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Three 3D Web Browsers Reviewed
mikemuch writes "Use that graphics card for something besides games. ExtremeTech has a group review of three browsers that use some aspect of 3D to display the Web. While none of them are going to put Firefox or IE out of business any time soon, they're fun to play with and give a new slant to the Web." From the article: "Whatever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the Web? Back in the late '90s, all the hype was about VRML -- Virtual Reality Markup Language -- which would turn the web into an immersive environment that you'd maneuver around to get to the information you wanted. We're here to tell you that the reports of the 3D Web's death are greatly exaggerated."
But still completely useless and unneeded
Hack the Gibson!!
...that 3D graphics have been used to display web data. Back in the early 90s, CompuServe had a virtual mall which was a bit like that. It was painfully slow; a real gimmick. I can't see any benefit beyond the gimmick for then, and now.
There's thing called 'hype'. And many things are not all they are 'hyped' up to me. Many, many things.
My first thought was VRML and what a clunky thing that was before it all but vanished. I've still got books and CD's for doing stuff in it, in a box somewhere, probably in the car-port.
Not really what I had in mind when I thought about what would make for decent 3D browsing. This looks like something you could knock off in a plug-in, like Flash. Probably has some decent uses, like creating a game on your own website or a Realtor giving you a VR tour of a house (which i think someone nearby already has.) Handy for exploring a Mall, to see where a shop is rather than looking at those little hand-bills which are sometimes so artsy-fartsy you just try to go in the general direction and hope you find it. Hope people keep these sites updated. More content==more overhead for maintenance.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
ok, you can unleash the hordes now..
Second Life is a sort of 3D web browser. To me, Second Life is everything I envisioned and more when I first heard about VRML.
(Ok, maybe its not ubiquitous, and its a proprietary app, but still....)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
reports of the 3D Web's death are greatly exaggerated.
Maybe not GREATLY...
With apologies to the late, great Frank Zappa: "The 3D Web is not Dead...It just smells funny!
We need a decent ubiquitous 3D plugin for things like showing off stuff you can buy in 3D.
We don't need a browser to show us a 3D representation of the web, because that is too much information. Hyperbolic mappings are not somehow more intuitive than simple lists. In fact, they are less so.
When we get common 3D displays and controllers, then my position will change.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I can see the need for "visualisation". See, the step from command line to graphical interface surely did some good for people who can't be bothered to learn the commands. While this caused the influx of dimwits to the web, it certainly was something that faciliated the approach by heaps. The information can be presented in a way that is easier to understand.
Now, 3D graphics on a 2D display is the opposite. Instead of presenting information in an easier understandable way, it obscures it. Basically, what we lack now is suitable interfaces. Input as well as output. The mouse is not the best way to navigate in a three dimensional world, neither is a non-stereo view the best display for it.
My guess would be the new interface for Vista will face a similar fate.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whatever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the Web?
As long as the screen on my computer is 2D I don't think the 3D web will really take off. Now, if you can get me some cheap VR glasses and gloves, that's another matter.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
The best 3d web thing I've ever seen is Apple's dashboard widgets in OSX. Each widget can have a (nicely standardized) button which activates the preferences for the widget. The prefrences are on the back of the widget. Literally when you click the prefs button the widget flips over in 3d animation and you interact with the preference panel.
I find this incredible because a) it's an amazing practical use of 3d and b) it's not at all flashy or trying to create a 'new 3d browsing paradigm' or some such silliness. Instead, Apple has used the graphics tools available to them and once again, made a fantastic advance in user interfaces.
Before you call me an Apple fanboy, you should know that I don't even own a Mac, I just think they're neat is all.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
It is understandable that if your only tool is a hammer, every problem will look like a nail. However, when every problem is a nail, why the hell would you look for a screwdriver?
When I first heard about a web browser being put onto the Wii, it occurred to me that this would be an excellent opportunity to add some 3D capabilities to the web. The Wii has a pointer that can simulate a mouse, but the analog controller might actually make moving around a 3D environment to find information easier than surfing in any conventional fashion. I don't know about you guys, but I think it would be fun to fly around in a 3D information-laden room with the nunchuku firmly in hand, grabbing at relevent pieces with the wiimote.
Moe: The "garage"? Hey fellas, the "garage"! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man.
Homer: Well what do _you_ call it?
Moe: A car hole!
