[x3d-public] Availability of X3D viewers -- despite the resource list?

[Anthony Judge]

I assume that this comment is somewhat pointless, but for the record...

Having struggled successfully over a number of days to produce an
animation using X3D Edit, reviewing it locally at each .stage with
H3DViewer, and with occasional successful test exports to VRML 97, I
reached the point of needing to make the result available in a web
document. (now via the document
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/infohea5.php) in WRL format at
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/images/infoheal_files/penta4.wrl

My conclusion, unfortunately is that the situation for (casual)
developers and (casual) users of 3D animations seems to remain as
chaotic as it has been over the past decade or more (during which
period I have generated WRL files). Whilst particular combinations of
browsers, (proprietary) viewers and formats undoubtedly work, the
risks of failure in some combination are great.

Thus the files saved in X3D format (or the many export variants on
offer from X3D Edit) do not appear to be directly viewable via the
web, notably  with H3DViewer. FreeWRL does not even seem to enable
viewing of non-local files. Clearly further embedding of the animation
document is required to achieve this -- but for which browsers?.

The safest/quickest option has been to rely on the legacy browser
facility offered by Cortona. This works well (in Windows) with the
VRML export from X3D Edit. However, on the assumption that that too
might fail for certain configurations,  a crude gif animation was made
(generated as a succession of screen shots from the Cortona
rendering). This is pathetic, given the sophistication of X3D Edit
which I much appreciate.

I am sure there is a fancy way around this constraint, but there is
only so much time one can invest against deadlines in working out the
narrow window of options that might work more generally

Again it is a pity that with so many export options, there is no sense
of which ones have some probability of being viable -- if the aim is
to encourage casual developers to work with X3D Edit without relying
on a legacy format or requiring web users to use some proprietary
format -- or to purchase a particular viewer

Tony

-- 
Anthony Judge
<anthony.judge at gmail.com>
www.laetusinpraesens.org