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Google Brings 3D To Web With Open Source Plugin
maxheadroom writes "Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google's plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space."
So was there ever a single useful thing done in vrml?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm really curious.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Maybe Google will make a game engine that doesn't suck next.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's been done...
The 3d web doesn't work. What "problem" are they trying to fix? That's the main reason it keeps failing.
-- incubus
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
goatse will be worth looking at~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Imagine how much spam you can fit into a 3D space!
The 3d web doesn't work. What "problem" are they trying to fix? That's the main reason it keeps failing.
-- incubus
I know that this is slashdot but did you not read the summary? This could allow for Google Earth to function in a similar way to how Microsoft virtual earth 3D does within IE without need for a fat client on the desktop. The main difference would be that it would be more open and cross platform/browser compatible.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I give Google credit for creating open source software, but I'm personally getting tired of the half implementation for Linux. I mean here is a company who has used Linux as the foundation for their internal use and they can't even muster up a deb or rpm package for their product, let alone 64 bit Linux support. Wtf Google.
Show some respect to the community.
Wow, google brought us an implementation of a standard that's got dozens of implementations already! A failed standard from 1996! One with several legitimate, healthy replacements!
You can tell they're doing great things.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
It has been years since I was on a 32bit linux system... Guess I will not be trying this out anytime soon...
This two implementations make me remember Jogl vs Java3D, and how people preferred direct access with jogl than an scene based API
Ummm.... where have you been for the last year?
http://code.google.com/apis/earth/
The 3D web worked fine with VRML (and continued to work fine with X3D, AFAIK.) The problem is that no one really had any work for it to do.
....do not add a 286 experience plugin... it sucks surfing under linux already... no need for ultra suck....
This only lags a little less than java applets on load. yay. This will only get useful if they can make the pageload overhead as small as that of flash, etc. I don't like my computer freaking out and lagging when I load a page.
Great, this will add more auto-loading bloat to the web. Soon even your netbook will need a Core 3 Octo and 80GB of RAM to get by without crashing.
Its disappointing to see a company that has sworn by minimalism since 1998 now going out of its way to make the web altogether more bloated. Of course they are trying to topple client-side computing and therefore Microsoft by rewriting the world in JavaScript
Having everything web-based is just the new way of making money from software. If a fat client had Google ads on the side people would dismiss it as adware, if there were no ads they'd just pirate it. if they want web applications to catch on 3D support is a must. I'd say by the time Google are finished trying to extend HTTP/HTML and JavaScript it will be such a mess that it won't be worth using anymore.
Really google should write a good client for remotely run applications rather than trying to extend web browsers to do it because browsers are by their design a piss-poor choice for any of the slightly more complicated applications
All of this is all well and good, but I'm holding out for a 3D interface, something that can really take advantage and create true 3D rather than depth to what is essentially still a 2D image no matter how many polygons you throw at it.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
ffs!
Javascript. API. OpenGL.
Speaking as an animator and web developer, I'd rather see this effort on the part of Google and Mozilla put into 3D SVG. It would eliminate the need for yet another plugin, allow direct DOM access, and facilitate the mixing of 3d with other page elements.
Or maybe I just want Lain's web experience...
It has been obvious since the release of GMail that google's intention has been to create the dumb terminal model for the 21st century. Everything will run in the browser. You won't need any storage or serious processing power. Just an assload of ram and a graphics card and away you go.
"But processing power is cheap!" you cry. But not as cheap as free, which is what google will offer. Email, office apps, video games as hot as you've ever seen before, all from the comfort of your own browser and all Google Adsense paid for.
Since the dawn of computer communications, there has always been a single valid answer to that question: porn.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Remeber - its a neat little tag that is really quite powerful in the right hands, everything supports it but internet explorer, google made a plugin for IE but still no website uses canvas because you can't ignore the fact that no IE user has it (until HTML 5 if IE stays standards complient).
I would *love* opengl ES like 3d rendering in javascript, with a fast enough javascript engine you could do some great things, at the last you could make fluid websites without the need for a flash plugin eating up cpu... but alas i feel this is doomed to the same fate as our old google canvas plugin for IE.
