As if the notorious Bob user interface wasn’t failure enough back in the early 1990s, and the irritating Mr Clippit office assistant in Office 97 wasn’t one of the first features that everyone disables upon taking delivery of a new system, Microsoft Corp still hasn’t learned its lesson. Now it has licensed 3D character animation software from Los Angeles, California-based Katrix Inc for inclusion in future versions of its DirectX multimedia application programming interface set. Katrix calls its technology real-time inverse kinematics, and uses it to add human-like 3D characters that can automatically interact with their environment and the end-user. The Katrix technology, set to emerge in the first quarter of next year, will bring interactive character animation to Microsoft Windows, said Eric Engstrom, general manager of Microsoft’s Multimedia Group. This will further our goal of enabling end-users to interact with media in more entertaining, informative and user friendly ways. We can’t wait.
