X3D News Archive August 2006
Aug 31, 2006
Ajax3D founder and X3D spec editor, Tony Parisi will participate in the design and development of a new generation of real-time 3D, interactive gaming, and immersive digital cinema standards as an invited expert of the following Media Grid Technology Working Groups:
+ Rendering Technology Group (RTG)
+ Virtual Reality Technology Group (VRTG)
+ Gaming Technology Group (GTG)
Based on new and emerging distributed computational grid technologies, the Media Grid builds upon existing Internet and Web standards to create a unique network optimized for digital media delivery, storage, and processing.
Aug 30, 2006
This whitepaper overviews the Ajax3D initiative and basic examples of how to implement it in a web page.
Royalty-free standards such as X3D have made it possible for anyone to deliver rich 3D content in real time over the Internet. At the same time, Ajax has emerged as a worldwide phenomenon and unleashed a flurry of new application development. By bringing these two technologies together, Ajax3D promises a complete open platform for creating a next-generation 3D web experience.
With Ajax3D, immersive virtual worlds can be deployed within a web browser, integrated with pages and other media. Ajax3D worlds can communicate with standard web servers using XML and Ajax technologies, enabling professional, scalable, industrial strength applications with high production value and visual impact.
Aug 24, 2006
Demotride is a standalone VRML/X3D viewer (.wrl and .x3dv). The latest release adds navigation “gaze” types that allow virtual walkthroughs with full freedom to look around the scene, including upward/downward head movement. It also supports programmable keyboard interaction through the X3D KeySensor node, and extends the viewer capabilities with several other features and improvements. These new features are currently used for research on the use of 3D technologies for cultural heritage.
Aug 16, 2006
Flux Studio (beta) is a powerful modeling and animation application for creating real-time X3D content and virtual environments under Windows using OpenGL for hardware-accelerated rendering. It supports advanced X3D constructs, such as Protos and Scripts, as well as metadata, movie textures and content encryption. All X3D nodes are supported. It is good for beginners and professionals. Flux Studio download includes Flux Player and KML2X3D translator.
Aug 15, 2006
This PhD dissertation by Nicholas Polys proposes Information-Rich Virtual Environments (IRVEs) as a solution to challenges of integrated information spaces that contain large volumes of data that are heterogeneous in nature - including spatial, abstract, and temporal information. The research uses XML, X3D and server-side services and presents methodologies and guidelines for designing IRVEs. There are also some supporting documents including videos of the annotation layout techniques.
Aug 12, 2006
OpenVRML is a C++ runtime library for VRML97 and X3D worlds. It is capable of reading and displaying VRML/X3D; it can be used for creating loaders, file converters, and VRML/X3D browsers. The new v0.16.0 adds a user-extensible I/O subsystem based on the standard C++ I/O streams, asynchronously loading of Inline worlds, support for nonnative EXTERNPROTOs, and support for constructing scene graphs from Classic VRML-encoded X3D, including the Core, Interchange, Interactive, MPEG4, Immersive, and Full profiles.
Aug 09, 2006
The Metaverse Roadmap event this Thursday, August 10th, from 6-9 PM at Eyebeam OpenLab in New York City consists of presentations and conversations about the metaverse space (video games, virtual worlds, CAD, maps, and web apps) coming out of and inspired by the Metaverse Roadmap Project. Tony Parisi of MediaMachines and Ajax3D will be presenting.
Aug 08, 2006
At the Carto BOF at SIGGRAPH 06, the Web3D Consortium announced it was establishing an X3D Earth Working Group. This group will build a distributed backdrop X3D model of planet Earth using publicly available terrain datasets, publicly available imagery and cartography, the X3D Geospatial Component and related open standards. An invitation-only workshop will be held at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) this fall to determine X3D Earth usage requirements, current capabilities, and necessary next steps for the working group.
Also at the Carto BOF:
Chris Thorne presented his recent work on approaches to error minimization for hi-fidelity scalable geospatial simulation and visualization. Significant improvements in rendering accuracy appear to be possible when floating-point roundoff errors are avoided by moving georeferenced scenes into viewpoint space (rather than object space). Upcoming work will adapt and test these approaches using Xj3D.
Alan Hudson demonstrated enhanced geospatial support in the open-source Java-based Xj3D with new X3D models for Pearl Harbor Hawaii harbor defenses and terrestrial parking orbits for satellites. These demos showed effective geospatial referencing with large models, lots of textures, effective user interaction and even networked agent-based simulation entities.
Aug 02, 2006
The X3D Revision 1 (ISO/IEC CD 19775-1r1:200x) has been submitted to the ISO for approval. This X3D Revision includes enhancements for delivering game-like experiences with physics and particle systems, picking sensors, HUDs (heads-up displays) and user interface overlays, spline-based animation, realistic motion, as well as features specifically for simulation and CAD applications like cross-sectioning and orthogonal views. This enables 3D simulations and web applications to implement features traditionally found only in high-level gaming systems. Read full press release.
Aug 01, 2006
Media Machines announced Ajax3D, a Javascript-based software library and development paradigm for deploying online virtual worlds and 3D web applications based on Ajax and X3D. The company also issued an open call for participation in an industry forum at www.ajax3D.org, dedicated to the research and development of online virtual worlds using 3D open standards and Ajax best practices.
Ajax3D combines the visual richness and interactivity of X3D, the ISO standard for networked 3D graphics, with the ease of use and ubiquity of Ajax, a set of Javascript and XML programming methods for developing web applications. Ajax3D employs the X3D Scene Access Interface (SAI) for controlling 3D worlds within a web browser via Javascript. Ajax3D content can be viewed with any web browser with an X3D-compliant plug-in.
Ajax3D founder to participate in the development of a new generation of interactive and immersive 3D 
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