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3D Graphics For Firefox, Webkit
angry tapir writes "A group of researchers plans to release a version of the Firefox browser that includes the built-in ability to view 3D graphics. They've integrated real-time ray tracing technology, called RT Fact, into Firefox and Webkit. Images are described using XML3D, and the browser can natively render the 3D scene." The browser will be released within a few weeks, the researchers say, and they are checking with the Mozilla Foundation about whether they can call it Firefox.
We've had 3D graphics for YEARS in browsers. It is called VRML and it is a standard that has been with us since the early days of graphical browsers.
But the real question is who in their right mind will develop anything as ephemeral as a web page with this complicated technology? The time investment involved to come out with even the simplest of models is enormous. Maybe not John Pinette enormous, something smaller like Louie Anderson enormous.
Does this mean this technology will be used strictly for 3D images/scenes, or when they say 3D are they referring to gaming?
Obviously and according to TFA, they're referring to 3D images/scenes. Gaming would require, amongst other things, browser-support for raw input devices, (at-least partial) server-side magic for processing interactive events. While these are definitely possible, they're not what this is about.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Porn ography.
I'd propose "Cerberus" as the name for their forked version of Firefox that has XML3D rendering capability. Cerberus is is three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. After all, Hades has lots of fire and the connection between foxes and dogs is tangible (they are both canines, AFAIK).
If successful, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Mozilla folks include this feature in a future release of Firefox.
Heaven forbid, please no!
We don't need a rendering engine for every arcane formalt ever developed incorparated into a browser that's deployed on millions of desktops. Just remember, each supported protocol adds new complexety, new errors and with this new secutiry-issues that'll lead to exploits, bad press, compromised machines and painful bugfixing.
Stuff like this should never be part of the browser, it should be an addon.
Ahh, the day that comes...
Believe it or not, it's already landed on trunk - at least for Firefox running on Windows 7.
np: Autechre.ws Webcast (02.03.2010)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
WebGL/RT/HTML5 are not fundamentally stupid. VRML hype mistakenly centered around a 3D navigation model for most of the web replacing 2D textual interaction with some image content, which was stupid.
However, richer multimedia content is a fact of life now with increased bandwidth. If it were not, then flash wouldn't persist (overuse of flash was a fad that has abated a bit in favor of javascript/css mechanisms, but flash persists for video and games without viable alternatives). Various video streaming sites that are relegated to flash today for games and videos would be freed from Adobe's whims as the embedded video, canvas, and 3d capabilities are expressed in industry standard terms.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
We realized that 3D graphics in the browser were stupid and useless back in 1995, when the VRML hype was much like the HTML5 hype is today.
There are a few differences.
VRML was never really an industry standard, it evolved from an SGI project and was adopted by a few other companies. There were competing technologies that seemed better, but were mostly closed. In any case, they required browser plugins that were large, clunky, and crashy.
At the height of VRML's popularity, there really weren't any standards for desktop 3D acceleration. Getting decent performance from a VRML browser required a pretty fast machine, and the graphics were very crude even then.
Now we have an industry standard backed by the group in charge of HTML, ridiculously fast 3d hardware on even low end desktops, and, with the modded FireFox and Webkit backends, integration with the codebase.
This might end up working.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
We realized that 3D graphics in the browser were stupid and useless back in 1995...
...and slow! I was there when VRML was landing (just finished high school) and all I saw it used for were virtual rooms were avatars would talk in a 3D IRC like environment. Only big problem back then was we didn't have 3D acceleration and the interface was clunky and painfully slideshow like in speed.
As for uses, I could think of a few and have already started coding them. Instead of loading a PNG or GIF, it is pretty nice to be able to download a float array, be able to display it, and allow a user to interrogate it. Giving a user that kind of capability in the browser while not requiring them to download an application or a browser plugin is pretty darn nice. And while not mainstream, scientific fields could greatly benefit from something like that.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Flash problem. But 2 days ago Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 was released with out-of-process plugins. Flash can no longer crash FF.
RTFact is based on a research paper from the University of Saarland. The paper describes the implementation of a generic real time ray tracing framework with source code in C++. The goal or objective is an interactive real-time ray tracer.
From the different implementations I researched (Manta from MIT, OpenRT, Arauna, RTSL, plus many more), RTFact is by far the most legitimate implementation. There are a million papers out there on interactive ray tracing, but only a few really take into consideration some of the major problems. I played around with OpenRT, but the amount of artifacts and aliasing really take away from the interactive experience. I have not played around with it recently, so maybe they now have an improved adaptive anti-aliasing solution, so my comments may be outdated.
The base code for RTFact is supposed go open source, but I have been waiting around for a long time without even a remote tidbit of information until this post. They actually even went backwards as they removed the paper from public distribution. Whenever it does go open source, it will be posted here.
http://www.rtfact.org/
Now the generic ray tracing api/framework is RTFact, but from the sounds of the article posted above, they are actually integrating the scene graph RTSG into WebKit, which has also been developed by the university of Saarland. This is only speculation and I could be completely wrong.
If you want some info on RTFact, check out:
http://tiny.cc/gHMrW
For info on RTSG, check out:
http://tiny.cc/3ezO8
If you want the original paper, the only link I could find from Google seems to be broken, but it may be due to the servers being overloaded by downloads after the announcement. I have the paper somewhere here on one of my drives, but it would take me a while to find, so if you want me to spend the time looking for it, you would need to give me some incentive by proving to me that you are in fact doing research.
In regards to your question, without a doubt, rasterization will eventually be replaced by ray tracing. Just look at Pixars evolution into photorealism. When the frame rates improve with better hardware for the general public, the framework will begin to be used in game engines, and not just scene graphs. The reasoning is aesthetic as much as it is technical. Ray tracing is truer to the physics of light than rasterization, so even though you can "fake" effects, the graphics will always be more appealing being rendered backwards than forwards. I do numerical simulation (with a background in CS from UW, where my heavy graphics knowledge comes from, plus a few years in real-time simulaton), and the true physics of the problem always gives a better solution than assumptions, approximations, correlations, and correction factors. It is a comment that my prof continually reiterates. For example, caustics will never look as good rastered as they do ray traced, since the ray tracer will map the full motion of the photons.
I could go on for hours, but I will leave it at this....