Bringing Online Shopping Into the Future With the 3D Web

An anonymous reader writes "While there is now the possibility of using 3D in the browser over WebGL, it is still hard for regular web developers to get 3D content into websites without being hardcore graphics programmers. XML3D, a project at the Intel Visual Computing Institute, tries to tackle that problem by having a very easy-to-use language as an extension of HTML5. The goal is to standardize it with the W3C. There are already modified Firefox and Chrome browsers that support XML3D natively. At Intel's Research Blog you can find a video on what shopping at an online store could soon look like. In the example, the user purchases a DSLR that can be fully interacted with in 3D, including attaching various lenses and an external flash."

Comments

Yay

[slackware 3.6]

the new VRML.

Re:Yay

[maxwell demon]

(Note: I have never looked at or used VRML, so I have no idea what state it is in.)

It's in Missouri.

Re:Yay

[Zadaz]

Exactly. This adds nothing to VRML (Or any of the other dozen 3D web technologies that went under this same headline in years past.)

Okay, that's not entirely true. Over the past it has the following advantages:

- It's buit into the browser, so no plugins.

- Computers are much faster so performance should be better.

- Bandwidth is higher so files transfer faster.

But none of the gets to the heart of the problem with 3D:
- 3D artists are much more expensive than a production artist running Photoshop and creating attractive 3D content takes much longer than a flat image. This makes the content much more expensive to produce.

- The quality is not there. If you want to show off the highest quality vision of your product you want Photoshoped images. 3D just doesn't have it. Even with high resolution 3D scanners and hours of cleanup by a train artist it will still look sub-par compared to properly prepped 2D images.

- There are very few 3D interface designers worth a damn. And they're all working much higher paid jobs making games. That leaves people who sort of saw a scene in Jonny Mnemonic on late-night TV years ago when they were a little drunk, and thought it would be neat to make an interface like that. This turns away customers. And even if they did hire one of those great designers away from the games industry, 3D is still a horrible interface for a 2D spreadsheet, which is what most web sites are.

- Phones.

With the exception of the last, these problems will always exist, and always doom the 3D web.

The single case I've seen for 3D web in 20+ years of doing 3D are online 3D libraries like Thingiverse where, in this case, you can preview an STL before downloading.

Disclosure: I have worked with web and 3D since 1996 and have been directly involved with a number of doomed 3D web projects in that time. They were all essentially identical with the exception of the name of the 3D plugin/file format.

Re:Yay

[grumbel]

- The quality is not there. If you want to show off the highest quality vision of your product you want Photoshoped images.

The shiniest polished image of a front side of a product helps me little if I as a customer want to actually look at the backside of the product. I would absolutely love it when Amazon or another major shop would start putting their products under a 3D scanner and allowing the user the actually view a product from all sides in 3D so that one can get a proper feel for the size, instead of just having an 2D image that really tell you much about anything. Apple had that a decade or so ago with QuickTime VR and there have been a few experiments with ActiveX back in the day, but that all has disappeared since then and I would absolutely love to have it back.

Re:Yay

[TheRaven64]

Add to that: 3D brings in limitations from the real world. I worked with a project a few years ago that used a 3D interface for displaying pictures online. You could walk around a virtual art gallery with the pictures all on the walls. What was the difference between this and a simple page of pictures? Several things:

First, there was the issue of distortion. You had to stand directly in front of a picture to see it without distortion from perspective. Zooming was also harder - you could zoom in and out by walking towards the picture, but panning up and down was not possible without implementing some kind of levitation mechanic.

Second, there was the problem of spacial location. By restricting yourself to 3D space, rather than the n-dimensional space of arbitrary hyperlinks, you increase the distance between any two points in the site. Even with 20 pictures per floor and instant teleporting elevators, users spent a lot longer walking between pictures than they spent navigating a 2D site.

For me, one of the main benefits of online shopping over a real shop is that I can search and get a list of items matching my criteria that I can quickly compare. 3D adds nothing to this, and takes several things away.

We've already seen this...

[Kennric]

Spatula City already led this revolution, perhaps just a bit too far ahead of its time.

Re:What a waste of time

[unrtst]

Right example, WRONG conclusion!

All too often when I shop on Amazon, products won't have adequate pictures that allow me to see a product from all angles and zoom factors. Many products don't even bother to list full specs. Just today I was shopping for a new projector, but many of them don't list the supported connection types, so it would be nice to be able to rotate and zoom a 3D model of the projector and visually verify that it has what I need.

If {online retailer} can't be bothered to snap a few pictures with their camera phone and/or copy/paste the product specs, what makes you think they'll bother to obtain a full blown interactive 3d representation of the device? This is why this is doomed (for online shopping at least).

