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Khronos Launches Initiative For Standards-Based 3-D Web Content
xororand writes "The initiative called 'Accelerated 3D on the web' has been formed by the Khronos consortium with the goal to define an open standard for 3D content on the web, using OpenGL and ECMAscript, as it was suggested by Mozilla developers. 'The Khronos(TM) Group today announced an initiative to create an open, royalty-free standard for bringing accelerated 3D graphics to the Web. In response to a proposal from Mozilla, Khronos has created an "Accelerated 3D on Web" working group that Mozilla has offered to chair. This royalty-free standard will be developed under the proven Khronos development process with a target of a first public release within 12 months.'
Unlike previous attempts to establish 3D standards for the web, this one might be actually successful due to the use of existing open standards, and the increasing performance of ECMAscript engines."
I've been trying to figure out how to get web pages to load slower. There are only so many things you can add to a page before you run out of ideas, and as cool as it is, the falling snow effect looks stupid 3 out of 12 months a year.
Yeah I know it has real potential for some serious implementations, but we all know that you're just going to have 3d rotating logs, 3d menus and other such junk more than anything else.
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Erm shouldn't fancy stuff like 3d acceleration be handled by plug-ins not browsers? I don't even think putting ogg in the browser was a good idea!
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Man, I miss people asking for VRML galleries and stores. The same way I miss getting kicked in the head repeatedly.
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Yeah, because standardizing web content has worked so very well thus far. This should take right off and just roll. No problems whatsoever. Yep.
Obviously there has been one particular company working hard to hold back Web standards. That said, between legal scrutiny of those actions and the slow erosion of their Web install share to both alternative browsers and alternative platforms (e.g. smartphones) standards are becoming both more important and more applied.
First prototype of the 3D web is already run at thousands of Opensim servers all around the globe. The 3D Web bears similarities to 2D Web; Users can follow links to teleport from a 3D world to another one. 3D Viewers are used to browse the 3D content on the servers. Check it out here: IT giants back up open source 3D Web.
I think it's useful to develop an open web 3d standard, despite the dancing GIF animations it brings to mind. What I foresee is either MS or MS sock puppet(s) getting a seat at the table. Suddenly, "Open" ActiveX is the solution.
Umm, do you have any idea who the Khronos group is? It's Apple, Sun, Id, Creative, Sony, Intel, AMD/ATI, and NVIDIA among others. They make OpenGL and pretty much all of them have a vested interest in keeping the standards open and usable by everyone and NOT controlled by Microsoft. The main purpose behind Khronos these days is to provide a usable alternative to DirectX.
Went to see Coraline last weekend. Good movie, but the best thing I can say about its use of 3D is that it didn't get in the way. Mostly.
All these idiots who keep pushing 3D media at us. WE DON'T WANT IT. It doesn't make anything "more real". Quite the opposite. Since you can never do it completely right with anything resembling current media, you end up with a lot of half-baked complications (the "foreground" objects in Coraline often look like cardboard cutouts) that make it that much harder to immerse yourself in the movie, the GUI, or whatever.
(When you invent a completely new medium in which 3D makes sense, like those "holodecks" on Star Trek, get back to us.)
And as for GUIs, they make interaction more complicated. The whole point of GUIs is to make interaction simpler. If I want to keep track of a lot of extraneous detail, I'll use a CLI.
I write hardware manuals for a living, and there are some people at our company who want us to start embedding 3D interactive models in the PDF versions of our manuals. If I thought this proposal was going to go anywhere (we don't even have enough resources to do more basic authoring easily) I'd be very noisily opposing it. Lots of extra work, all to make using our manuals a little more difficult. No thanks.
Promoting Members and Contributing Members of Khronos Group
Pedantic is one thing, just plain wrong is another.
"Content" is logical, not physical, and therefore this statement is wrong. And the web isn't a 2d surface (or any other kind of surface), so even if the statement was true so far as it goes, it would still be irrelevant to whether there can be 3D content on the Web. And since the human visual system uses a pair of 2D sensors to synthesize a 3-dimensional model of the portion of the universe seen, its pretty clear that you can present as good of a presentation of 3D content as humans can deal with using via 2D images, provided you do it just right. And, of course, you can do 2D projections from a 3D model even with one 2D surface, with quite useful results (and, if you deliver the 3D model to the user agent, which then performs whatever requested manipulations the user wants, with a whole lot less latency than if the server had to generate 2D images from a 3D object model and send them over the wire in response to queries for different views of the same model from the same user agent.)
