Re: X3D comments in Bug 8238.

On Nov 9, 2009, at 7:12 AM, John A. Stewart wrote:

> Maciej;
>
> Nice to meet you at the TPAC last week.
>
> I hope you don't mind; I'm going to bring some of your comments from  
> within Bug 8238 out to the mailing list so that I can ask for  
> clarification.
>
> "Tentatively, I would not be in favor of an X3D-specific mechanism  
> in the parser. X3D is not supported directly by UAs, and it's not  
> clear if it ever will be (since there are competing 3D model  
> serializations with similar or greater levels of traction)."
> May I ask what other 3D model serializations you have in mind?

COLLADA.
O3D (has a JavaScript API that creates a retained-mode scene graph,  
and a JSON-based serialization).

These seem to have more active support and interest in at least some  
quarters than X3D.

> "... But it doesn't make me, as a UA implementor, feel more  
> motivated to add built-in parsing complexity for a feature to be  
> implemented by third-part code."
> There are a number of open-source code bases for X3D out there;  
> Johannes created the X3Dom javascript implementation that we  
> demonstrated last week; I have FreeWRL, a OSX/Linux/Windows native  
> implementation, and there are others.
> I am not yet fully aware of the W3C process, nor of individual  
> member's requirements, but could such open-source codebases be of  
> interest to UA implementors? Hopefully it is apparent that we wish  
> to work with the W3C to promote X3D as one possible candidate for 3D  
> rendering and interaction within HTML5.

If X3D looks like the right technology for the problem space, then we  
will definitely want to implement it natively. What I'd be hesitant to  
do is to expend effort on parsing hooks without doing the rendering  
natively as well. I don't think we're ready to bet on X3D at this  
time. But we (Apple) do think that a logical next step after WebGL is  
some sort of retained-mode mechanism for 3D graphics.

Regards,
Maciej

> I look forward to further dialogue.
> Thanks;
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> John A. Stewart
> Team Leader: Networked Virtual Reality
> alex.stewart@crc.ca
>
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Received on Tuesday, 17 November 2009 23:50:14 UTC