Newegg (my personal favorite retailer of electronic goods except for cables, which is then monoprice) already does nice 2d pictures with zoom support so you can zoom in and see what connections are there, and you can often make out the tiny little labels even. Sometimes, they also have a 360 degree view, which is really just a series of pics shot around the product, and a slider that lets you change the pictures in order via flash (but could easily be done in JS or HTML5 etc). There is very very very little benefit to a complete 3d model over these, and it's a lot more work, it's more expensive to produce, it's less compatible with existing browsers, it's higher bandwidth, and more difficult/complicated to use, and it will likely be lower resolution.

Still photos are by far the easiest thing for a retailer to add. Snap, and attach to the product profile. You're complaining (and I agree) that there aren't enough of these already... you're delusional if you think a 3d model will show up on all those products that don't even list the basic specs or more than one pic.

360 degree photos are also quite easy, especially for a big retailer that can setup one rig to do them (ex. a single camera, product on a lazy susan, spin it while shooting a movie or taking pics, paste result to 360 degree image maker or just make it a gif), and very few products have these even some of the best retailer sites.

3d online shopping - not going to happen. Stop expecting fancy new tech to solve operational issues that have simple solutions in place that aren't being used.

3d models on the manufacturer page - I can definitely imagine this showing up on high priced items.

I liked it better when it was called X3D

[nickmalthus]

I am not sure what XML3D provides that X3D or Collada does not. Another "not invented here" technology? 3D scene creation is complex and compelling visualizations will never be able to be XML hand coded like HTML can be.

Too much style without substance

[shoehornjob]

I want reviews from real people, specs, facts and comparison shopping when I shop online. All of my purchases are thoroughly researched and vetted for at least 3-4 weeks before I plunk my money down(big purchase anyway). If I really wanted to see it in great detail and touch it (feel it) I'd go to a retail store. I dunno maybe this will catch on with the emotional buying crowd but if I'm buying something online this is a big waste.

full-body avatar

[thegoldenear]

I'm imagining online shopping for clothes, where your full-body avatar has all your dimensions and you get to see how clothes might look on you.

3d, a solution desparately in search of a problem

[smoothnorman]

The central problem with 3d-ing stuff is that it solves no problem, scratches no apparent itch, feeds no bull-dog, *and* annoys the pig. Every implementation i've been 'lucky' enough to observe comes off as a skit John Candy did where the 3d feature was made the central feature of the plot (of some silly B-movie). oh, here's a sample (forgot it was "Dr Tongue") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u4tTFEF_XE

So... "look at this crap we want you to by... *look* at it! ooo..." [moves object fitfully in/out of visual plan]

Re:What a waste of time

[Frosty Piss]

Until the 3D image is actually some sort of functional 3D projection, what's the point?

Quite so.

Today's 3d technology is not at a useful level. It's much like the video phones in 200A Space Odyssey. A cute "Sci-Fi" fad, but not a truly useful consumer technology.

Yet.

Much like the 3d televisions: A curious and half-assed implementation held back by the state of the technology, and of dubious value other than as a curiosity. If you're rich enough to by a 3d big-screen, why not? But otherwise, it's just not much of an experience.

The other point I want to touch on is this: For some reason, there are many people that are of the opinion that applying advanced technology to something automatically makes it better (like electronic balloting). But it is very rarly the actual case.

How much value would this really add beyond the kind of 2d 360 viewing technology we already have (think NewEgg)? Maybe for some things, but not a lot if any for most things.

Fad.

Re:NOPE

[maxwell demon]

But LCDs are the most common 2D viewing technology today, and no one I know denies it the status of a valid 2D viewing technology just because you can't get a non-distorted image when looking from the side. The point being that the demand is ridiculously high.

Oh, and BTW, a hologram wouldn't be valid 3D according to his definition either because it lacks an eye tracking camera!

Second Life tried this

[biodata]

Everyone bought cocks, got bored and left.

Re:What a waste of time

[__aajwxe560]

One would think if a few large retailers got together and set a base standard of images they expect a mfr. to provide for a product, this may alleviate some of the issues. While it shifts the "burden" to the mfr, its in their marketing dept's best interest to take the time to provide the pictures so the product moves off the shelves.

From there, the standard could mature into 360 views and maybe one day in my lifetime 3D. Baby steps ...

This is True, And Yet

[Phoenix666]

What you're saying is true, but the example of Thingiverse rather points the way to solving the 3D artist problem: 3D scanners. One of the bottle necks in additive manufacturing is the need to design something in a CAD system before feeding it to the printer. And that's the same bottleneck you've pointed out for 3D websites. If you have a 3D scanner to generate a CAD file for an existing object, then no 3D artist time is required. Of course, in the case of a 3D printer you need to scan with X-rays to pick up internal structure, but for a website a surface scan is entirely, or at least mostly, sufficient.

boooring

[Tom]

Various incarnations of this have been tried for at least 10 years.

All of them miss the point. That it's not more visuals that is lacking from online shopping, but other senses. Feeling the weight and texture, touching something, getting the full experience.

It's like increasing the resolution on sports TV because you think too many people still go to the event instead of watching it at home. That decision was hardly ever because the picture was so small.