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Why Hasn't 3D Taken Off For the Web?

Posted by samzenpus on from the adding-some-depth dept.

First time accepted submitter clockwise_music writes "With HTML5 we're closer to the point where a browser can do almost everything that a native app can do. The final frontier is 3D, but WebGL isn't even part of the HTML5 standard, Microsoft refuses to support it, Apple wants to push their native apps and it's not supported in the Android mobile browser. Flash used to be an option but Adobe have dropped mobile support. To reach most people you'd have to learn Javascript, WebGL and Three.js/Scene.js for Chrome/Firefox, then you'd have to learn Actionscript + Flash for the Microsofties, then learn Objective-C for the apple fanboys, then learn Java to write a native app for Android. When will 3D finally become available for all? Do you think it's inevitable or will it never see the light of day?"

2 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Because... by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't think the submitter is asking about the optical-stereo kind of 3d (like what you get with "3d movies" and "3d glasses"), but rather just geometric projections of 3d scenes onto a 2d viewing plane, like you get in Leonardo da Vinci paintings or Quake.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  2. Please define "gimmick" and "edge cases" by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative
    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    There are a few tiny edge cases

    What's with this recurring meme that I've been seeing on Slashdot lately that edge cases should be ignored? If everybody has his own edge case, then why not allow something that handles all the edge cases acceptably?

    but everything else is FPS or gimmick.

    True, one of the first video games with a 3D perspective (Battlezone) was the ur-first-person-shooter, but 3D games in other genres have been popular since the mid-1990s. Or is every other video game genre "gimmick" and "few tiny edge cases" to you? I'm not getting what you mean by "gimmick"; in the circles where I hang out, "gimmick" refers to a 2D platformer for the NES published by Sunsoft with a design aesthetic similar to that of the Kirby games.

    kind of like 3D tv's

    The "3D" in "3D TV" and the "3D" in WebGL are two different things. WebGL just defines a way to project 3D geometry into a display plane. This display plane may or may not be presented with binocular separation, which is what the "3D" in "3D TV" and "Nintendo 3DS" means.