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X3D Community Blog
August 03, 2007
Web3D Executive Director’s Summer and Siggraph 2007 Update
With August here already, the one thing on everyone’s minds (and monitors and keyboards...) around here is Siggraph, starting on August 5th in San Diego.
See us, meet us, visit with us at SIGGRAPH 2007 - booth number 029 - on the exhibition floor. Don’t forget to ask for our newest 2007 SDK, debuting at Siggraph!
This year we will be have twice as big a booth as last year with half a dozen Web3D member company exhibitors. I’m excited that we’ll have Planet 9 Studios showing off their gorgeous all new Virtual Cities 2007. The city models are tightly coupled with Planet 9s RayGunҙ mobile GPS software application and also work with other popular applications such as Google Earth and nVidias new NorthStar mobile platform. Planet 9 CEO David Colleen will be speaking about Virtual Citiesҙ 2007 at Siggraphs ғCarto BOF on Tuesday August 7th at 12:30 PM, Room 29B and showing Virtual Citiesԙ 2007 at booth 29.
Bitmanagement will be showing their brand new Mac version of Bitmanagement’s BS Contact, as well as their 3D Engine to support COLLADA. Bitmanagement will showcase at this year’s Siggraph it’s newly developed support of the popular COLLADA 3D format in their web-based 3D rendering engine BS Contact. With this strategic move, Bitmanagement furthers their strong reputation in real-time rendering engines for open standards in Web3D and Khronos consortia.
We’ll also have Octaga showing off their new releases as well, including THEIR new Mac based X3D browser. Octaga Player 2.2 is now a full blown X3D viewer with the release of the Mac OSX version at Siggraph 2007. Octaga will also release the Octaga Exporter for 3D Studio Max with support for sun/shadow simulation. Octaga Player is now available on Windows XP, Vista, Linux and Mac OS X. In addition Octaga Player can run as a plug-in to MS Windows products, Adobe Acrobat and all major Internet browsers as a Java applet.
Alan Hudson from Yumetech will be showing the latest Xj3D release and Don’t forget to ask Alan about Yumetech’s foray into teaching classes on X3D and Xj3D, starting up again in September! Chris Thorne from Ping will be showing his SMAM avatar communications as sponsored by Systemic. Thank you Systemic!
SenseGraphics will be showing off their new X3D browser developed strategically for the medical imaging industry. Siggraph attendees will get hands-on demonstrations of H3DAPI, the SenseGraphics software package that medical and dental applications can use to integrate Haptics with 3D visualization. SenseGraphics will also showcase a X3D-based implementation for DICOM import, graphic rendering, and Internet browser support.
Note that our booth will also be stamping cards for the COLLADA booth crawl prize drawing, which will take place in the Khronos booth on Thursday at 1PM. Sony is donating a PS3 to the lucky grand prize winner and our very own Bitmanagement is donating a fully supported BS Contact browser SDK, valued at over $2000. Web3D is donating a polo shirt with all the relevant logos. I know which prize I would want!
We will also have a small presence in Khronos booth #227 sponsored by Fraunhofer IGD and Media Machines as well as an hour in the Khronos event room for a Web3D technical talk update. Please register now to attend the Web3D Tech Talk at http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/san_diego_siggraph_2007/#register. See Khronos Group BOFs & BOF Socials @ SIGGRAPH 2007 for more info and continuous updates at http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/san_diego_siggraph_2007/#socials.
We will also have some BoFs through-out the Siggraph week. Here’s a few that the Web3D folks are involved with:
The X3D Medical Working Group BoF will also be held on Monday, and will take place from 4-5:30PM in room 29B, and is organized by Michael Aratow, MedX3D WG Chair. Mike will deliver an update on the work of the Web3D TATRC contract for a new medical X3D browser and related technologies.
Web3D professional member Mitch Williams will chair a BoF on Mobile 3D Graphics on Tuesday from 11AM to 12:30PM, in room 29A. This BOF will bring together anyone interested or currently developing 3D Graphics for wireless devices such as cell phones. Some time will be spent demonstrating the ease for artists to create Mobile 3D in the M3G format, and a brief overview of the Java code for Mobile 3D so programmers can see how simple it is. Attendees are encouraged to demonstrate any applications and to announce any events, publications or recent developments. Mitch is also releasing Dynamic-X3D at SIGGRAPH 2007. Dynamic-X3D is a pure-Java X3D browser, meaning Dynamic-X3D does not need to be installed. Users simply view X3D content similar to any other web page content. Dynamic-X3D is based on Dynamic-3D, which reads VRML files. Dynamic-X3D implements most of X3Ds Interchange format and nearly all nodes exported by 3D Studio Max. Web3D is pleased to announce that Mitch will be teaching X3D this year at UCLA, possibly UC Berkeley and several other local L.A. schools to teach X3D. Dynamic-X3D is available on the Web 3D Consortium SDK and from 3D-Online at http://www.3D-Online.com. Best of all, Dynamic-X3D is free to use for an unlimited time and unlimited applications.
And for you carto-BoF fans, there will be a Carto BoF on Tuesday as well from 12:30-2:30 PM in room 29B. Don Brutzman will be speaking about X3D Earth at this BoF.
Wednesday at 10AM is our tech talk in the Khronos BOF room, Conference Room 2 (upstairs). Right before this, in Conference Room 2 at 9:30 AM, Morgan Kaufman will be hosting a coffee social to show off the new X3D book from Don Brutzman and Leonard Daly. See here for more info on the book: http://www.x3dgraphics.com/. Yes, the authors will be on hand to sign copies!
And on Thursday from 1PM - 2PM, Web3D will hold a Town Hall like meeting in room 29B.
After SIGGRAPH has officially ended, we will host an X3D Earth WG meeting at UCSD: Calit2, Atkinson Hall. ThatҒs quite a full week! If you are interested in attending, please email webmaster (at) web3d.org and let us know your intent to participate.
Hope to see you in San Diego next week!
-Rita-http://www.web3d.org/images/uploads/news/S200708_rgb_left.jpg
Comments
I trust some detailed reports will be forthcoming.
There are tremors in the 3D market. X3D and Collada appear to be making progress in serious 3D web applications. These are not the immediately press-worthy applications but the ones that spawn profitable businesses in stable niches.
Meanwhile there are signs that the SecondLife phenomenon achieved a local peak and is now entering a trough. The problems of the banking scandals, regulation of behavior, even recognition by Gartner of the problems I mentioned earlier about using SL (really any server-farm-for-rent) for hosting virtual business. It isn’t that LL is doing anything wrong other than not making customers aware of the inherent risks earlier world efforts had noticed or not recognizing them. Virtual world business is in the second generation although it is difficult to spot any progress as it scales up in lessons learned. It will probably take a press-worthy catastrophe for that although the internal banking failures may get some attention as lost money usually does.
While it is still worth making efforts for X3D in virtual world technologies, it may be time for the consortium to investigate the other issues and delineate technology-infrastructure from social infrastructure issues. Meanwhile, the progress in the non-virtual world applications of 3D on the Web is excellent given these do not have the scale of challenges to application sustainability.
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