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Re: [www-vrml] Re: [x3d-public] Web3D Zeitgeist - most popular format, one year on.

Hey, John. I'll do my best to answer your questions, although keep in mind that I have no "inside" information on what's really going on at Adobe. I only know this from the technology end.

On Sep 28, 2005, at 6:44 PM, John Richardson wrote:

Hello,

If U3D is just a variant of Shockwave3D, then consider the following:

U3D and Shockwave3D share a common heritage, in that they both use the same awful progressive compression scheme Intel's been shopping around for years. (Ironically, the format that actually lives inside PDF is rather different from the published ECMA standard for U3D.)

However, the similarity ends there. Shockwave3D (arguably a dead initiative) integrated a pretty decent 3D rendering engine into the Shockwave plugin. You had to program it using Lingo, which is a very Java-like programming language that almost nobody knows. The target audience was shockwave game developers, second was educational content developers, and third was e-commerce. They got relatively no traction in any of those areas, for different reasons (game & educational content developers largely have no idea how to program in Lingo.. they just re-use component libraries; the need for a plugin other than Flash or Java was a non-starter in the e-commerce world).

U3D as a file format in PDF is quite different. The rendering engine is about the same quality, although it's a bit behind in support for hardware accelerators. It was written by RightHemisphere, not Intel or Macromedia. It can be programmed with the more-widely-accepted Javascript language. Most importantly, PDF is an open format that anyone can write (unlike Shockwave). The target audience is CAD, where PDF has a foothold (but is by no means a standard). We're targeting sales & marketing, where PDF is already the defacto standard. The fact that you need Reader 7 has not been an issue at all for us (somewhat to my surprise).


1) Adobe owns Macromedia. 

Not yet.  But probably soon.

2) Adobe owns PDF.


Yes, although you can argue that ECMA owns PDF now more than Adobe does.

So, why would they not put their new acquisition's technology into one of
their market leading flagship products.


Because Shockwave3D is considered an abysmal failure inside Macromedia.

Because putting U3D into PDF is nothing at all like putting Shockwave3D into PDF. They really have very little in common at this point.

Because Macromedia never owned the rights to use the file format for Shockwave3D in other products. Intel retained those rights.

Because Adobe decided to put U3D into PDF nearly a year before the Macromedia acquisition was on the table.

Adobe probably wanted to do this years ago, presumably with Atmosphere (VET
is the technology). VET competed with Shockwave3D. I assume that Adobe then
decided that Shockwave3D was better or they could control the licensing of
Shockwave3D or both.


Atmosphere was a flop and Adobe killed it because it didn't make them any money.

PDF does not use Shockwave3D. They didn't license it. Other than a common heritage for parts of the file format coming from Intel, the new 3D capabilities in PDF and the old 3D capabilities in Shockwave have absolutely nothing in common. Different renderer. Different runtime. Different scene graph handler. Different end-user programming language. Different authoring environment(s).

Now, what does this have to do with Web3D?

Devil's advocate answer: Web3D is delivering 3-D content on the web. If you
send a 3-D PDF via the web it is Web3D.


I agree.

Anti-Devils advocate retort: Well fine, but I was hoping that I could do a
distributed CFD simulation in my PDF document (or among them). Please let me
know when that happens. Oh, I'd also like to have a multiuser chat between
PDF's. Please have Adobe send me an email when that happens.

Have you looked at the Acrobat Javascript API? This is all probably possible today. (Not that I can think of a reason WHY you would want to do this, since there are much more rational deployment platforms available for such things.)

Oh, did I
mention that it had to work on the MAC. Yes, the MAC, make it work on the
MAC...Hah, Hah, Hah.......

As has already been pointed out, it does work on Mac OS X. It doesn't work on OS 9, but what does anymore?


NOTE: I hope 3-D PDF's take off and gain in popularity. PDF's are great. 3-D
in PDF's is really cool. Even if it is PC only, still cool and groovy.

Win 2K+, Mac OSX+ only. Not for Linux yet, but I suspect Adobe is fixing that, since Reader is available on a VERY wide range of O/Ss.

 I
also hope that Adobe can integrate Director, Shockwave3D and the web in
PDF's or some other solution so they can perform Director web based
simulations. Director is very powerful and cross platform (works on the
MAC).

PDF has a plugin API that lets it host pretty much any rich media you want. For example, dropping a RealPlayer movie into a PDF takes about 2 clicks. I've never tried it with Flash or Shockwave, but I suspect that would work, too. Again, the question is WHY would you want to do that in a PDF?


Oh, and could Adobe take on KML with U3D. What a glorious battle that would
be. Please, could someone prod Adobe into that......just for my amusement.


I have to admit that I needed to go to google to find out what KML is. Is this a new front in the 3D format battles?

Lastly, thanks to Viveka for exploding this discusion onto the web in a
fantastic groovy totally hip thread....


Agreed.

John F. Richardson



-Joshua

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