Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication

As so many of you were witness to last summer, Web3D put on an engaging and very well attended Tech Talk at Siggraph. Since then, many of us have gone back to our homes, our offices, our caves, etc., and as happens in all of our busy lives, we really don’t keep each other all that well informed. I sure would like to communicate with each of you more and I’d like those of you who are only in the public forum to keep me apprised of what you are doing with X3D, and even VRML. Yes, it’s no longer being standardized, but I know there is much legacy work still in VRML.  So, where was I: communication: I’d like to see that change and improve. You to me, me to you. Just recently, several misunderstandings surfaced in the Web3D public forum about the course of VRML, the current path of X3D and how they intertwine, or not. As can quickly happen with passionate on-line forums such as ours, sometimes emotions run high and people pull out of what are potentially valid and enlightening discussions.

Today I spoke to Brian Hay of Bitmanagement, and this is what he said:

“Only 2 days ago, in an off-list discussion, someone said to me “the few startlingly clear VRML lines look a mess in X3D”. They weren’t even aware of the Classic VRML encoding of X3D, which is certainly much better for human readability. I told them the XML encoding was best for web interoperability and parsing by other software, something we will need to do deal with to take advantage of other web services.

I myself was initially skeptical and confrontational about X3D on the mailing lists when it was being developed but I’m a convert now. There’s really nothing but improvements and mostly backwards compatibility in X3D. Nothing to be scared of. A vast improvement on VRML.

Better communication of the features and benefits of X3D with cool examples may help the situation.”

Brian has a valid point here. This was my take exactly when I learned about X3D after looking at VRML on and off over the years. XML is sort of a given, love it or hate it and for now; it’s what we use to communicate semantics over the web. It does not need to be very human readable. If you don’t believe me, ask Len Bullard. He is my resident expert on all things XML and SGML. I’ve never told Len, but years ago, while working for two large corporate entities, I had the immense pleasure to work with Charles Goldfarb, inventor of SGML. A brilliant man on many levels, Charles once told me: “any good that comes out of SGML makes me a very happy man.” I am going to rip him off and say:  Any good at all that comes out of VRML will help X3D. Let me elaborate a tiny bit: years of effort and experience should not go to waste because of internal squabbles or because extremely-well-funded-marketing-hype-machines say so and Tony Parisi is correct in saying that the hype of Linden and the hype of IBM should bring 3D and hence us more attention, not less. It’s what we do when the attention sways our direction (as it does periodically) is what will count in getting X3D related products recognized!  So stride forward and know that member or not, I am here to hear and hopefully can answer your questions. Often I do have answers, but sometimes the public list is not where I am looking.

Posted by Rita Turkowski on 2007-02-18 | Permalink | Comments