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RE: Why 3D Redux?

• To: 'James Landrum' <james.landrum@n...>
• Subject: RE: Why 3D Redux?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:10:46 -0500
• Cc: 'Bill Kearney' <wkearney@i...>, Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>

Downloads for any file type, 3D, 2D or even HTML are as 
good as your pipes are wide and the bitmaps are sparse. 
XML is worse than VRML97 in that respect (verbosity) 
but so far no one is really complaining about that anymore. 
The Gagarin example proves what can be done with basic 
web tech and design.  Children latch on to worlds like 
that and teachers can use them.  One should respect what 
our Russian colleagues do because PG has hung in there and 
made both good worlds and a good viewer in a period when 
the money wasn't that good.  They don't get grants.  They 
work long long hours.

The Flux viewer is good.  The Cortona and Contact viewers are 
good.  Flux and Contact can display X3D.  There isn't much 
X3D/XML out there although the viewers mentioned can display 
VRML97 as well.  Until XML enabled tools are used for 3D 
widely, I don't expect to see much XML 3D.  Because the 
standard is still in draft and the viewers just became 
available this spring, it is a little early.  As I said, 
I wrote an article for XML.COM that has some examples 
of some very good looking worlds.  There is a BMW model 
that competes with a high gloss magazine photo and is still 
3D.  Quality ranges from the simplest worlds to some very 
professional ones.  The telling is in the technique.

Each of the vendors and the open source creators of viewers 
maintain sites for filing bug reports.  Otherwise, a lot of 
VRML and X3D come down to the talent of the artist/programmer. 
I've seen some VRML that will compete with anything from 
CAD.  First rank professional tools can export VRML.  So 
whatever your issues are, you should probably do some 
serious research on finding good examples because they 
do exist.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: James Landrum [mailto:james.landrum@n...]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:31 PM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
Cc: 'Bill Kearney'; Rick Jelliffe; XML Developers List
Subject: Re:  Why 3D Redux?


Thanks Len,
Interestingly, the Gagarin demo points to relevant issues about 3D 
attractiveness and Internet usage. Connectivity, Download time, etc., at 
parallelgraphics is pretty poor, regardless of fact I already have 
Cortona on my system, and despite the relatively small file size (3.4. 
MB) of the demo, and the Internet2 (i2) pipe through which I access the 
Web.  We are working on compression and decimation utilities and 
applications to redress bandwidth issues, and thus improve realtime 
access to 3D content, but that isn't done yet. Parallelgraphics also 
displays VRML files not X3D, and although it has been mentioned, I 
haven't seen a really good X3D viewer yet, but then again, I have never 
seen a really good VRML viewer either (other than the NEW Java 3D Viewer 
in DANA-WH, an even newer version of which will be available in the 
fall).  

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