality of service. Bitmanagement is leading in this domain and will penetrate the emerging market.

What is your position toward the Web3d consortium ?

We are monitoring the X3D standardisation efforts and are interested in the XML 3D path the consortium has taken. We have contributed a bit in the beginning of X3D and our contributions have been integrated into the Standard like X3D core profile, Nurbs, Multitexturing and so on.

Do you include X3D in your plans ?

As mentioned XML support is on the roadmap.

Do you include online content's protection in your products ?

Yes, this is a point we have heard repeatedly. Customers will consider to use more 3D on the Web if there are tools for protection to the content. In MPEG-4 it is already architectured into the standard.

What is the SoNG project ? What is your role in it ?

The Song project has been a large scale R&D IST project funded in part by the European Commission with participation of industry leaders, such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Siemens, Telecom Italia and others. Within the SoNG project a first prototype of an integrated 2D and 3D MPEG-4 player was developed mainly by Bitmanagement's team. The SoNG project is finished and Bitmanagement is marketing the player.

What is your relationship with Blaxxun ?

blaxxun interactive Inc. is a partner until end of 2002.

Cybertown recently announced the change to a new technology
using Contact named Silhouette and developed by IVN, do you have
any link with it given Blaxxun used to own this community ?

As there is no information disclosed, we can’t speculate here. As we constantly update and further develop BS Contact VRML, the player from Bitmanagement should be the client software of choice for Cybertown users.

Words saved by Jean-Michel Flamant
Translated by Cécile Muller
12/02/2002
for http://www.web3d-fr.com