You confuse presentation mechanisms with content.
If I remember my history, HTML started as a way to store linked information. Then it was badly hacked to be a way to poorly layout documents. Then java script was stapled onto it. Then the whole mess was turned into the kluge that is ajax. Now someone's trying to duct tape 3-D onto that.
I for one look forward to a day when the web is a more dynamic environment, where information is presented more fluidly instead relying on the old metaphor of static published pages, but I can't believe this is a sane way forward. It seems like instead of looking for a better way to present information they're just duct taping crap onto the same old model. Kind of like achieving flight by strapping a rocket motor to horse drawn carriage.
Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
but we all know that you're just going to have 3d rotating logs, 3d menus and other such junk more than anything else.
Ok. Obvisouly, your favorite browser FireFox and you're using AdBlock+ and/or noscript on a regular basis.
Just turn them off for 10 minutes and try to surf the web. Keep sharp and pointed object away from you as you might get tempted to gouge your eyes in the process.
Yes, probably a couple of geocities- and myspace- like pages will get useless 3d gizmos.
But the most massive usage that the other users of the web are going to endure are even more obtrusive animated advertisements. (As if full-screen out-of-the-browser-window flash animations weren't enough).
Prepare for giant rotating 3D renders of "p1lls", "r0lex replicaz", etc...
Well. That, and porn.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Sun? They're pretty late to the party, and we're not sure they're on board. But Apple? Creative? Nvidia? SONY?!?!?! You hold these guys up as pillars of openness?!?!?
We weren't discussing openness. We were discussing the possibility raised by the previous poster about making this standard into an MS controlled ActiveX based technology. Sony has a terrible record on openness in general, but they rarely if ever support closed technologies controlled by others, especially Microsoft. Sony also has a vested interest in some standards, such as OpenGL which they have been a good citizen with regard to.
What the hell have you been smoking that makes you believe that the makers/backers of itunes/ipod, BD+, pervertors of the CD standard have any interest in making things open and accessible to everyone?!?!
All of these companies have a history of promoting open standards for technology when in situations where said standards provide them with significant benefits and help cancel out the dangers of closed standards controlled by Microsoft. They've all been implementing the Khronos group technologies they help develop and all those are open technologies. What makes you think this new one added to the list will be any different?
You're just trolling anyway, aren't you?
Since the dawn of man, every UI innovation has been poo-poo'd by the old guard.
When GUI's came out, people said that it was faster to use old keypunch machines. And perhaps it was, at first, but the operators had to be much more skilled and took longer to train.
When browser-based apps came out, a lot of people said that we're all better off with thick client apps that can have a more responsive UI.
Flash and Javascript, people complain about their misuse. But how they're misused is missing the point compared to the good things they've done in changing the landscape of the web. Examples include Youtube, Google Maps. I realize a lot of people don't want to use Flash or Javascript at all, and that's cool with me. But such people are missing out.
There's a lot of 3D applications in our future. Virtual worlds, learning, exploring, sharing experiences together-- all of those things are best done in 3d. Looking at pictures of the Acropolis is one thing. But to really get a "feel" for it, for how big it is, for what it might have been like to be there, you really get more out of exploring a 3d model. Ideally with a guide or a friend.
There's real benefit in 3d, even though a lot of people won't see it. I won't deny that some applications of it will suck, especially at first. But long term, the web could become a fine standards compliant delivery mechanism for 3d apps.
Wow. This is the most uninformed discussion I've seen in years.
This has nothing to do with markup (VRML, x3D, etc). It is about the browser exposing an opengl API to javascript.
According to TFA, it's Mozilla that is proposing building the functionality into a browser (but it could be any other ecmascript container). Since Mozilla is contributing to the standard (and started the initiative), we should expect this to absorb Canvas:3D (i.e., this is not a redundancy).
This standardization is a Good Thing. Everyone's concerns about advertisers abusing this should be directed towards advertisers, not this totally useful idea. Also, noscript rocks.
To all who think javascript just sucks, you don't know how to use it. Stop using it like it's C.
And if it replaces that leaky, closed, insecure, inaccessible, non-semantic and patent-encumbered plugin that almost killed the Web, awesome. With any luck, it'll kill DirectX too.