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Comment by jonah | Hacker News Reader

Back in the day I worked at MetaCreations née MetaTools[0]. We had a web browser plugin that rendered streaming, progressive, interactive 3D - well before WebGL et. al. It shipped with IE and was available for other browsers as well. The MetaStream logo[1][2][3] was surprisingly similar to the Meta one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCreations

[1] It was surprisingly hard to find a copy of the logo on image search.

[2] https://browserengine.net/wp-content/uploads/metastream3plug...

[3] https://twitter.com/Salliemeta/status/1454571901381058562/ph...

Nothing new under the sun...

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Ahh… sorry for pirating Kai’s Power Tools and Ray Dream Studio when I was like 14!

There's a fun blast from the past! InfiniD was my first serious 3D graphics software package when I did that for a while way back when on the Mac. I'm trying to remember how I even discovered that one, I vaguely recall Ambrosia Software used it for creating the sprites in Escape Velocity? I think one of my first personal learning projects was using it to make my own ships and plug-ins for EV (all done by hand with ResEdit) which felt pretty neat at the time. Thanks for your part in what MetaCreations did back then, what a wild time that was.

I worked in a lab four years ago, where Kai (the designer of MetaTools) was an investor, but it didn't work out as although the tech was impressive and cool, it lacked the other components that are needed for a startup. They are still operating and building stuff in Edinburgh [0]. Sadly, they didn't release anything yet.

[0] https://www.kpv-lab.co.uk/

Sadly, there's been a lot of that over the years - really neat and beautiful ideas which were either ahead of their time, or didn't quite find a use or market fit.

Separately, some various Kai Krause related links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause

http://kai.sub.blue/en/

https://fr.ax/

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/digicult/dc970... (Aside: it's kinda neat that this Atlantic archive from 1997 maintains a period-correct look.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)#/media/File:B... (An example of the kind of UI Meta software had.)

Kai's Power Tools has the best resizing algorithm i have ever seen.

We had some incredible folks creating cutting-edge graphics algorithms, UI frameworks, etc.

It was sad to see the company disintegrate due to mis-management, but the diaspora has gone on to all the top companies and have continued to do strong work elsewhere.

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