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, unlimited cpu, $7.95
none of them are going to put Firefox or IE out of business any time soon
Not on my workstation anyway.
Two of them require M$ and one of them requires money.
Wake me up when we hit 2001.
I just had a horrible nightmare about flash ads going 3d....
The extreme annoying-ness is too much for my feeble brain to handle.
Imagine the most hyperactive ADD person you know.
Now imagine them when they go into hyperactive mode that happens right before they need a nap.
Now give them lots and lots of soda and candy.
Now give them some crystal meth.
This is half the annoying-ness of a 3d flash ad.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Microsoft already tried placing small items/thumbnails in a "3D" environment. It was called Microsoft Bob and it failed completely.
We're here to tell you that the reports of the 3D Web are greatly exaggerated.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a fully 3D web, but I'm not willing to sacrifice functionality to get it."
And yet people interact with full functionality every time they play a multiplayer (FPS,RTS,etc) game. The main difference between the web and games is the size of the world.
All these browsers attempt to show you a lot of pages in one go. Assuming you're after sites that deal with fashion, or games, or cookery, or music etc. in broad categories then there is a usefulness to be able to see a bunch of sites in one go. I know it would be useful to just wander through a hall of today's articles and simply click on a site that has something that interests you. The problem as the article highlights is that showing a bunch of sites simultaneously should not be at the expense of your regular browsing experience. Therefore I'd say that if you could flip between regular browsing and 3D browsing, perhaps even based on what you're looking for, then you could reap the best of both worlds. I've played with 3B and it seems to work (extra points for using Firefox), but the experience is somewhat reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D in that it's 3D in the same way that a hedge maze is 3D with no up, down, platforms or other points of interest. I'd like to see a more interesting world that is genuinely 3D rather than a hedge maze and perhaps one where there is a little more interaction than my solitary self wandering around aimlessly with not direction or interaction with fellow browsers.
Whatever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the Web?
It required proprietary plugins that could just display crude 3D objects and pretty much nothing else. People abused 3D in the VRML days just like noobs abuse Java applets to make lake applets. Hence it died.
Proprietary plugins like flash still thrive since among the crap (like annoying flash intros and ads) they offer plenty of useful applications not-outside-this-world, easy to implement, and the plugin is tiny, multiplatform.
VRML never had a dominant plugin and each interpreted the details of VRML in the different manner. A big no-no.
It's time that we draw a line in the sand: no further development on the 3D browser until a commercially viable flying car hits the market.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
With such cutting-edge graphics, it's difficult to tell what is reality and what is VRML.
...with QuickTime VR. Well, not the same thing, but at least this one is not a total flop like VRML. Maybe because it makes more sense to view websites in 2D and real life locations in (pseudo-)3D .
Circumcision is child abuse.
but my surfing habits include getting somewhere fast. If I have to walk around to where I want to go...I'll walk down the street to get there. Point, click, type. No frills surfing is 'nuff for me.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Useless and confusing then, useless and confusing now.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
OMG! IT'S FULL OF ADS!
>But still completely useless and unneeded
I recall that being the MS-DOS/PC response to all of those other systems that could display more than four colors.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Install Stylish, then go here, here, or here.
See now, an interpreter of some sort that would take the normal internet and display it in a three dimensional way. A navigation metaphor of some sort.
But as these are, they are no better than a poor imitation of Second Life. They have focused on a such a narrow vision that by looking completely beyond them, other software such as Second Life has already moved far beyond.
But, like I originally said, I would love to play around with something that displayed the normal internet in a 3D metaphor.
They were able to patent that? That's crazytalk.
How can you patent using a partial cube to display the contents of web pages? Exactly how does that bring something innovative to the table?
It's no more then a slight variation on the standard diplay method. I've used several apps that provide thumbnail previews of websites, and I used a '3d' desktop switcher in linux ages ago. It's a nothing advance, just eyecandy produced to make money, a different way to do the same old thing.
If we had a way to interact properly in 3d with a computer, then perhaps, just perhaps '3d browsing' might really happen, these are just visual toys that do nothing to advance the evolution of the Human Computer Interface.
Am I the only person on /. that's seen The Lawnmower Man (1992) ?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104692/
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Yeah, the Q-Link had something like that. It was allright.
This makes the http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/04/ 12112205d/4d rubik's cube seem useful for day to day life.
