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X3D - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D Rationale: It was the 1990s, VRML flew but didn't quite make it. 3D hardware accelerati
by contingencies 9y ago
X3D - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D
Rationale: It was the 1990s, VRML flew but didn't quite make it. 3D hardware acceleration had arrived, gaming was exploding, Descent and Quake had proven complex worlds and freedom of movement were possible on commodity hardware, and talk of buffering 3D content in video streams seemed to make perfect sense for next generation passive entertainment. Product placements, architectural documentation, mechanical design courses, etc.
What killed it (IMHO): Took too long to standardize, too much formalism, no consumer electronics manufacturers on board sending actual products to market. If they had done an IETF approach ("rough consensus and running code") they may not have missed the window of opportunity.
- kobeya 9y agoIt ain't dead yet... https://www.x3dom.org/ https://www.x3dom.org/
- Animats 9y agoX3D is VRML, just with XML delimiters.
- vortico 9y agoWouldn't a Javascript X3D-to-WebGL wrapper solve this? That would allow time for adoption to happen during the standardization process, until browsers begin to implement it natively. If nobody is using this now with a JS wrapper, then why should browsers standardize it?
- greggman 9y agoWhat killed IMO and what will continue to kill these kinds of things for a long time is that nearly all 3D applications need massive amounts of custom optimization solutions. Stuff like X3D gets you a few cubes on the screen. Then you want to do GTA or Google Maps or Minecraft or pick your app and suddenly your generic scene graph just isn't good enough.