Summary Report on X3D Evolution-Revolution from Web3D2014 Workshops

On Friday prior to the Web3D 2014 Conference, approximately 60 people met in an all-day workshop to discuss evolution and revolution for the X3D Graphics International Standard. Workshop moderators were

  • Don Brutzman (Naval Postgraduate School)
  • Dick Puk (Intelligraphics)
  • Leonard Daly (Daly Realism)

Discussionprimarily  focused on the Web3D 2014 Workshops on X3D Evolution/Revolution which lists all the presented content.

Major points of discussion included:

  1. File-size reduction and speedups
    1. Geometric compression, particularly the techniques offered and demonstrated by Fraunhofer
    2. Information-theoretic compression
      1. Gzip compression (.x3d.gz)
      2. Fast Infoset (current used in X3D's Compressed Binary encoding, .x3db)
      3. Efficient XML Interchange (EXI), likely to become .x3de
  2. X3D V3.4 Evolution Features including a JSON Encoding
  3. X3D V4 Revolution Features
  4. CAD/BIM/AEC Improvements

As a result of this workshop, the X3D Working Group is proceeding with a JSON encoding. The work is documented in the Community Pages - X3D JSON Encoding. The working group promised a preliminary version of the format by the end of 2014.

The feature list for X3D V3.4 is quite interesting and still growing.  Although much work will be necessary, all features are currently considered both technically achievable and also fully compatible with the existing X3D architectural design. Final approved capabilities will be determined by community participation for the design, development, specification and testing of these features.

X3DOM is the prototype for X3D V4. All of the work done by the Working Group and Fraunhofer to date indicate that X3D V4 will run run inside of an HTML5 page, and will also be fully backwards compatible with X3D V3 and X3D V2 (VRML).  It remains possible that some new features may differ from X3D design but will be accompanied by conversion approaches.

Each of these design topics remains under active consideration in the weekly X3D Working Group teleconference and on the x3d-public@web3d.org mailing list.