Re: request for guidance: centralized extensibility for HTML5 using X3D graphics

Fine to hear from you, Chris. I know your deep experience is of great 
value in this investigation..
Thanks Again and Best Regards,
Joe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Marrin" <cmarrin@apple.com>
To: <public-html@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 3:25 PM
Subject: Re: request for guidance: centralized extensibility for HTML5 
using X3D graphics


>> > * As a HTML implementor, I would like to see X3D mature a bit 
>> > more
>> > in the web world before committing to implementing this. 3D on 
>> > the
>> > web is still very new technology, especially in the form of 
>> > markup.
>> > It's very hard for me to judge how likely it is that X3D is the
>> > solution that we'll want to go with.
>>
>>
>> Practically any past history of 3D on the WWW gets updated by a 
>> giant
>> step just looking at www.x3dom.org. Dr. Behr has provided these
>> examples just in case anyone wanted to compare X3D with any other
>> forms of encoding various themes showing declarative realtime 3D
>> shapes, lighting, navigation, and interactivity, including 
>> 'internal'
>> ecmascript. Essentially, the technique used for reading and 
>> rendering
>> X3D could be done for any syntax, so most anyone interested in
>> learning about 3D can pick anywhere they wish to start. I would say 
>> to
>> just go ahead and start with X3D because nothing you learn about 
>> basic
>> 3D stuff and h-anim is likely to be past history anytime soon.
>> Besides, most any 3D vendor will export X3D. LIkewise, most any X3D
>> tool chain will import Collada, KML, CitiML, and many others. And
>> really, it is no harder to hand edit X3D element structures than
>> HTML5.
>> ...>
>> > A javascript-based X3D player invokable from HTML content has 
>> > been
>> > produced to demonstrate how these capabilities can work together
>> > closely. It utilizes the WebGL layer provided in 
>> > Minefield/Firefox
>> > and Webkit/Safari/Chrome nightly builds, and also shows excellent
>> > performance results. Available at
>> http://x3dom.org
>>
>> >
>> > We are also prepared to extend these leading browser 
>> > implementations
>> > to add open-source solutions for native UA rendering of X3D 
>> > scenes
>> > within compound HTML5+X3D documents. Details at
>> >
>> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8238#c26
>>
>> >
>
> I responded on this topic to the bug shown above, but I (and others) 
> felt it would be useful to repost it here to garner better 
> visibility and comments:
>
> 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 
> or 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.
>
> -----
> ~Chris
> cmarrin@apple.com
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:55:32 UTC