Jun 09, 2006
ExtremeTech takes a look at three 3D browsers that are used for something other than gaming: 3B, Browse3D, and SphereXPlorer. The article starts out by noting that “3D web isn’t dead, an XML format called X3D--a free run-time architecture that can “represent and communicate 3D scenes and objects using XML"-- is starting to take hold. You can find more info about it from The Web3D Consortium which is very active in its efforts to add one more dimension to the web as we know it. There’s even a mobile browser for X3D, so that you could, for example, navigate around a city you’re visiting on your handheld PC.”
It concludes by saying:
“The future of 3D web browsing holds great promise, but none of the 3D browsers we looked at were particularly compelling. Sure they’re fun to take out for a spin, but they don’t really offer serious enough advantages over standard 2D web browsers to make you convert. They were also all lacking in either stability or design. Final Thoughts: Wait for X3D and Vista”.
A future article on ExtremeTech will look at X3D viewers.
