[Bug 8238] Add support for X3D

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8238


Chris Marrin <cmarrin@apple.com> changed:

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--- Comment #27 from Chris Marrin <cmarrin@apple.com>  2010-02-13 00:22:33 ---
The X3DOM experiment (http://x3dom.org) is a great proof-of-concept that X3D,
as well as many other declarative 3D formats, can be accommodated in HTML 5
today without additional parsing in the browser. The reason for adding WebGL to
WebKit and other browsers was to include the smallest set of 3D functionality
possible and avoid locking in any one higher-level scene-based format. This
both makes the implementation tractable and reliable as well as making it
implementable on a wide array of devices.

X3D is only one scene-based 3D format. There are many others that will surely
arise using the same WebGL based mechanism as X3DOM. Some will have a large set
of wide ranging nodes like X3D, others will be much smaller, targeted at
specific applications like games of 3D visualization. The beauty of WebGL is
that is can accommodate all these formats without the burden of building any of
them into the browser.

I worked on VRML, the predecessor to X3D, from its inception in 1994 to 2000. I
was one of the authors of the VRML 97 ISO spec and I'm editor of the WebGL spec
now. I've seen lots of cool and interesting things with 3D embedded content and
I'm convinced that keeping the native 3D browser support as small and lean as
possible is the right approach to enable X3D and many other 3D apps in the
browser.

With my WebKit implementor's hat on I can say that we wouldn't be interested in
adding native X3D parsing to WebKit. But I would be extremely interested in
seeing the X3D group put effort into improving X3DOM and creating other
JavaScript layers on top of WebGL. I think there is huge potential there for
all the 3D applications the X3D group is currently pursuing.


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Received on Saturday, 13 February 2010 00:22:37 UTC