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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."
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?
It may be useless in its current incarnation, but that doesn't mean someone won't come up with a good way to use it as the technology matures.
The main problem is that people have this nifty tool, but they keep applying it to bolt it onto an existing interface instead of really trying to create a new one. (And when they do try to create a new one, the drawbacks outweigh the advantages. I swear, these "airport/city" metaphors and the like remind me of nothing so much as Microsoft Bob.) It's like using advanced 3D graphics to render a console app -- in a hard-to-read font.
Someone needs to figure out what a 3D display brings to the table, and build on that. Texture-mapping the 2D web onto the walls doesn't accomplish much.
Boobs've gotta be WAY better in 3D.
Throw in Feel-A-Round and I think you've got a killer ap.
KFG
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
No way, dude. Talking about 3D, real boobs are WAY better than virtual boobs.