I just need a good 3D model of a 1953 Martian War Machine.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
..blows this away... (imho, of course)
This engine isn't close to being ready for prime time yet.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Without clipping, demos like the island are basically useless.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
That plugin does not work on Linux. The point is not to implement Google Earth as a plugin. It is to implement it using Web standards (VRML, HTML, JavaScript, etc.). It's the same as using SVG + JavaScript + SMIL instead of Flash, or Google Maps which doesn't use any plugins. If they manage to pull it off, it's going to be interesting.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
This could allow for Google Earth to function in a similar way to how Microsoft virtual earth 3D does within IE without need for a fat client on the desktop.
So the benefits are:
1) Google Earth displays in a browser window. Was it really so hard to manage two separate windows?
2) Instead of a fat client on the desktop, you get a fat plugin in your browser.
I'm not seeing how this is filling a need.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Did no one see the flying advertisements in that Futurama episode???
I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
3D porn ftw.. go google gogogo..
Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
This, and the canvas/video tag (if implemented widely) and fast Javascript (V8/Spidermonkey) will kill flash.
Flat out kill it. It might take a little while, but before long it will die out as soon as comparable dev tools pop up (and they will, because it's open).
I have a feeling this will be big - not XMLHttpRequest big, but not too far off. Need proof that this will succeed? Look at the hacky ways this has been done - Javascript raytracers, animated GIFs, writing software renderers in Flash - and tell me that people won't utilize a proper alternative when it arises.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
For one thing, you get a single general-purpose plug-in instead of a separate one for each different 3D web application you want to use. For another thing, if it's a standard then it can be implemented as part of the base functionality of the browser, and not need a plug-in at all.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Tip:
Over and over I have heard people say that you just use the usual configure, make, make install sequence to get a program running. Unfortunately, most people using computers today have never used a compiler or written a line of program code. With the advent of graphical user interfaces and applications builders, there are lots of serious programmers who have never done this.
configure; make; make install
[Linux Gazette, November 22, 2003]
He closed his eyes.
Found the ridged face of the power stud.
And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiled in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like a film compiled of random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.
Please, he prayed, now-
A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky.
Now-
Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding-
And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of the military systems, forever beyond his reach.
And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.
The whole google earth application is going to be shoehorned into the browser one way or another. The 3d support part of it might be reusable, but that's a small part of the whole application. If it's not a "Google Earth" specific plugin that you have to download and install, then it's going to be loaded every time you hit the page. That's worse than a native application.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I disagree.
Why does it have to solve anything? What "problem" does WoW solve?
From the summary, "Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible ..."
On the Google site I see Windows and OS-X well represented, then a whisp of a suggestion about 32-bit Linux, then nothing for FreeBSD. This does not qualify as cross-platform, not anymore.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
the comet CHAIR-R51 is in route collision with planet earth!
I must also warn that this supposedly simple little plugin installs that "Google Updater" spyware crap without asking if it was ok and with no way to remove it short of manually killing the process, deleting the files and removing the startup entries from the registry.
Thanks a lot Google. I just wasted 20 minutes having to remove rubbish. I uninstalled the plugin without even trying it because I cannot trust anything from a company that installs spyware.
Google's main 3D project is SketchUp, an easy 3D modeling studio. But it's not available for Linux. And it runs crappy, if at all, in WINE. It's also nearly the only way (other than a really tricky multi-app process with Blender) to import 3D buildings into Google Earth. Which means that without a Linux SketchUp, it's nearly impossible to get Google Earth to place the buildings properly (it requires IPC which doesn't work with SketchUp running within WINE).
So if Google is going to spend programmer hours bringing 3D to the masses, how about finishing bringing SketchUp to Linux already?
--
make install -not war
Unsure how well this will go, maybe it'll work just because it's google. But there was an *awesome* 3D plugin ages ago called Metastream. It was by the group that made Kai's Power Tools (the first set of photoshop plugins that really got the plugins thing moving along). What made it awesome was that you could model the one model with as much detail as you wanted and then export it for Metastream. In the webpage you could just call the server and say that you wanted a little low-res version to show as a thumbnail, but if you wanted a product detail you simply call for the same thing but with more detail. The Metastream plugin changed the geometry detail and image mapping to whatever was needed to get it done... just like progressive images, but better and more complete (would be the exact same if you could tell a progressive image you just wanted it really small).