All these do right now, is look like a weird marriage of 3d FPS and webbrowser screenshots used to texture billboards. So pretty. But that's about it. Navigation can be done much more efficiently with a 2d plug-in for firefox that would concentrate on such a thing.
I can imagine a 3D web. But it probably be more useful to have one when 3d holographic displays are the norm and I can reach in and manipulate objects.
I can see a need for 3D on the web, VRML and QTVR objects giving you walk-throughs and views of real world products for example, but is there actually a need for a 3D Web?
If I'm looking for something on the web then I usually want to find it quickly. How does this help me find what I need? It seems to be an obstructive use of 3D technology, all because someone said "3D's cool, let's make a 3D web browser."
Looking for something? Use Google. Want 3D? Play WoW, Quake, Doom, NFS, etc.
3D is useful (even with 2D screens) for all kinds of data, and conventional interfaces are adequate, if not ideal, for working with it (otherwise, we wouldn't have 3D games). But 3D's internet utility, I think, is going to materialize in forms that are very much not like what we think of as "web browsers", though there may be some overlap (of course, "Web" applications are becoming increasingly ill-suited to the traditional web browser model as well, leading browsers to increasingly become fairly generic application platforms) -- I think that things like OpenCroquet are more like where internet 3D will bloom than 3D adaptations or plugins for traditional web-browsers.
Like "turning right from the 3D Browse button, then moving towards the Door-like Enter button, and levitating over the sinuzoidally-flowing search results" ...
Too much waste of precious time.
Best is the way we have it now ; click, click and voila.
Read radical news here
....granted, eye candy-ish, but maybe fun none the less, here's a few:
Imagine you have a ton of ebooks stored. Instead of a flat representation of folders and sub folders for labelling and navigation, you could walk around various rooms in your mansion until you got to the reading den, walls covered with bookshelves. As you zoom in you can see the titles on the binders, and you can "reach in" and select one and open it and start reading. Maybe you want to monitor the news and weather or listen to the game while you are reading, go over to the "TV" and select a channel, that screen now is displaying a real channel. The mouse moves your hand(s) of course. Same with music, choose from your "record collection", drag and plop it on a cyber turn table and it starts playing. Ditto movies. Say you want to chat with your friend, you could jump in your Flying car(finally!) and fly over to his house quickly and knock on the door, he opens it and you are now chatting. If you don't want a face to face, just "pick up the phone" and dial, just do audio then.
And stuff like that there, just take the idea of GUI into real life (RLUI- real life user interface) and do the stuff you normally would on the machine but with real world examples. Surfing the web? You are back in your flying car visting places (websites), or maybe you like flying by jet or taking a train nice and easy-whatever you want! A sailboat! It won't matter, because you choose what YOU like to have represented in the manner you want to accomplish the computer tasks. Going to your bank? Go there and the real teller you normally go to is there waiting to serve you, all 3-d looking like they really do look.. Transforming normal tasks into the real world similar examples would be sorta fun!
Adding a dimension to an task on a computer does nothing but slow it down in most cases. Yes, it make lower the learning curve, or be more prettyful, but slow it down it does.
.mp3 files and changing them to .ogg files.
Lets take for example the task of taking all
In one dimension (command line), we have a simple python script:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
list = os.listdir('.')
for item in list:
os.system('mp32ogg "' + item)
Nice and easy, and scales linearly with x number of file.
Now lets add another dimension: a GUI.
Now we go into our graphical program to convert it, and open a file manager, and select something, and then encode it. Now it is easily 2x time.
Now lets add a third dimension: We open a program to do it, open a file manager, and then walk around and chase the buggers down.
5x time at least.
And we got the ooh factor, but only at the cost of 5 times the time (and it is interactive time too!) Psh, I'll stick with my CLI.
DYWYPI?
"As long as the screen on my computer is 2D I don't think the 3D web will really take off. Now, if you can get me some cheap VR glasses and gloves, that's another matter."
And yet you play a 3D FPS using only a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
...and yet people still buy paitings.
The whole idea of browsing web pages in some sort of 3D reminds me of demos of this I saw at Netscape back in 1996. Pages flying in from nowhere when you'd click on a link, and so on. I imagine people want that now just as much as they wanted it back then-- not a whole lot.
