Re: [www-vrml] Why you _can_ convert VRML97 to X3D

[Sandy Ressler <sressler@nist.gov>]

On Sep 10, 2004, at 8:22 AM, Bryancreer@aol.com wrote:

> Don Bruzman wrote ;
>  
> >many folks will want to
> >upgrade it, particularly for conversion to .x3d encoding so
> >that XML benefits can be realized.
>
> As part of a Masters dissertation, I am studying the development of Web 3D.  X3D seemed to be heralded at first as a fundamental change from VRML.  For instance, in his forward to Core Web3D  (Walsh & Bourges-Sevenier), Mark Pesce said "X3d allows Web designers to drop 3D into their pages without concern for the plug-in architecture or client platform."  From what I have seen, X3D just seems to be an alternative encoding format just as dependant on plug-ins as VRML.  Am I missing something?  Are there any moves to realize the XML benefits?
You're quite correct X3D is as dependant as VRML on plug-in's. (of course standalone VRML and X3D viewers exist) It's also true that X3D is "just" an alternative encoding format, however that's too simplistic of a statement. X3D by utilizing XML is able to leverage the large infrastructure and technologies being developed to make the Web much more useful. The simple example is the use of X3Dedit to as an editor for X3D, it's based on an IBM XML editor. If you want to create a transformation language to transform one type of X3D files into another (say with a different look) you could define an XSLT transformation and voila...a new file can be produced. In addition by defining the very structure of X3D via XML shema's we can begin to add semantic information to the 3D models and start to use the geometries in the models more meaningfully. Of course there is no magic in any of these methods...they are all dependent on people putting in the effort to define these things and populate modes with valid semantics.  I think the whole argument over VRML97 versus X3D is silly, the meaningful questions are...what problems are you going to solve with this 3D technology?
Sandy

>  
> Bryan Creer (University of Southampton, UK)
>  
NAME:   Sandy Ressler                                  TELE: (301) 975-3549
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