Projects Wish List

Do you want to get involved?  Here's how.  There are many interesting projects with potentially broad impact that are looking for energetic developers.  Many activities are support the rapid evolution and development of the X3Dv4 specification.

Motivated individuals with software development skills and Web authoring experience are welcome to start, or help develop, any of these candidate projects.  Diverse talents are needed... maybe you too?  There are excellent opportunities here!

All contributors are welcome to use the x3d-public mailing list (subscribe) for planning and design discussions.

Available Projects

1. Open-source implementation efforts for X3D v4, Javascript implementations of X3D for native integration with HTML:
   • X_ITE (formerly Cobweb) is an excellent codebase with many features available and excellent coverage.
   • X3DOM has node and component support that lacks Prototypes, NURBS, Scripts, Event Utilities, ViewpointGroup.
   • Implement proposed Annotation Component for HTML-compatible display for CAD, Medical and other applications.
   • Implement proposed Projective Texture Modeling (PTM) component.
2. 3D printer and scanner support for X3D:
   • Are equipment surveys for X3D-compatible printers and scanners available, or should we together build them?
   • 3D printing export converters: Stereo Lithography (STL), Additive Manufacturing File Format (AMF) and 3MF model formats.
   • Enabling direct import of content into NIH 3D Print Exchange and other model exchanges for VR and AR applications.
   • Web3D Design Printing and Scanning Working Group is actively these topics.
3. Support for publishing X3D models in Wikipedia using X_ITE or X3DOM.
   • Initial exemplar scene efforts in progress: Shay D Pixel and Titania X3D floating animation
   • Style guidelines, best practices, exemplars, review by Wikimedia Foundation.
4. Example X3D scenes for the open-source X3D Examples archives showing:
   • MultiTexture nodes, Texturing3D and Cube map environmental texturing components.
   • Particle systems, Picking Sensor, Layering and Layout components.
   • Shader examples for all shader programming languages of interest.
   • Hello World Scenes for multi-lingual Internationalization (I18N): add your country!
5. X3D Conversions capabilities:
   • assimp Open Asset Import Library (open-source C++) discussion email thread.
   • Blender import/export (open-source C++) announcement, email thread and Blender task.
   • Scene graph reduction tools such as Chisel.
6. X3D Server virtual machine autoconfiguration:
   • Apache http/https server configured with X3D MIME types,
   • GeoServer configured with STOQS by MBARI and 3D Blacksburg by Virginia Tech,
   • OpenBIM Building Information Management Server with X3D export, and
   • Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) WebSocket/WebRTC network bridge by NPS
7. Image support:
   • Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as an X3D ImageTexture, and X3D-SVG-HTML animation examples.
   • DICOM image loader - discussion email thread.
   • DICOM/3D File overlay in a web-browser.
   • DICOM to STL or X3D files for VR rather than physical models (for transparencies etc.).
   • Available Datasets: DICOM, STL or X3D files of hearts.
8. Unity Game Manager support for X3D exporter and X3D scene loader:
   • Latest effort:  UnityX3D project on GitHub (with Web3D 2015 demo images).
   • Initial effort:   UnityX3D project on SourceForge (with example conversion).
9. X3D Unified Object Model for Scene Access Interface (SAI) integration with major tools and applications:
   • Codebases autogenerated from X3D Object Model such as X3D Java Scene Access Interface (SAI) Library (X3DJSAIL).
   • Additional open-source Scene Access Interface (SAI) codebases for JSON, JavaScript, C#/C++/C, Python.
   • GNU Octave (with Octave-Forge) supports a high-level interpreted language for numerical computations, similar to Matlab.
10. More candidate projects can follow... additional project proposals are welcome.

Recognition Possibilities

Web3D Consortium wants to help incentivize these efforts.  Candidate awards for great work include:

• Consortium announcements on web3d.org website and Twitter giving credit and announcing availability.
• One year's free Professional Membership in Web3D Consortium.
• Free registration for the next VR Hackathon or Web3D Conference.
• Bragging rights in some kind of Web3D Developers Hall of Fame.
• Web3D members who really want certain results might offer special rewards.
• Got questions or ideas?  Please Contact Us.

Further Improvements to Projects Wish List

Web3D Consortium is happy to add new projects here.

• X3D working group moderates community dialog and development.
• All working groups have opportunity to add and guide projects.
• Board of Directors approves awards and is advised regarding of major new efforts.
• Communications Team publicly reports significant opportunities and progress.

Is the list growing too large? We may need to avoid collecting too many - that's a good problem to have!

Additional ideas welcome, thanks for considering the possibilities.