But 3D on the web is not completely pointless as some would suggest. I have been poking around X3D and VRML lately because I am trying to figure out, in this post VRML world, what is the easiest way to show off some 3D scatter plot data via a web page in a way that allows the user to navigate around in it (rotate, pan, etc), and see some textual details on each data point when you got within range (brushing, level-of-detail, picking, billboard text). Initially, I figured this would be a no brainer because I'd done similar things in 1996, but it seems like one area of the web where time has stood still, or has even been rolled back. VRML97 is still around, but there are still all kinds of plugin incompatibilities, varying levels of support of the standards, generally clunkyness, and licensing issues.
Is there a much better way to do this sort of thing that I am missing?
just because you have a lousy implimentation of a GUI, and a horible software, doesn't make a GUI slower. That only says you are using a horrible tool.
There is no reasn why someone couldn't write an encoding app the looked for an extension, and then reencoded into a diffrent format.
It takes one click for me to open a browser, how many keystrokes does it take you?
Why are you too lazy to learn the hot keys in your GUI?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Whole new bunch of hype
What about TurboGopher VR?g s/24CAP04.gif
http://www.tidbits.com/iskm/iskm3html/pt4/ch24/im
-Darkshadow (There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.)
Yes, that's right! I look at Google Earth as a geospatial browser, where I can click on KML links to web pages based on location, and now get dynamic web based geospatial content based on KML servers [for example: this]!
it may seem useless. Maybe because it's not such a great idea, of maybe because nobody has found good applications for it yet.
Personally, the next big thing I might be working on isn't 3D web, nor going batshit crazy about AJAX (I'm not saying I'll totally avoid it either), but I rather XHTML+Voice. It sounded boring and not such a great idea - until I've tried it.
The only reason why I haven't spent much time on it is because of very poor browser support. The only browser I know that uses it is Opera - and last I checked, it wasn't installed by default (talk about very f'n low browser share... a small portion of the already very low number of opera users - like, 3 people?) Well, that, and that it wouldn't be easy to localize (there are only english voices available for Opera AFAIK).
Check out the examples. I'm not much of an Opera fanboy myself (nothing against it, just not my preffered browser), but it's worth downloading it just to try that alone. Much richer web "experience" - it blew me away. It uses very simple markup too. And you can even voice-enable your javascript.
XHTML+Voice with some AJAX thrown in... Would make some killer web apps.
http://my.opera.com/community/dev/voice/
Everyone would've paid attention to Virtual Reality Markup Notation. Ad campaigns with vivd illustrations would have said "Do you have VRMN running in your data center?". Web site developers would have offered to "control your VRMN problem".
I've worked with a lot of people producing 3d environments over the years (Since 1996). Several projects called themselves "Web 2.0" but I guess that name finally stuck with an even more hyped technology.
The problems are:
1) Speed: It's slower than a web page. Always will be.
2) Unscanable: If I want to scroll through a web page I scroll through it. If I'm in a virtual environment there can be stuff on the "page" that's behind other stuff. Great for metaphor, but bad for someone trying to find something.
3) Difficult navigation: We have mouses. A mouse with a scroll wheel gives three dimensions of translation (move forward, sideways, and vertically). However to navigate a 3d space you need to add at least two axis of rotation (heading and pitch). Sure you can do that with holding mouse buttons, but it's counter intuitive and awkward. Would you like it if you had to hold the right mouse button down to move your mouse up and down? 4) Content creation is too hard. Sure 3d tools have gotten better, but compare the effort, knowledge and skill required to build a basic web page with building a 3d room. Even using notepad vs a full featured 3d application, notepad wins.
5) No content: Text is best in flat form. 2d images are best viewed without distortion. Audio is best heard without accounting for virtual proximity or room acoustics. As for browsing a 3d shop, it's about 100 times easier to photograph it from every angle than to build an accurate, detailed model.
http://www.curl.com/solutions/demos.php
The third and fourth demos are interesting.
I do hope that if 3d web takes off that adobe brings back atmosphere (free player free server( location for it was topsecret burn before reading) but the offical tool to make $tuff wa$ a bit pricey.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
My agreement is wholehearted. I find it distracting and without merit to have web pages on various 3d surfaces. some of those screenshots look like really terrible video games. I was watching Lost on ABC's website [the free streaming version]. They have the 3 or 4 streaming shows arranged in a 3d manner, with the one you're watching of course center stage. The thing is, for the hour or so I watched, I had to look at these awkward images of someone's desperate housewife. I don't want that in any other part of my life. Why would I want it for browsing? [Have you seen the screenshots of vista in 3D? They're atrocious!]
