Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication

Oct 25, 2004

The development of Web based tools and Grid middleware and infrastructures allows the exploration of new approaches in designing scientific applications and increase the level of interaction between the user and the application or the learning environment. The VRSAL 2005 workshop (Suntec City, Singapore May 9, 2005 – May 12, 2005) will represent a great opportunity for the scientists to exchange ideas and progresses made in the field. Developers are invited to submit a papers for oral presentation.

The planned conference themes are the following:

• Virtual Reality based scientific visualization
• Learning and assessment based on Virtual Reality approaches
• Molecular Virtual Reality techniques
• Computational Science Education
• Distributed learning environments
• Virtual classes and practice
• Virtual Reality on Grid environments
• Virtual Laboratories
• Virtual Reality applied to the Cultural Heritage
• Virtual Reality languages (X3D, VRML, Java3D, OpenGL)

Oct 18, 2004

Octaga is a free 3D player for both VRML and X3D. It supports the whole profile of X3D which gives users a multitude of visual effects such as multi-texturing and can run as a stand alone application or be a plug-in to you Internet browser. Octaga Professional is a more advanced version supporting X3D / MPEG-4 / VRML.  The new V1.6 adds improved support for shaders, higher quality textures, an improved UI, and enhanced X3D compliance for the following nodes (box, sphere, cylinder, cone, text, touchsensor, sylindersensor, spheresensor, planesensor)

Oct 10, 2004

The draft of Amendment 1 to the X3D abstract specification is now available for review and comment by Web3D consortium members. X3D Amendment 1 (AMD-1) defines several enhancements and modifications to the X3D abstract specification, ISO/IEC 19775, as follows:

New components/profiles:

• CAD Geometry component
• CAD Interchange profile
• Programmable shaders component
• 3D texturing component
• Cubic environment texturing component

Modifications to the existing specification:

• New Matrix field types
• Text improvements
• Lighting changes - ability to control scoping for all light types
• NavigationInfo, LOD improvements
• Fog enhancements - local (vertex-based) fog
• Various errata corrected

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Early access and review of specifications is a benefit available to Consortium members. To review and comment on the Amendment, log-in to the members only area of the website.

If you are not a current Consortium member, you can quickly sign up or renew your membership.

Oct 06, 2004

V6.2 of BS Contact announced at Siggraph is available for public download and testing. This version adds enhanced X3D support and supports an early version of X3D Shaders using DirectX 9 for realistic rendering of shadows and materials such as metal, water, wood, fur, etc.

Oct 04, 2004

SpaceShipOne climbed into space for the second time in a week to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which was set up to give impetus to commercial space flight. This model lets you view the spaceship design.

Oct 01, 2004

I3D is the leading-edge conference (April 3 - 6, 2005 Washington DC) for techniques that combine 3D computer graphics with human interaction. The conference continues to focus on the hottest research in 3D game technology, interactive visualization and visual depiction, interactive modeling,user-assisted techniques, and applications.
Paper abstracts:  October 29, 2004
Paper submissions: November 5, 2004
Tutorial proposals: December 15, 2004
Panel proposals: February 4, 2005
Poster submissions:  February 4, 2005

Oct 01, 2004

3d-test has published an interview with Julian Gomez about the X3D-based CAD Distillation Format. The key idea behind CDF is to distill the essential elements of complex, high density CAD data to a form usable by other groups within an organization. The interview discusses the format and what it supports.