[X3D-Public] Acrobat 3D

[Lars Grobe]

Hi!

> Does anyone see Acrobat 3D http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat3d/ as a
> rival to X3D?

I like PDF for many applications, as I like HTML. Both x3d and u3d can be embedded in both. While embedding u3d has the advantage that you just download Adobe's Reader and do not need any plug-in, it is a poor format compared to x3d. And while html with embedded x3d can at least in theory be opened using lots of different html-browser, u3d in pdf can only be opened using one pdf-browser, the one by Adobe. Which is actually not installed on my system, as it is so fat and slow compared to other viewers.

But basically, one has to compare either the scene-formats, thus u3d vs x3d, or the whole integrated solution, e.g. u3d in pdf vs x3d in pdf (with plugin) or x3d in html. For the scene-format, u3d has little capabilities afaik. For the integrated solution, u3d in pdf has the sole advantage that it is available by Adobe's Reader on lots of platforms, while x3d in pdf requires plugins. If you do not need the pdf-formatting (which gives better control for press-ready publication), you can go with x3d in html to get both - multiplatform and more powerful including scene logics. And the development moves towards browsers that could display x3d without plug-ins using the x3dom technique.

Still, as I recognize the charm of the nicely-formatted pdf with 3d-scenes without plugin - maybe someone out there is already working on extending one of the free pdf cores to become able to display x3d without plugin, similar to what x3dom is for html? Would certainly be nice.

Cheers, Lars.