I think this would be great with a Wii style control.... just wave it around and browse, keyboards not really made for this. i also think MS is working on controlling the pooter with two webcams that track movements, kinda like a Minority Report-style internet. That would work.
King of kings and Lord of lords
WHat ever happened to the VRML virtual reality markup language that supports the 3d web apps?
I was just wondering about this last week. Sure back in 98 with no decent 3d cards it sucked balls and turned a might pentium into a trs-80 but the standard might be hot today with 3d cards and fast processors.
You dont need a 3d browser for these features if anyone actually kicks up the old standard again.
http://saveie6.com/
Texture-mapping the 2D web onto the walls doesn't accomplish much.
That's the problem with ALL of the 3D web-browsing/user-interface implementations right now. You use markup and controls that are designed to render onto a flat 2D raster surface. It seems logical to bundle an existing renderer (an IE/gecko control, or a UI toolkit window rendering) and point it at a texture, and then schlep that into a 3D framework... but that's just so completely wrong.
At least for web browsing... if you want to make it 3D then you first need to WRITE a 3d renderer for XHTML. You need to figure out some way of interpreting the tags and markup and using 3d (or 3d accelerated algorithms) to do something intelligent with all that CSS and hints.
You are going to need to at least have an antialiased glyph renderer for text. Either using real polygons or dynamically created texture maps (maybe a single mip-mapped texture for each character).
Because on the web the most important thing to be able to have is LEGIBLY RENDERED TEXT.
Maybe for the sake of keeping polycounts low you reserve the shape-defined text for h1/h2 tags and render the rest as rasters. But do something useful with them.
Don't start putting textures containing text at oblique angles unless you've got it at least 2x oversampled. Instead, render it to a surface in a bounding box and "float" it where you want but keep it's normal pointed straight at the view frustrum. Or use a particle or sprite primitive.
Come on people!
Have a look at some demoscene demostrations and how they integrate text and 3d. I guarantee you can always read the text clearly (as it is often used to convey jokes or greetz). And that stuff is just for fun.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
a true 3d browser would be 3d in the real world.
I remember data storage and presentation systems that performed exactly in this way. They were called "offices"
Of course, if they was a practical way to do this, the porn industry would have done it a long time ago. then we would have 3d porn.
3d Porn? yes, exactly like the real world, without any of those troublesome things called "people" and "personalities" to deal with.
Feel free to fill in the details.....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Back in the late 1990s and earily 2000s, I used a VRML plug-in for the Windows version of Mozilla called Blaxxun Contact. I think when X3D came along and replaced the VRML97 standards (both defined by The Web3D Consortium, things became confusing. Of course there are other graphics standards such as OpenGL and SVG that are also used. DirectX will slow you down.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
true opengl 3D in yer browser www.pimtools.be
Google Earth. It's one of the few things I can even imagine it's at all good for, because it maps to 3d space, information that is, wait for it, three-dimensional.
I tryed the Browse3D
How many times do you wish you still had some information on your screen from a few web pages back, but don't want to go rooting through your history!!! Especially like, when you're on a secure site that barfs when you click back, You just click on the left side and you get to see the last 4 pages you were on, click on the screen and you get the page, so you can get that information you forgot to copy to clipboard.
Why a screwdriver? Because it's a pain in the butt to paint with nails -- it takes a lot more practice to keep from scratching the wall.
3DNA has been out for years. Can't see how any of this is news.
Although it probably amazes most people to know this, our good friends at Google actively use VRML. Thanks to Microsoft's lack of support for transparent PNG rendering in IE 6 (and Google obviously needing to support it), Google leverages IE's VRML support to get the job done. With the level of 3D experience users have come to expect with modern applications and hardware, it's a big ask for anyone to create a 3D environment of a comparable standard using VRML.
I'll be honest, back when I first heard of the internet (you know, when I was like 12) this is what I pictured "chat rooms" to be like, only with the pictures of people you were talking to. Not a bad implementation for websites, but like most will agree, it serves no benificial purpose other than stimulation.
I went through the slide show, because images > words. All I got for a first impression, was that you're just walking through a whole bunch of someones search results, or a web directory.
