X3D Earth

The X3D Earth Working Group supports the X3D Graphics Geospatial Component.

• Nearby: X3D Earth Home Page
• Web3D Consortium member? Go to X3D-Earth members-only wiki

Executive Summary

The X3D Earth Working Group will use the Web architecture, XML languages, and open protocols to build a standards-based X3D Earth specification usable by governments, industry, scientists, academia, and the general public. X3D-Earth efforts encompass client-side, server-side, authoring, and conversion technologies. Much work has been accomplished already.

• Vision. Make it easier to create and use 3D spatial data.
• Mission. Promote spatial data use within X3D via open architectures.

Description

The X3D Earth Working Group works to ensure that the X3D specification is capable of handling all manners of geospatial data representations. We interact with other standards development organizations (including the Open Geospatial Consortium and the World Wide Web Consortium) and vendors to employ open protocols and content standards to provide an interoperable framework for visualizing and interacting with geospatial data. These standards-based specifications will be used to create systems and content that is usable, and re-usable, over the long term.

The X3D-Earth effort encompasses client-side, server-side, authoring, and conversion technologies. It's goals include:

• Providing ability to use publicly and privately available terrain and imagery datasets
• Capitalizing on X3D capabilities (e.g. scripting and HTML 5 browser support) for displaying geospatial data
• Promoting its use as an alternative to proprietary solutions

Mailing List

• X3D Earth Mailing List subscriptions
• X3D Earth Mailing List Archives
  • April 2009 - present
  • September 2006 - March 2009

Our working group continues meeting by teleconference every two weeks.

Resources

Software: Players

• BS Contact Geo browser plugin and standalone application for X3D geospatial rendering by BitManagement
• Instant Reality standalone application for X3D geospatial rendering by Fraunhofer
• Xj3D open-source Java application for X3D geospatial rendering
• FreeWrl/FreeX3D open-source C++ application for X3D geospatial rendering

Software: Authoring Tools

• X3D-Edit authoring tool includes full support for authoring X3D geospatial nodes
• MBARI MB-System

Potential future work:

• The 3D City Database Importer/Exporter uses CityGML for KML/COLLADA portrayal preprocessing. It is a well-documented open-source Java codebase. There is an interesting development opportunity to follow the design pattern of adding another exporter for X3D output that is similar to the existing KML/Collada exporter. Inquiries are welcome.

Documents

• X3D-Earth Tutorial presentation by Mike McCann and Alan Hudson at Web 3D Symposium 10 August 2008 in Los Angeles
• Geospatial Component X3D Earth tutorial slideset by Don Brutzman
• Tourtelotte, Dale, X3D-Earth: Full-Globe Coverage Utilizing Multiple Datasets, Masters Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California, September 2010. Advisor Don Brutzman, second readers Byounghyun Yoo and Don McGregor.
• Examine mode behavior for exploring geospatial worlds
• Terrain height/slope visualization via autogenerated texture coordinates

Specifications

• Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics Geospatial component version 3.2
• Proposed changes for X3D Geospatial component version 3.3

Examples

• X3D Basic Examples Archive, GeoSpatial Examples
• TODO Byounghyun Yoo's scripts
• TODO Fraunhofer?
• TODO Bit Management?
• TODO NPS internal supercomputer cluster nightly build