"Once upon a time, 3D for the Web promised to be as easy as building a Web page. Unfortunately, 3D - even simple 3D - is more complex than displaying scrolling text and pictures. Each VRML vendor implemented a different subset of the spec, and it never gained traction. And so 3D on the Web faded away. Or did it? It turns out that VRML lives on in its XML flavor, X3D, which has grown to encompass VRML's siblings H-Anim (Humanoid Animation) and GeoVRML."
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2005-07-09
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2005-11-10
But what does it actually add. Clicking on a link is still quicker than walking down a corridor and picking up an object at an attempt to be "cool" about navigation.
3D on the web doesn't improve usability, doesn't improve speed and ease of access to information. This is like saying that everybody flying planes in 3-D would prevent traffic on the 2D roads. All it'd cause is a lot more crashes and not enough landing strips.
Member since:2005-07-06
Seems that you think of it only as of navigation coponents of a website. But navigation isn't everything, although it's crucial.
Take e. g. a photo of a notebook or a jewel. Wouldn't it be nice if you could view it from all angles, not just from one, just click and rotate it as desired. Might not be a bandwidth saver, but customers would surely like it.
There might be other uses I didn't think of right now.
Member since:2005-11-10
New techonologies never ever get used right.
DHTML came along - we got exploding pizzas, popup ads, javascript rollovers from doom and everything that plagued the web 1996-onwards
Flash came along - we got ads with sound and shoot the monkey
If 3D arrives, we will have to live through five years of abuse by that technology for a few gems now and again that can be done now, with Java.
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You know someone tried. It probably just wasn't any good. 
Ok, so in the interest of science I looked this up and come upon the following site which delves into this subject : (NSFW!) http://www.lovechess.nl/artoflove/archives/3dporn/index.php
Although it looks like it's mostly just 3D rendered pictures and the animated stuff where you can change perspective is strictly offline, which makes sense because there's probably a lot of high detail textures involved.
Edit: added NSFW warning.
Edited 2005-12-27 00:00
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2005-11-21
Let's not get too pessimistic regarding VRML's heritage for the web before we have even begun to see a real-time Internet.
You have an entire Medical Community that could benefit greatly from the aide of 3-D.
You have the Aerospace Industry, various industrial fields that could benefit greatly from these technologies.
Does the average consumer get excited? No. VRML never should have really been targeted for the general consumer who has not real need other than to connect through link branches and get back their text/image content.
Problem solving systems where critical analysis is needed in 3D will want such capabilities.
When information in 2D becomes so dense that searching requirements are choked then they'll rethink in 3D space or 4D space how to reimplement solutions that can break these enormous amounts of information into sets of uniquely grouped blocks of desired information that are more easily visualized in 3D than in 2D.
Member since:2005-07-06
Does the average consumer get excited? No. VRML never should have really been targeted for the general consumer who has not real need other than to connect through link branches and get back their text/image content.
So why integrate yet another markup language into every browser wouldn't it make more sense to provide these kinds of applications through already existing plugins like java which have the advantage of already being able to use the models being used by 3D creators today ?
Check out JPCT ( http://www.jpct.net/demos.html ) for example, a free (beer) 3D engine for java.
Member since:2005-11-21
So why integrate yet another markup language into every browser wouldn't it make more sense to provide these kinds of applications through already existing plugins like java which have the advantage of already being able to use the models being used by 3D creators today ?
Check out JPCT ( http://www.jpct.net/demos.html ) for example, a free (beer) 3D engine for java.
You're discussing implementation and I'm focusing on viability and need based upon market segments.
If you are in the Aerospace Industry what stops say Boeing or Airbus from writing a custom XUL implementation or WebCore implementation to meet their needs at their various deployed Intranet sites?
By the time the Web reaches critical mass with real-time specs (Fiber to the House) > 60% of the current mass of regular Internet consumers the design of a Web Browser will be more akin to a mess of smaller applications with Services that call CustomViews for various markets.
What is to say it isn't presently deployed via Internet2?
X3D will become relevant after the number of XML specifications that are procreating like flies slows to a trickle and reach general usage in browsers.
Yes its a long-term vision, but to dismiss it as irrelevent only expresses a short-term vision; and a myopic one at that--if I don't have a need then it must be useless.
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... and VRML was too much, too soon. Not to mention it was buggy, slow, and not supported natively by anything worth mentioning. You also have the very simple fact it flat out wasn't useful for much apart from games and goofy UI's that interfered with the user more than they helped.
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3D on the web hasn't taken off simply because there isn't enough demand for it. The technology has been available for a long time now, and it's fairly widespread - Shockwave3D is part of the regular Shockwave plugin, Viewpoint gets installed with the AOL software. What held web 3D back was the fact that the majority of content out there is 2d (text and photos) and the creation of 3d content is too expensive (you can't just photograph a 3d object, even a good 3d scan still requires lots of handwork to be 3d ready). X3D as just another format doesn't offer any advantages in the key point that holds back the other web 3d standards.
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..concentrating on cleaning up the web, all the advertisment that at least I would be glad to get rid off. It may be a tiny fraction of the whole speed but many small streams piles up to a big one, and from the beginning it was only straight code no plugins needed. These days it is plugins plugins and more plugins and mostly to see more advertisement, which most of takes ages before they are loaded and the page can be showned.
HTML led to DHTML then it went down hill after javascript.