Anyways... Metastream didn't take off, but it was certainly an example of it done really well with a lot of possibilities. Because it was so good, it makes me doubt as to whether it'll be cool when google does it. Metastream was awesome.
I thought the realtime blender plugin was a very cool project and quite effective. It implemented a sandboxed version of blender's richly featured 3d game / interactive simulation engine within several browsers on multiple platforms back in 2002 http://www.linux.com/feed/20866 there have been rumblings of reviving the project and bringing it in line with the current code base now and then on the blender developers mailing list. most recently by Marcelo CoraÃa de Freitas
As I mentioned in another forum I can see home improvement and DIY sites using this technology. Not to mention educational and science sites. As for Google earth, it could simply be a different way to look at the web.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I'm starting a totally new app that is (hopefully) going to use OpenGL for the display. Not full 3D, but I kind of want the fancy blending features. The problem is the last time I used OpenGL was... a VERY long time ago. It seems to have changed substantially sense then.
I'm totally out of the loop, though, as far as graphics programming goes, so... does anybody know of a decent source for discussion, tutorials, docs, anything on doing modern OpenGL the "right way"? Seeing as this project is starting from scratch, I might as well get it correct from the beginning.
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http://www.quakelive.com/
its a stupid idea now.
Much like flash this is another retarded thing to add to websites that stupid managers and shitty web developers will put on pages when they don't have any real content.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
As someone who is using SVG as a basis for a rather large system at the moment, what do you use as an SVG editor. I personally use a combination of Illustrator and Sketsa for most of my work, with a lot of the final tweaks done by hand as they both suck when dealing with text and things like flowRoots. Neither do animation for crap, so I'm curious as to what you use for creation of SVGs on a regular basis.
I love the format, but the amount of time I spend editing in a text editor tweaking things is getting to be more than slightly annoying. We use Batik to power our browser plugins and rendering to raster files and I'm not too far away from creating my own editor as everything I've used so far just seems to be crap.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Back when I did this proof-of-concept SVG game, I used Inkscape. While Inkscape is definitely coming along as a basic Illustrator alternative, it produces terrible SVG for DOM manipulation -- objects are defined with inline styles rather than attributes, and Inkscape would delete my inline JavaScript when I opened and saved the file.
Now that Safari supports full SVG and browsers are actually competing on JavaScript performance, I should really dust off that old project. Its time may have come.
Folks, this isn't new technology.
I was mucking around with VRML documents and JavaScript bindings to manipulate them over ten years ago. In the good old days of SGI.
There are a number of companies that still make 3D browser plugins, but now they use the standard X3D document format.
A JavaScript API as suggested here just allows the 3D document to be manipulated in the browser using JavaScript. Nothing amazing, been done many times before.
Hopefully Google are utilising the standards and not defining yet another API, diluting the effectiveness of the standards in the process.
I'm really glad this is finally happening. I was just thinking the other day that Flash hadn't really made the internet annoying enough. Now we can enjoy 3D websites with tiny fonts, swirling graphics, and no content.
I understand the potential usefulness of this, I really do. However, I shudder at the inevitable trends in web development that will further abuse the notion of usability.
http://unity3d.com/
Is a very good 3D plugin
http://www.fusionfall.com/splashpage.html
A good example from cartoon Network.
If you build it, they will come... real 3D web applications, that is. They're heeerree, or at least they will be.
People claim that there are no real applications for web 3D. Humbug. Here's just a tiny subset without even trying. No, 3D isn't the solution for everything, but it's the solution for enough things.
Phase 1: Niche 3D apps move to the web
It'll start with the niche applications that are already 3D moving onto the web - CAD, architectural walkthroughs, collaborative design etc. A light version of your CAD or design software will be a web app (starting with SketchUp).
Phase 2: Mainstream web apps add 3D
Next, existing non-3D web apps will start to add 3D capabilities. Product configurators will be visual, your driving directions will have a 3D mode, your customer service applications will let you pull up a model of a piece of equipment and engage in real-time collaboration. These apps will function like regular web apps, but better.
