Press Releases
Octaga to develop plug-in for Acrobat that will extend interactive 3D visualization and augmented r
Ola Ødegard
Octaga AS
Tel: +47 905 19 176
Email: ola.odegard (at) octaga.com
San Francisco, CA, - May 25, 2006 - Octaga in conjunction with Yumetech, will develop an X3D plug-in for Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader so that any user will be able to read and interact with 3D visualizations embedded in a PDF document. This will enable engineering, technical publishing and creative professionals to more quickly and cost-effectively collaborate on projects that require 3D, audio, and video.
X3D is the ISO ratified 3D scene interchange format and runtime system for 3D visualization, virtual reality, and augmented reality (3D with text overlays, audio, and video). X3D supports several file format encodings and programming languages, providing unrivaled interoperability of 3D data across diverse computing environments and great flexibility in manipulating, communicating and displaying scenes interactively.
Because X3D is scalable and offers an XML representation of 3D information, it is easily adopted on the Web, on mobile devices, and across computer networks. Acrobat PDF adds another communication option that will be particularly useful for sharing 3D and media content between design engineers, technical publisher, marketers, suppliers, and customers.
“Being able to include X3D models in PDF documents will have a huge impact on how we see and use electronic documents. Imagine being able to read instructions on how to fix a motor, and being able to not only watch a video on how it is done, but also being able to use a 3D model to go through each step in detail. The possibilities are endless.” notes Yumetech President Alan Hudson.
Availability and Details:
The X3D plug-in (based on the Octaga Player) will be available as a free download from http://www.web3d.org and from http://www.octaga.com. It will support key X3D profiles and components including the Core, Immersive, Interactive, Interchange and MPEG-4 Interactive profiles. Octaga will deliver a Microsoft Windows version in Summer 2006, with Linux and Mac OS X versions to follow shortly afterwards. Octaga is working with Seattle-based Yumetech to develop the plug-in. Octaga also plans to offer commercial content creation and authoring tools for PDF documents.
The X3D plug-in will be demonstrated at this year’s ACM SIGGRAPH Conference in Boston, MA., 30 July to 3 August. (http://www.siggraph.org/s2006).
About Octaga AS:
Octaga AS is based in Oslo, Norway and was established 2001 as a spin-off company from Telenor. Octaga is today a major manufacturer of 3D viewing software products for industries such as oil and gas, construction, engineering and maritime. Octaga Player/Professional viewers for interactive 3D (X3D, VRML and MPEG-4) are in use by ½ million users world-wide. Octaga focuses on providing visualization solutions for industrial customers including: FMC Technologies; Statoil; Hydro; Vetco; IKEA and Rambøll Group. More information at: http://www.octaga.com
About Yumetech, Inc.
Yumetech, Inc. was formed to develop innovative and compelling real-time, networked 3D computer graphics applications. Its founders, recognized experts in their fields with eight books and numerous articles to their credit, bring a variety of knowledge and experience to the company. The company manages over one million lines of open source code and has successfully completed several projects based on this code for companies and organizations such as Sun Microsystems, Vcom3D, North Dakota State University, NASA, and the U.S. Military. Yumetech is the leading contributor to the Xj3D Toolkit: an open source implementation of the VRML 97 and X3D specifications. This codebase is the sample implementation for the X3D specification for standardization purposes. Two of the company’s members were major contributors to the X3D specification and current serve on the X3D Specification Team. More information at: http://www.yumetech.com
About the Web3D Consortium:
The Web3D Consortium is a member-funded industry consortium committed to the creation and deployment of open, royalty-free standards that enable the communication of real-time 3D across applications, networks, and XML web services. The Consortium works closely with the ISO, MPEG and W3C standardization bodies to maximize market opportunities for its membership. All Consortium members are empowered to participate and vote in Consortium working groups and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge 3D platforms and applications through access to specification drafts and conformance tests before public deployment. More information on the Consortium and Consortium membership is available at http://www.web3d.org