These days you can hardly even be anonymous many advertisments is shown from the country or even location that you are connected from, why not use that for making the pages appear in that language if you want.
Just a few things that is needed more then 3d on the web.
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General utilization of 3D concepts in computing is slowly becoming more understood. Except for a few sentimental reasons, no one is arguing that 2D games are superior to 3D counterparts.
Being able to orient oneself in 3-space is a natural experience despite the fact that visual capability is limited to 2D, perception of the world is in fact 3D.
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2005-11-10
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Blender, before becoming a OSS project, used to have a web plugin that allowed a content creator to embed highly interactive 3D environments on a webpage limited only by the limits that the (then called) Blender Publisher imposed for its own game engine: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/3D_web_plug-in.199.0.html
Coupled with the already featureful and powerful Blender to create content, it certainly was something to reckon with even if it wasnīt either Free nor free.
However, a big drawback at the time was that the hardware wasnīt yet up to the standards that such thing required, so most of the stuff done with this tool were either too slow or too limited in order to fit those hardware specs.
As a consequence, content providers did not showed too much interest and did not jumped on the bandwagon leaving such technologies to dust. And nobody is showing too much interest on it even today, that capable hardware is nearly ubiquitous, and thatīs why nobody is willing to take over the duty of maintaining a OSS version of such thing.
Itīs sad because Iīve seen what some creative minds were able to do with Blender and its game engine/web plugin. Though, I also have to say that I donīt really see 3D adding anything to the web as it is other than some good looking gimmicks.
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2005-07-06
Just for completeness I thought I'd throw in this URI: http://www.opencroquet.org/
Check it out if you want to see some 3D internet plans.
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General utilization of 3D concepts in computing is slowly becoming
more understood. Except for a few sentimental reasons, no one is
arguing that 2D games are superior to 3D counterparts.
Being able to orient oneself in 3-space is a natural experience
despite the fact that visual capability is limited to 2D, perception
of the world is in fact 3D.
>
>
Bullshit. The only moroms who claim that 3D games are better than 2D games are *WANKERS* like you who have no lives and get off on playing PC FPS Titles.
Browser: Lynx/2.8.5dev.7 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/0.9.7
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> General utilization of 3D concepts in computing is
> slowly becoming more understood. Except for a few
> sentimental reasons, no one is arguing that 2D games
> are superior to 3D counterparts. Being able to orient
> oneself in 3-space is a natural experience despite the
> fact that visual capability is limited to 2D,
> perception of the world is in fact 3D.
I can't agree to this completely. Sure, humans do have a three-dimensional perception of the world (or maybe they think they have, but let's not argue about *that* point). However, this does not make 3d games inherently better than 2d games for several reasons:
The most important point is that current input devices are far from natural. Walking around in 3d is simply not intuitive if you have to do it through a set of, say, 10 keys on your keyboard, resulting in a very limited but still overly complex interface. A similar difficulty is looking around with a set of four keys or similar. This would be much better if you could move around in cyberspace by using your leg muscles, look around by using your eye and neck muscles, and so on. I expect this to become possible in the future.
A second point is that games are not always trying to replicate reality. Tetris was a huge success despite the fact that it shows you a completely artifical "world" which would not benefit from being displayed in 3d (and expanding the game itself to 3d wasn't exactly a success either). Pinball is another good example, as are strategy games like Warcraft or Command&Conquer. The point is simply that these games don't have the goal to give you a natural experience. For example, you cannot move around a Warcraft map in a natural way and at the same time keep control over your troops. On the other hand, FPS and roleplaying games would be good candidates for a "real life" experience.
- Morin
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IMHO people need a good language to write 2D pages.
It should be capable of create a system independent and browser independent layout (and color scheme), good from smartphones to high definition displays and print too;
it should implement robust native transaction security features, oriented to protect customers from frauds and not (like actual trend) to protect content creators from customers;
it should be now a n environment oriented toward running remotely online software;
it should not encourage people to use it mainly to create eyecandy like intros and animated buttons that user will desire to skip (someone is thinking to...);
it should be complete to substitute HTML in everithing (aka, new standard) so people will not be bothered to install the n-th plugin to use it;
Unfortunately, today's trend see many (OS, smartphones, online music, providers, online cinema and TV...) companies trying to close everithing and bound the users to his "user experience" and so since many standards jet exists that provides some of the bits of the things needed (rendering, security, eye candy...) I think they will not agree on a robust new standard that would cover all present days "online life" aspects.
It's sad.
Member since:
2005-07-25
Surprising that no one has mentioned 3DML, which was created by Flatland in 1998...you can find more about it from the web site:
http://www.flatland.com/
3DML is extremely easy to use if you know HTML, because 3DML uses tags to create a 3D scene.
I'd suggest checking it out when you have time.
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Obviously the folks scoffing at a 3D web haven't seen the market statistics on Everquest and the other massive online role-playing games.
They may "only" be games, but they certainly disprove the comments on here that a 3D environment is useless for navigation or basic task usage.
A little imagination, and a little standardization, might go a long way to finally changing the way people use computers.
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Check out XAML 3D links.
http://www.xaml.net/
http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/3D_in_XAML.asp
http://www.erain.com/Products/ZAM3D/DefaultPDC.asp
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/tools/3d_converters/3782.ht...
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-14DassaultFo...
http://www.eternalillusions.com/Blog/PermaLink,guid,00775235-ff39-4...
http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/153962.htm
