Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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.
Isn't this trying to open the path for that? If they can get the API down pat with the plugin, and leave it open enough to replace the plugin with built-in functionality, it'll do exactly what you want, quicker, and with cross-browser compatibility.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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 meant specifically the object-heavy DOM API required by SVG, where everything in sight is an object, including things that would be better off as strings (the .href of an , for example, just in case you want to use SMIL to animate that; same thing for .className on all SVG elements). Oh, except you have to also provide it all in string form for the Core DOM APIs.
Having personally worked on a browser DOM implementation and done a fair amount of black-box testing of three other browse DOM implementations, a lot of the "shittiness" is baked into the specs. The SVG example is pretty typical: instead of using strings where they make sense, objects where they make sense, and something radical like integers where _they_ make sense, the DOM APIs typically require you to keep information in multiple forms at once and sync them to each other when any of the representations is changed. Setters are typically provided for all the different representations. In practice implementations often end up violating the letter of the spec and using a canonical representation in some cases just to keep performance sane. If the representations could be generated from each other, this wouldn't even violate the spec... but they can't be.
There's nothing flawed with the concept of an object model, of course, just with the design-by-committee object models the W3C has produced.
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