I was expecting websites to be 3D, not "portals".
No Mac or Linux versions? Don't care.
->
although after looking around this looked not so bad http://www.planet-earth.org/ but still feels like something made in the 90s.
The only thing I can see for having 3D take off is if there's virtual reality maps and navigation into buildings, houses, etc. Imagine Google Maps, down to the brick level! That would make for great entertainment, information, and games.
WHAT HAPPENED TO VRML!?? I'll tell you what happened! All the clients were such a royal pain in the left toe to USE that people dropped them like a box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels! If only the VRML browser people had got together with the id software people and learned some basic interface tips, VRML might still be in use today.
Ugh! I mean, you have to click a button to change from "walk" mode to "strafe" mode...
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
If the mouse pad was an input device you could get by with the regular mouse. Just make the pad have a slight tilting motion to it, back and forth,a pivot underneat, you could easily adjust to getting the third depth dimension by tilting forward or backward just slightly. It doesn't have to be much at all, just slightly.
No ClaraGL? IMHO it's certainly a better way to do to 3-D browsing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
in a sense the browser I'm using right now has a 3rd dimension.. tabs ! it seems vastly more efficient than dealing with a dozen flying and rotating windows.
Back in 1996, Packard Bell computers came with this thing installed, called navigator. It was a picture of an office, with a desk and shelves and books and things. Clicking on the items would take you to different applications, file system browsers, etc.
It was stupid then, and it's stupid now.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
And the VRML browser should do all this with an intuitive interface?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Once upon a time, documents were stored in folders, in boxes, on shelves, in rooms, on floors, in buildings, in places, joined by bicycle, rail, roads and ships and aeroplanes. Everything was in its place, and its place was hard to get to. Then hypertext joined it all up. There's a reason we don't use 3d for browsing, we don't care where the information is, so long as we can follow the links. 3d browsing has its place. The cube engine wouldn't be nearly so much fun if one could just click on links to get to the carrot.
Netcraft confirms it, the 3d web is dead.
Trying to improve the web by letting us rotate it is just senseless. 3d is good for one thing: representing information that has three dimensions. Text does not. Graphics do not. Those are what the web is made of. Unless someone can think up an amazing way to map them to a 3d environment, or a completely new 3d approach to communication, the 3d web will remain a technologist's wet dream.
3d's biggest feature is making stuff hard to reach. Why we want to do that to the web is beyond me.
With immersive 3d displays, it might make some sense to put web pages all around ourselves on the surface of a sphere (which is what one of the browsers in TFA tries to do), but even then it's not a 3d web. Not any more than Asteroids was a 3d game. It's a 2d web in a 3d display. The inner surface of a sphere is just two dimensional.
used to work on Macs and presented a gopher site that appeared sort of like Stonehenge?
Do I EVER want to see goatse in 3D.
"It is true that the hype of VRML really killed it before it could do what it wanted to."
That's part of it. The other is simply that most consumer PC's at the time didn't have the horsepower, and for those that did, the tools at the time didn't use it.
At least to some extent... and while somebody may be making money off of it it's not exactly ready to compete with the real (2d) thing for the majority of people.
Link (warning: not work friendly)
Keep in mind that even the genius of Alan Kay is still experimenting with ways to make 3D a useful, intuitive medium of expression. My personal feeling is that, so long as we are stuck using a 2D display, 3D applications are only going to be useful for displaying data that are 3D or 4D. However, that doesn't mean we should wait until we can "jack-in" to the Net before we explore how best to build and navigate a 3D colaborative world... So what if it may not be ready for main-stream use (you could argue that 2D desktops aren't ready for main-stream yet, in fact...) That doesn't mean we should lock it away until then. We're the geeks, people! Lets explore the frontier.
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
1. drink screwdrivers,
2. get hammered,
3. forget about nails.
Nice as proof of concept, but not really that practical right now. I'd really hate to see what happens when pop ups start spawning.
The reason virtual reality markup language is an obscure footnote in the history of the 3D web is that it was quickly replaced by The Virtual Reality Modeling Language.
None of the browsers reviewed in that article had ports for Linux.
I don't think that its stupid/useless, if input devices are/were to change and we get our hands free from the keyboard. The 3d apps would make very good sense.
Instead of Alt-Left/Right we just flick our finger to go back and forth in history.
