"X3D AND BEYOND -
An Introduction to Web3D" >Page 1, 2

X3D and Beyond

A poll conducted from 2/9/00 to 2/16/00 addressing the issue of an ever increasing number of Web 3D technologies produced the following results:

About.com Poll

The emergence of lots of Web3D formats is: a bad thing. (10) 45% a good thing. (6) 27% a great thing. (5) 23% of no consequence. (0) 0% I have no idea. (1) 5% 22 Total Votes

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Opinions seem to be roughly evenly split on whether or not it's a good or bad thing. One aspect I like a lot is simply bringing more 3D to the Web. Given this recent explosion of technology development, one might wonder what's going on with VRML? The answer is X3D.

In an effort to evolve VRML the Web3D Consortium is defining the next generation and it's called X3D. The details of X3D are beyond the scope of this article, but one aspect is very cool. It's possible to implement a "core" set of X3D in pure Java. This means no plug-ins necessary. Two prototype implementations already exist blaxxun3D and shout3D, both talked about in last week's article.

3D Web pages viewable without plug-ins are a great way to introduce people to the possibilities of 3D for the Web. While plug-ins may not be the biggest impediment to more widespread 3D on the Web, they certainly don't help.

X3D will be merged with the ISO standard VRML97 in the year 2002 and VRML2002 will be the merged result of X3D and VRML97. X3D addresses the integration of 3D with Web pages by adopting XML the eXtensible Markup Language to represent VRML syntax. Web browsers in the near future will be able to interpret XML pages making integration issues less problematic.

As usual there are few if any hard and fast answers to the future of Web3D. One thing however, does seem certain. 3D for the Web is growing, it may not get there this year, but it growing so enjoy the ride!

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