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(source: www.commarts.com)
"Web 3-D
Taking Sites to the X-axis
by Joe Shepter
If it’s possible to feel sorry for a technology, we should all feel very sorry for Web 3-D. Its sad history began in the mid 1990s with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) standard, which was too early and too heavy. Then almost everyone took a blind swing at the piñata. Adobe tried with Atmosphere, Macromedia with Shockwave 3D, Microsoft with Chromeffects and Sun Microsystems with Project Wonderland, not to mention hundreds of smaller companies. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) also produced not one but two major 3-D standards, which browser makers have completely ignored.
“Why isn’t 3-D fully integrated into the Web browser today?” asks Tony Parisi, the co-creator of VRML and a 3-D Web consultant. “That’s the long and tortured part of the story. It seems like a good idea and that it should be attractive to brands and businesses, but it hasn’t happened—and not for lack of trying on the part of a lot of people.”
The good news is, great Web 3-D is probably coming, and good Web 3-D already exists. For several years, digital agencies have been making 3-D in Flash, mainly using third party code libraries like Papervision and Away3D. But for all its virtues, Flash (and competitor Silverlight for that matter) has a glaring weakness when it comes to 3-D: software rendering. It uses your CPU to generate graphics—which isn’t something it is meant to do or does particularly well. If you want to incinerate swamp rats with a virtual flamethrower (or pick up a realistic boy or girl in a virtual meat market), you need to assign those tasks to your graphics card. This is known as hardware acceleration. Web 3-D advocates burn incense on its altar...."
read more: http://www.commarts.com/columns/web-d.html
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