Re: Why is declarative 3D important?

Following Johannes' suggestion I created a "Why use Declarative 3D" section to the WIKI and added my text that new page...feel free to edit!
I think the idea behind the section however is for simpler non standards language text that can someday be used for the more uninterested general public to explain the point of all this work.
...Sandy

On Jul 30, 2011, at 8:43 PM, Johannes Behr wrote:

> Thanks for the text. 
> We should really put it into the wiki. 
> 
> Maybe in a reworked "Why use ... " and not " Why use not ... " section.
> 
> regards
> johannes
> 
>> Hi I'm submitting the following text for use by any interested participants...I don't really see a good place on the WIKI for this so I figured I'd just mail it...if an appropriate place appears in the WIKI feel free to paste it in or tell me to paste. This may be more suitable for the SIGGRAPH BoF.
>> 
>> --------cut here--------
>> Why is Declarative 3D Important?
>> Sandy Ressler
>> 
>> Declarative 3D is the latest in a long line of computer graphic efforts to integrate 3D graphics with web pages? Why is it different and who cares? Without getting into long history suffice it to say that nearly 20 years ago VRML was created and did integrate 3D graphics with web pages. What has changed? VRML, or other 3D graphics systems either appeared as “black boxes”, literally a rectangular area on a web page in which the user could interact, or as more fully interactive areas which communicated to the wider web page via some mechanism, typically the EAI (External Authoring Interface). Both solutions were inadequate. Small rectangular areas with 3D graphics were quite limiting and more importantly took the user out of the web browsing experience. EAI based systems were difficult to implement and very fragile over several operating systems and browsers. 
>> 
>> Today we have the potential for 3D graphics as first class citizen's. Web pages exist as large collections of hierarchical elements that are rendered to the page, all content appears in the DOM.  A huge collection of tools has been created to allow programmers to manipulate the DOM, in particular tools and frameworks based on JavaScript which has become the “go to” language for Web development. Placing 3D graphics also in the DOM, therefore allows these same JavaScript tools to access and manipulate 3D graphics. 
>> 
>> Again we must ask, so what and who cares about 3D in the DOM? Let’s examine a simple example. Take something like a graphical representation of the human body.  There exists a collection of locations on the body (landmarks) that are significant from the point of view of human measurement (anthropometry). If I wanted to create an educational web page illustrating these landmarks I could place all the 3D inside of a rectangular area on the page. However I would like to associate dialogs that pop up display information about each of these landmarks. I want to have friendly, “normal” buttons on the web page, that are associated with the landmarks. Using a common JavaScript framework (jQuery) it becomes nearly trivial to select elements  from the DOM that contain these landmarks and create web buttons on the page for each landmark. Giving users access to the DOM leverages the rich collection of tools that already exist for manipulating the content of web pages. 
>> -------cut here-------
>> 
>> Sandy
>> 
>> Sandy Ressler
>> High Performance Computing and Visualization Group
>> National Institute of Standards and Technology
>> 100 Bureau Drive, STOP 8911
>> Gaithersburg MD, 20899
>> (301) 975-3549 Fax: (301) 975-3218
>> sressler@nist.gov
>> 
> 
> --
> Dr. Johannes Behr
> Abteilungsleiter Visual Computing System Technologies
> Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung IGD
> Fraunhoferstr. 5  |  64283 Darmstadt  |  Germany
> Tel +49 6151 155-510  |  Fax +49 6151 155-196
> johannes.behr@igd.fraunhofer.de  |  www.igd.fraunhofer.de
> 

Sandy Ressler
High Performance Computing and Visualization Group
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, STOP 8911
Gaithersburg MD, 20899
(301) 975-3549 Fax: (301) 975-3218
sressler@nist.gov

Received on Monday, 1 August 2011 13:05:09 UTC