[x3d-public] Presentation from SVVR2017 (Leonard Daly)

Michael Aratow maratow at noegenesis.com
Thu Apr 13 20:50:51 PDT 2017


Great points!!

Sounds like a combination of the two is best.

I am afraid that if there is not strong advocacy for the strengths of 
both, we will wind up with A-Frame only and unless it is somehow 
extended will hobble rich webVR worlds for a longer time than necessary.


On 4/13/17 8:02 PM, Leonard Daly wrote:
> On 4/13/2017 6:55 PM, Michael Aratow wrote:
>>
>> Do we really need to have both A-Frame and X3D?  This seems to be 
>> making things unnecessarily complicated for VR content authors.  
>> Either one or the other or something that is a combination of the two?
>>
>
> [Usual caveats apply here -- this is a discussion of displaying 3D in 
> a web browser environment using a declarative HTML-like language.]
>
> Only one will end up surviving.
>
> A-Frame is simple, easy to understand, and supported by some very 
> large and influential organizations
>
> X3D is complex, fully declarative, rich environment and is frequently 
> never heard of or ignored.
>
> A-Frame is not currently capable of handling (without coding) 
> Geospatial, volume, CAD, metadata, and 3D printing (though it is 
> usually the just the models that are printed).
>
> A-Frame's component system isolates individual elements of the scene. 
> It is difficult to impossible to build up a composite structure of 
> multiple elements. In X3D this is done as a Transform containing 
> another Transform containing ... So far, I have not found a way to 
> even Group elements together; however, it may be beyond where my 
> detailed reading has taken me so far.
>
> So far, I believe that it is difficult (or impossible) to have your 
> model in X3D and express it in A-Frame. I believe that it is possible 
> to have a separate file that is just a model and load that (as 
> geometry or geometry+texture). I think traditional X3D (rigid-body, 
> key-frame) animation cannot be done in A-Frame on pieces of X3D models.
>
> I am trying to get at the basic philosophy of X3D and A-Frame and see 
> what use cases each cover and not cover.
>
> A-Frame appears to put each element in a box. The elements can only 
> change in pre-defined manners and two elements cannot merge. X3D is 
> far more flexible in this regard. I don't know how I would handle 
> certain types of visualization or user-controlled on-the-fly geometry 
> changes or arbitrary network updates in A-Frame.
>
>
> Leonard Daly
>
>
>
>>
>> On 4/11/17 12:57 PM, Andreas Plesch wrote:
>>>
>>>     From: Leonard Daly <Leonard.Daly at realism.com
>>>     <mailto:Leonard.Daly at realism.com>>
>>>     To: x3d-public at web3d.org <mailto:x3d-public at web3d.org>
>>>
>>>     A-Frame's VR capability (as all of its rendering capability) is
>>>     provided
>>>     by Three.js. I know that Unreal has rather extensive VR (Rift, Vive)
>>>     headset capability. I believe that Unity does too. Since the
>>>     focus for
>>>     this talk was on browser-based VR, I couldn't spend the time
>>>     addressing
>>>     VR capabilities of these platforms.
>>>
>>>
>>> True, A-Frame only provides the declarative DOM layer, and three 
>>> does all the rendering.
>>>
>>> Unity can export to webgl but I do not know if or how it supports webvr.
>>>
>>>     >
>>>     > Did you get feedback after your presentation ? Anything you
>>>     can share
>>>     > would be interesting.
>>>
>>>     Nothing significant. There was more in discussions with other
>>>     attendees
>>>     at the conference who did not see my presentation. I'll be
>>>     posting that
>>>     over the next month or so.
>>>
>>>
>>> ok. thanks.
>>>
>>>     >
>>>     > The idea of combining of x3dom and A-Frame somehow is
>>>     interesting. I
>>>     > think it would boil down to implementing a new x3d browser on
>>>     top of
>>>     > A-Frame which may be quite possible. I experimented by
>>>     reimplementing
>>>     > IndexedFaceSet and ElevationGrid in A-Frame and think that
>>>     geometry
>>>     > and material nodes could be quite straightforward. Not sure about
>>>     > everything else but probably possible with a lot of work. It also
>>>     > would mean having a SAI on top of the DOM (as being manipulated by
>>>     > A-Frame and custom event interfaces). Your presentation made a
>>>     good
>>>     > argument that there is a lot of value in having a wide set of
>>>     > standardized capabilites.
>>>
>>>     Personally, I think putting X3DOM on top of A-Frame is a bit like
>>>     inverting a pyramid. A-Frame (as defined, not extended) is a rather
>>>     limited-capability system. I think it would be much easier to put
>>>     A-Frame on top of X3DOM -- except the part with A-Frame
>>>     extensions. I
>>>     think a better choice is to merge the two keeping the most important
>>>     capabilities of both. I am formulating some ideas on that.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, the idea of A-Frame is to be extensible with the hope that 
>>> over time enough functionality emerges so it becomes truly easy to use.
>>>
>>> A-Frame takes care of parsing html (using html5 custom elements API 
>>> I believe), helps with defining nodes, and provides rendering and 
>>> interaction basics. To me it does sound like a good intermediate 
>>> layer between three and x3d. And it exists. Of course, then all 
>>> elements have to start with 'a-'.
>>>
>>> -Andreas
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> x3d-public mailing list
>>> x3d-public at web3d.org
>>> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> x3d-public mailing list
>> x3d-public at web3d.org
>> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>
>
> -- 
> *Leonard Daly*
> 3D Systems & Cloud Consultant
> LA ACM SIGGRAPH Chair
> President, Daly Realism - /Creating the Future/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> x3d-public mailing list
> x3d-public at web3d.org
> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://web3d.org/pipermail/x3d-public_web3d.org/attachments/20170413/35e9bf97/attachment.html>


More information about the x3d-public mailing list