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13
3DinaWebBrowser
Rémi Arnaud
Screampoint Inc.
13.1ABriefHistory
The idea 3D graphics in a web browser is not a new concept. Its prototype im-
plementations can be traced to almost two decades ago, almost as old as the con-
cept of the world wide web (WWW) itself, as it was first introduced in a paper
presented at the first WWW Conference organized by Robert Cailliau in 1994.
The virtual reality markup language (VRML, pronounced vermal, renamed to
virtual reality modeling language in 1995) was presented by Dave Raggett in a
paper submitted to the first WWW conference and discussed at the VRML birds
of a feather (BOF) established by Tim Berners-Lee, where Mark Pesce [1] pre-
sented the Labyrinth demo he developed with Tony Parisi and Peter Kennard [2].
This demonstration is one of the first, if not the first, of 3D graphics for the web.
The first version of VRML was published in November 1994 by Gavin Bell,
Tony Parisi, and Mark Pesce. It very closely resembles the API and file format of
the Open Inventor software, originally developed by Paul Strauss and Rikk Carey
at Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) [3]. The current and functionally complete version
is VRML97 (ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997). SGI dedicated engineering and public re-
lations resources to promote the CosmoPlayer and ran a web site at vrml.sgi.com
on which was hosted a string of regular short performances of a character called
Floops who was a VRML character in a VRML world. VRML has since been
superseded by X3D (ISO/IEC 19775-1) [4], an XML encoding of VRML.
Despite its ISO standardization status, VRML/X3D has not had the same
success as HTML. HTML is definitely the standard for publishing content on the
web, but VRML/X3D has failed to garner the same level of adoption for 3D con-
tent publishing. HTML has evolved from static content to dynamic content (a.k.a.
Web 2.0) and has fueled the economy with billions of dollars in businesses that
200 13.3DinaWebBrowser
are still growing despite the internet bubble bursting circa 2000. Currently, there
are over two dozen web browsers available for virtually all platforms, including
desktop and laptop computers, mobile phones, tablets, and embedded systems.
The browser war started in 1995, and Microsoft (with Internet Explorer) won the
first round against Netscape to dominate the market by early 2000. The browser
wars are not over as Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), Opera (Opera) and
Apple (Safari) are now eroding Microsoft’s dominance.
During the same period of time, 3D has grown significantly as a mass-market
medium and has generated large revenues for the entertainment industry through
games and movies. 3D display systems have materialized in movie theaters and
generate additional revenues. So the question remains: Why has VRML/X3D not
had the same pervasive path as HTML? The web is filled with tons of opinions as
to why this did not work out. (Note: X3D is still being proposed to the W3C
HTML Working Group for integration with HTML 5.) Mark Pesce himself of-
fered his opinion in an interview published in 2004, ten years after introducing
VRML to the WWW conference [2]:
John Carmack pronounced VRML dead on arrival. His words carried
more weight with the people who really mattered—the core 3D develop-
ers—so what should have been the core constituency for VRML, games
developers, never materialized. There was never a push to make VRML
games-ready or even games-capable because there were no market-
driven demands for it. Instead, we saw an endless array of “science ex-
periments.”
This comment is of particular interest in the context of this book since its
target audience is game developers. According to Mark Pesce, game developers
should have been all over VRML and creating content for it. Indeed, content is
what makes a medium successful, and games represent a significant amount of
3D interactive content, although not all games require 3D graphics.
Game developers are important because they are recognized for pushing the
limits of the technology in order to provide the best possible user experience.
Game technology needs to empower artists and designers with tools to express
their creativity and enable nonlinear interactive storytelling that can address a
good-sized audience and build a business case for 3D on the web. Game devel-
opers do not care if a technology is recognized by ISO as a standard. They are
more interested in the availability of tools they can take immediate advantage of,
and they require full control and adaptability of the technology they use, for the
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