Slashdot Mirror

viveka writes "Back in April, Slashdot reported the announcement of a Universal 3D File Format by Intel, Microsoft & others - to be "as open as MP3". Of course, that's not all that open. And this turns out to be the sneaky part. There is a real open standard already - X3D is ISO-ratified, royalty-free, and has multiple open source implementations. U3D is "going to be submitted to ISO" - one day - but right now they're talking to ECMA, which allows royalty-bearing patents. I found this article by Tony Parisi, co-chair of the X3D Working Group a fascinating insider's picture of the standards wars, along with insights into what it takes to release an online game, what really killed VRML, and why open standards do (and don't) matter. I mean, a royalty-bearing, pseudo-open universal 3D format from Intel and Microsoft? Sorry, guys. That trick doesn't work anymore ;)"

viveka writes "Back in April, Slashdot reported the announcement of a Universal 3D File Format by Intel, Microsoft & others - to be "as open as MP3". Of course, that's not all that open. And this turns out to be the sneaky part. There is a real open standard already - X3D is ISO-ratified, royalty-free, and has multiple open source implementations. U3D is "going to be submitted to ISO" - one day - but right now they're talking to ECMA, which allows royalty-bearing patents. I found this article by Tony Parisi, co-chair of the X3D Working Group a fascinating insider's picture of the standards wars, along with insights into what it takes to release an online game, what really killed VRML, and why open standards do (and don't) matter. I mean, a royalty-bearing, pseudo-open universal 3D format from Intel and Microsoft? Sorry, guys. That trick doesn't work anymore ;)"

j7953 writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has released the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) 2.0 as a W3C recommendation; and the Web3D Consortium has announced they will present first browsers supporting their X3D standard (here's a draft), which is supposed to replace VRML, at Siggraph 2001."

j7953 writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has released the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) 2.0 as a W3C recommendation; and the Web3D Consortium has announced they will present first browsers supporting their X3D standard (here's a draft), which is supposed to replace VRML, at Siggraph 2001."

j7953 writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has released the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) 2.0 as a W3C recommendation; and the Web3D Consortium has announced they will present first browsers supporting their X3D standard (here's a draft), which is supposed to replace VRML, at Siggraph 2001."

RickMuller asks: "I'm interested in molecular graphics, a field entirely dominated by OpenGL. I would love to see something more web-friendly come along. I've worked with VRML and Java3D, and have been very puzzled why these technologies didn't become ubiquitous. Now there are new 3D efforts by Adobe and Macromedia (the Adobe Atmosphere download is available as a beta-download and is way cool!). The press is heralding this as the 3D web revolution. Why should these technologies succeed when VRML or Java3D failed?"

There is a story over at News.com that says that Platinum Technologies has signed a letter of intent with the Web3d Consortium to turn over the source code for some of the Cosmo tools for some type of open source developement project. This could be a big development for 3D on the web. What do you think of the Cosmo line or tools and programs? I tried them on an SGI (if it's the same code) a while ago and they were pretty sweet. Here is the press release from Platinum..