Review Of 3D Web Browsers

shelflife points to this very intersting article on the 3D Web browsers in Scientific American. He writes that of the 3D systems mentioned, "A Swiss company, Geonova (www.geonova.ch), seems to demonstrate best that the idea of a geography-based Web is feasible with today's PCs. Engineers there created two impressively detailed models of Switzerland--one of the entire nation with 25-meter resolution and another of two central cantons at 50-centimeter resolution. .. Text and iconic labels hovered quite legibly above towns, lakes, companies and tourist attractions; clicking on the labels opened associated Web pages. What other 3D browsers are there -- VRML plugins have been around a while -- yet they do not seem to be successful. Why is that?"

Comments

why they don't work

[Teflon Coating]

yuck, the reason why they don't work are because they're slow and don't benifit any. Even most 'regular' people don't want to surf the net by clicking through an interface that looks like a town. Even if it does look nice, the fun wears off after running around in your own little virtual town when you notice that it takes twice as long to find information.

Why not VRML? VRML sucks.

[RobertGraham]

The question in the article was: VRML plugins have been around a while -- yet they do not seem to be successful. Why is that?

This isn't a flame, but the answer is simply that nobody likes VRML. People think that things are successful because of some other force than people like something. This can be true in rare cases (huge marketing campaigns like Nike's can change what people want), but ultimately, if something isn't successful, then it is because people don't want it.

The real question is: why don't people like VRML? Well, load it up yourself and view 3D worlds. Now play Quake. The VRML experience is unsatisfying, but Quake is fun.

Here are some basic reasons why VRML fails to stimulate people:

• Navigation sucks. The controls were built for people who wanted to model 3D objects from the outside, they weren't built for people who wanted to navigate the intireors of dungeons. Few people wanted to look at the 3D objects, most people want to fly through objects.
• VRML worlds sucked. Because of (or causing) the navigation problems, most VRML were objects you attempted to manipulate rather than 3D worls you could fly through.
• VRML didn't grok "cyberspace". Go to old VRML design documents and read the description of how they define "cyberspace", then read William Gibson's defition (or any cyberpunk definition). The VRML group was trying to model the real 3D world and objects, trying to make the PC model reality. People don't want this -- they want the computer to do stuff that you can't do in the real world. Doing real world stuff is easier in the real world -- VRML brought nothing new that the real world didn't have to offer. (This is why Quake is fun: it isn't the real world -- I love the low-grave levels :-)
• Poor leadership. Read Mark Piesce's old writings and contrast with Linus/ESR's writings. Piesce is a petulant child compared to the maturity of Linus/ESR/Cox/etc. Emotional ranting is popular in forums like Slashdot, but leaders who behave that way hurt their projects.

The real answer is that 3D has taken over the world and become the driving force behind computers (e.g. 3D cards in computers have more gates than CPUs). The 3D market has expanded hugely fast. There are those that figured out how to catch the wave (John Carmack @ Id) and those that failed to grok what was going on (Mark Piesce w/ VRML). One of these days we'll see some interesting 3D technology added to browsers; it won't look like VRML, it might look like Quake/Doom or Flight Simulator, or it might be something completely different.

3D requires interaction

[mj6798]

Computer screens are generally 2D, without even depth information. When we talk about "3D graphics", what it means is that we get a 2D image that transforms like the image of a 3D object when we interact with it (mouse, trackball, etc.). That is, 3D graphics is simply a particular way of showing and hiding information in response to user input. So, we need to evaluate it relative to other ways of interacting with data on the screen.

I think in practice it has turned out that mechanisms like a folding tree and a tabbed window are more effective and easier to use for interacting with the kinds of data we deal with. Our current 2D interfaces require less user interaction and intervention and display more useful and related information than a system that is constrained by trying to conform to the rules of 3D objects. The closest to 3D we have come in user interfaces is zoomable UIs, but even there the jury is still out whether that is actually useful in practice.

Worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember this same sort of thing that Worlds (www.worlds.net) failed to do a long time ago.

3-D chat worlds are cool, but they are not as easy and efficient as IRC or Instant Messaging.

--Nicholas

We've got one too!

[antarctican]

At Antarcti.ca Systems (http://antarcti.ca) we've been working on the idea of geography based navigation for over two years. Both in 2d and 3d based maps, which can be seen at our demo site of http://map.net

It's a facinating new era of data navigation, doing away with the old screens and screens of text and moving towards a paradigm closer to the real world.

I can tell you why THIS one won't succeed.

[AndyChrist]

The web is organized by TOPICs (that is, web pages tend to be devoted to one sort of information)...and while that does include geography, things that can be organized that way are only a tiny fraction of what's out there.

But people looking for a car dealership in a particular town might think...oooh, cool! Except that any 3D game is likely to be way cooler. So what's the point?

Text-based directories for local areas are easy to find, don't open up as much possibility of putting things in the wrong place, if stuff like this 3D thing were generated automagically. They're probably easier to search, too.

The reason this won't succeed, and none will for a long time, is that they aren't especially useful, cause more problems than they solve (what problem is this supposed to solve again?) and require people to go get extra software.

If we're going to see 3D web browsing in the near future, I'm betting it will be through Flash, as that is software that DOES do something relatively useful (if you like watching cartoons) and is already widely distributed.

Not everyone can use 3-D

[wadetemp]

Try making a 3-D website accessible for someone with visual or physical handicaps. It's hard enough for someone without handicaps to conceptualize and navigate 3-D spaces. I've seen many people who didn't grow up playing video games fail try to run through a complicated room in Quake... now you expect them to get content this way? For those who don't have every facility available to them these interfaces are just not useful. But, I also think we need to work on improving this... I'm not saying that 3-D navigation shouldn't become a standard eventually; but just not now. The human/computer interfaces and technologies are just not up to snuff.

Why there is no 3-D /.

[Codeala]

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. So we now have super faster computers and graphic cards that can render 1024x768 at 60fps with 32bit colours, so what? It maybe good for gaming and some very specialised research and visualisation applications, but it is no good for general web browsing.

Why? What does browsing mean? Reading (and maybe typing) text, and maybe some images here and there. So what does a 3D environment bring you in this case? Nothing. Reading an article in 3D is pointless; most people will rather stick with the good old "flat text".

The reason Virtual Reality did not catch on for web browsing is that it is not bring anything new. At least not anything people think are useful outside of some very specialised cases. For example 3D maps cool! 3D /.? No thanks.

We are still waiting for a killer (non-game) app in 3D. In the mean time, the idea of 3D browser is probably only of interest to academics researchers.

Lots of reasons VRML failed

[workly]

1) VRML2: unimplementable.
The spec contains 3 scripting langages. There are 3 different mechanisms for animation. Everyone implemented part of it, so all VRML2 browsers were mutually incompatible, more or less, which defeated the reason to have a spec in the first place.
Blame who you like.

2) 3D content takes, literally, 2500 times longer to make than 2D content.
A business wanting to put merchandise online has to do 1 week of work per model.
A good commercial photographer can take 500 merchandise photographs a day.
Is 3D 2500 times more compelling than 2D? (No.)

3) It exists in a tricky place, half file format and half scripting language.
If you're not using motion, why not use the existing Java viewers for OBJ's?
If you're using animation, and 3d-ness isn't mission-critical, why not Flash, which is more standardized and faster?
If the point is a walkthorough, why not a sequence of pictures?
If you're trying to make a game, why use a plugin at all?

Then, the reasons others noted:
4) It's slow.
5) It's harder to navigate.
6) Everything looks crappy.
7) Mom doesn't get it.
8) You weren't allowed to sell the plugin.