If 3d browsers are useless then Compiz and GLX are useless as well...
try { println( SigString ); } catch( Exception e ) { println( 'Who cares?' ); }
I like my windows rectangular, except when I'm repositioning them and I give them permission to wobble into their new location.
;)
XGL
It's already been done.
Is a cool 3d way to look at least a part of the internet
...why 3D interfaces haven't been widely used yet.
a) We still don't really have the ability to do them properly. Yes, there are a lot of research projects centred around it, (there have been since at least the 70s) and yes, we're getting better, but we're still not there yet...and my money says we're not going to be there for a good while yet.
b) Partially because of a), we don't really have any data yet that *needs* a 3D interface. Most of what we've got still centres largely around text, and text for the most part is very 2D.
c) Part of the whole reason for using a computer is to make information easier to access than it would be in a conventional, three dimensional filing cabinet. When you start using three dimensional metaphors, unless you build a *very* large space, you start running into the old physical problems of clutter, lack of space, and difficulty finding things. One of the biggest advantages of text is that with it, you can zero in on precisely the data you do want, without being bothered by any data that you don't.
Hence, due to the above three reasons, I'm not expecting a genuinely useful, utilitarian 3D interface to appear any time terribly soon. We'll continue to have such things as Tactile and Croquet, but I feel very comfortable in predicting that they will remain exactly what they are now: Novelty research projects, largely devoid of genuine relevance or truly useful application.
Croquet's developers might think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I can promise them that any single thing that you can do using Croquet, you can do a lot more quickly and easily using more conventional, two dimensional applications. Like many other such things, it is sadly a solution to a problem which doesn't exist. We don't use 3D because, apart from anything else, we simply don't need it...and given that, it's a heck of a lot easier not to.
#d web browsers are not effective, bc they are used on a 2d display to represent mostly 3d info..
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they will spread when innovative 3d goggle providers start providing resolutions other than 800x600, to actually make 3d text readable, and vant me to buy a turning chair and some cyber-jockey controller
untill that, i do not want my 2d info made 3d so it can be crappily represented on a 2d device
On VRML: VRML was really a cool tool to demonstrate a bunch of things. I beleive that it could be brought back and used in many fields effectively, the problem is tha same: you do not want to dymp the map of NY in 3d into a browser bc it will take 20 mins to download
now you might want to put an a simple model 3d animated on a school page, e.g. showing how a 4-stroke engine works
oh well, VRML is so dead, and I really liked it
The ZUI is good for a 2D interface. The 3D version is a progressive disclosure box.
I think, personally, the overall failure of a 3D net experience is due to the unrealistic expectations that most early adopters had, when virtual reality involved putting on a goofy helmet and feeling, smelling, tasting and hearing content that rivaled real life. This was mainly due to endless tons of crappy cyberpunk flicks, such as Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers, Lawnmower Man 1 & 2, et al. Hell, for the sake of definition, lets coin the phrase "Cyberputz" for such material.
Of course, in the 90s, and in the real world, when these interfaces were being experimented with, we had at best, a 56K modem that was incapable of connecting at any speed higher than 43K due to shitty connection quality, computers that at best ran 400-500 Mhz, graphics cards that were largely bloated and slow (shy of the last 3DFX card in the mid to late 90s), expensive RAM, all of which would not easily be available to anyone who didn't have a blank check to build a competent system. Add to this the overall cost of VR motion tracking helmets (still a pretty penny even today), and you have a rough approximation (Dactyl Terror, anyone?) of virtual reality. Still not quite anywhere near what cyberputz movies advertised or offered.
Now the only real reason for a cyberputz style 3D interface, was nothing more than showing a graphical representation of existing servers and routers, which in themselves would only be nessesary for a representation of distance between servers based on ping time, traceroutes, etc. Maybe a 3D logo, or animated character representing security apps or a virus (a 3D image of a really scary monster would be more psychologically effective at saying "Keep Out", than a javascript popup). Most of these things, however, are not needed by the average computer user. A perfect example of why, is the overall sales of set top boxes such as WebTV, bought up mainly by people who don't care to play Halo 2 on a PC, and just want to download e-mail, or (barely) navigate the web.
Long and short, as long as it's financially unprofitable, it will most likely be unavailable. As long as there is limited demand, it most likely will be unprofitable. It's a vicious cycle.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!