Phase 3: Entirely new 3D web apps
Finally, over time, 3D will find its way into nearly every current web application that even touches on visual or spatial data - search, maps, 3D medical atlases, you name it. You'll be able to use 3D models to index databases. Text and visual information will co-exist like images and text but better because 3D models are structured. Virtually whatever you see can be 3D.
Oh yes, it will happen. Maybe not right away. The first batch of 3D web apps will almost certainly suck. There will be lots of failed projects until people figure out how to build 3D web apps. O3D may or may not be the ticket, but something else similar to it will be. It will take years and years, but it will happen.
Be kind to everyone you meet, for they are fighting a difficult battle. - plato
The 3d web doesn't work. What "problem" are they trying to fix? That's the main reason it keeps failing.
Going from 2d to 3d is the hard part.
This is really just an early precursor for a 10d plugin, which will be implemented on a quantum computer.
Why do you think quantum computing researchers are so obsessed with entanglement?
It's much easier to run multiple threads in all those extra dimensions, so the smoother performance from the enhanced browser will be the first useful application of superstring theory.
(What's scary is that in ten years, professional tech and science journalism will look just like this post if current trends continue)
How long until we have a 3D compositing window manager for our in-browser desktops?
(Nearly 20 years of hardware and software improvements, and the pinnacle of our achievements is exactly what we started with, but slower. With all the effort that's gone into making javascript fast, wouldn't it have been easier to make downloading random binaries from the internet safe?)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Silverlight definitely has 3D APIs today (and yes, accessible from JS, too), and I bet its marketshare, though miniscule compared to Flash, will dwarf that of Google plugin anyway - and, with Windows Update as a distribution channel, will keep doing that. Also, I don't know much about Flash development, but doesn't it have some 3D APIs, too? If yes, then this thing is pretty much stillborn.
Yep. And Google Earth *might* even become the future of home pages, if people keep geotagging their content when they put it online, so that it makes sense to highlight hotspots which are relevant to your search etc.
I'll try: People used to spend too much time outdoors? Some of the nerds were close to leaving their basements?
Personally, I much prefer the scenegraph approach. AFAIK, people prefer so-called "direct access" because it's faster when performance is at a premium, like in games on the desktop. I don't really imagine that being an issue online, since bandwidth will still be a major limitation (especially if ISPs don't get off their buts and start providing transfers that match the real bandwidth sold).
On another note... what's with this "retained mode" stuff that Direct3D popularised? Isn't that the same as "scenegraph"?
From the summary, "Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible ..."
On the Google site I see Windows and OS-X well represented, then a whisp of a suggestion about 32-bit Linux, then nothing for FreeBSD. This does not qualify as cross-platform, not anymore.
Not to mention OS/2 and BeOS !
(yes I run Linux too, and so does Google, and I understand they cater to the masses.)
Hopefully this time they wrote their code with a little portability in mind...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Warning: the plugin is an executable that installs Google Updater, an obnoxious program that sits in the background, hogging resources and ever so often connecting to Google servers to transmit some information.
A few years ago this would have caused an outcry and the plugin would have been labeled "nagware" if not "malware"..
Why does a simple Firefox-plugin require its own installation service to run, when Firefox has its own built-in method for updating plugins which runs perfectly well?
"Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures."
yep. because that's exactly how things have worked in the past.
/sarcasm
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Because you lack vision does not mean a use does not exist. Think a furniture site that lets you build and walkthrough your home. Or Ticketmaster having a 3D representation of stadiums. I'm sure there are many other ideas as well but I'm not stupid enough to think that "if I can't think of them then they don't exist."
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
We can already do that: with Java.
Yes, those pesky little applets. The secret? The new "Consumer" JRE - take 90% of the space of the old one and startup time is 200 ms. Want to use j3d? Boom - you can fast. Want to craft a MQ PAS message to talk to that crusty IBM mainframe? Boom, you can, in a browser.
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How diferent is this from processing? ( www.processing.org ) ?
How about a "Summer of Code" for good 3D physics in this plugin?
Seastead this.
Unfortunately, it works on 32-bit Linux distributions only. Simply because their JavaScript engine is 32-bit only. :-(