“What ever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the web? Back in the late 90s, all the hype was about VRML – Virtual Reality Markup Language – which would turn the web into an immersive environment that you’d maneuver around to get to the information you wanted. We’re here to tell you that the reports of the 3D web’s death are greatly exaggerated. As evidence, we present three 3D browsers that will use that graphics card for something other than gaming: 3B, Browse3D, and SphereXPlorer.”
apparently they’re all windows-only. i guess the 3D web is dead to me.
Browsing on the desktop in 3D is pointless. It is a 2D environment without the 3D controls.
Browsing in a game is different. Adequate controls are provided to navigate full 3D space and people are used to them. (WASD)
What do you mean, without the 3D controls? At least in the first browser they showed, 3B, you move around the web page just like you would in a game.
The browsers are just jazzed-up tabbed browsers and bookmarking.
It mentions X3D, VRML’s replacement but I suspect we’ve a few years to wait for anything useful there. Unless Vista gives everyone a good kick up the arse that is.
The browsers are just jazzed-up tabbed browsers and bookmarking.
You’re right. And 3D browsing is dead unless the designers come up with something better than viewing a 2D web page at an angle and calling it a 3D web page. If I wanted that, I’d rotate my monitor 45 degrees.
These browsers took VRML and tossed out the Virtual Reality part. Don’t give the user a pseudo 3D maze with 2D billboards.
A 3D web needs to be an immersive “Virtual Reality” much like todays 3D games but geared towards the aggregation and distribution of information or presentation of commercial goods and services.
How to make a truly 3D web that’s actually useful? That’s a tough question. I haven’t figured that one out yet.
I just downloaded the first browser, 3B, because it looked the most interesting to me. In short, it takes web sites and puts them into a maze (albeit not a very complex one) that you have to wander through. The walls are basically billboards. The “city” is divided into sections, but I can’t figure out how to move instantly to another section. (not to say you can’t, it just wasn’t intuitive to me, which is annoying) So now I’m forced to walk around to get to a place that really should come to me instantly.
Sign me up, this looks awesome! It combines the annoying marketing of hundreds of billboards with the frustration of wandering through a maze in a game. All it’s missing are enemies blocking your way to web pages.
All it’s missing are enemies blocking your way to web pages.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14856
3D Browsers = Completely useless
What’s the need for that? Just to slow down our machine’s performance? I don’t know why software developers are fogetting there points for making softwares. They must be lite, easy to use, no useless animations, give max performance, etc.
3D web browsing is dead if it doesnt add functionality or ease of use IMO .
& most sites I guess are not designed with 3D browsers in mind – I think this idea of 3D browsing can work if the sites & data etc are designed to be shown usefully in 3D space .
Just IMO
That adds no real functionality, and amounts to little more than goofy eye candy… that in fact can often make things MORE difficult and MORE confusing.
But then this is coming from a guy who’s running the Vista beta in ‘classic’ mode (even though I have the hardware to run the eye-candy full bore), runs XP in ‘classic’, wishes OSX had a way to turn all it’s goofy {censored} off to present TEXT for the programs on the dock, and thinks XFCE tries too hard on the eye candy and hasn’t put enough effort into usability.
microFawad hit it on the head with what programs SHOULD be – something that it seems UI developers seem to have thrown out completely: UI’s today seem to be all flash and no substance… and 99% of the 3d webstuff when used for ANYTHING other than gaming amounts to little more…
would be to actually have the Web content that people actually want to see on one side of a wall or cube, and then have all the advertising clutter on other walls/cubes. Personally I have a huge /etc/hosts file simply to block all the advertisements, and then use Ad-block to make pages more readable. If the ads weren’t so obtrusive on so many sites, then perhaps maybe I’d look at them long enough to see what the ad is about and click on it, rather than just right click, adblock it, and then read whatever article I’m trying to read.
Other than that, 3D web browsing really only has a “wow, cool but pointless” effect on people. Though it would be pretty cool if/when it gets to the level it is in Johnny Mnemonic. Though that’d be when we move away from keyboards and go towards neural interfaces and cybersuits, etc.
At first glance, it seems like a cutting-edge, radical idea. However, if you have to click more frequently to rotate the 3D windows or to enjoy the capability, it could quickly become annoying and useless.
i think it failed back then because of the lack of broadband connections for the typical web users. now with xdsl widely available it could gain more acceptance
Are these really effective?
Neal Saferstein
Reading the entry, I thought it was all about browsers able to display 3D content in the likes of Macromedia Shockwave 8.
What a dissapointment! This is one of the pointless things I’ve seen: making 2D billboards in a 3D environment. So much for usability.