[x3d-public] Preliminary Announcement for XSeen: problems in motivation phrasing

[Don Brutzman]

Hi Leonard.  It was great to see that your project is progressing - congratulations. Implementing and evaluating possible improvements to X3D is always good.

However your current motivation section has problems:

=======================
"Why Another 3D Language

Neither X3D nor A-Frame are designed as a declarative, DOM-Integrated language. A-Frame has several deficiencies that make it not suitable for the enterprise (see the presentation "Declarative VR/3D Environment" given at SVVR2017). X3D is not designed for the DOM. XSeen is very explicitly designed as a language that is fully integrated with the DOM and has the enterprise features of X3D."
=======================

As you well know, X3D is not a frozen capability and X3D integration with DOM/HTML5 is the primary goal of X3D version 4.  This several-year effort continues to progress steadily.  Multiple major implementations have integrated X3D and DOM/HTML5: X3DOM and Cobweb.  Further, VRML/X3D design has always been declarative.  Successes keep accumulating, lessons learned keep growing, and further improvements keep emerging thanks to cooperative work by many people.

Saying otherwise is incorrect and confusing to others interested in learning more about Web-based 3D technologies.

I recommend that you improve your motivation statements.  Correctly identifying strengths of relevant technologies makes opportunities for progress more understandable.  Getting clearer also helps new work constructively influence ongoing X3D version 4 development activities, benefiting everyone.

Hope this helps.  Thanks for your many contributions and continuing efforts.


On 6/26/2017 12:46 PM, Leonard Daly wrote:
> The latest version of XSeen (V0.3) has been pushed to GitHub. It includes initial work on Animation. After looking at many different kinds of implementations of 3D animations, I concluded that getting the developer involved in the rendering pipeline for each frame was not needed, nor desirable. X3D though the use of events for each stage of the pipeline does put the developer in the "loop" and forces inefficiencies, especially for pre-defined (key-frame) animations.
> 
> While XSeen does not yet offer full key-frame animation (just start/end points + transition style), it does illustrate how to do key-frame animation without the developer in the middle of each frame. This structure does hint at how the developer can get access when needed.
> 
> In addition to code updates, there is now an XSeen project page (http://realism.com/xseen) where all of the test cases are listed. Each test case can be executed from the web page and displays as an overlay.
> 
> * XSeen project page: http://realism.com/xseen
> * XSeen code on GitHub: https://github.com/DrX3D/XSeen/tree/development
> * XSeen language definition: http://tools.realism.com/specification/xseen/language-definition
> * XSeen internals documentation: http://tools.realism.com/specification/xseen/xseen-internals
> 
> XSeen is built upon the architecture of X3D and A-Frame. The JavaScript library is supported by THREE and TWEEN plus pieces extracted from X3DOM. John Carlson provided the JSON to XML converter. It is early-stage work and not everything is fully developed out or functional. Please report any issues you have with the software or documentation. Contributions are always welcome. XSeen code is joint licensed as MIT / GPU. XSeen documentation is licensed as Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC BY-SA).
> 
> -- 
> *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

all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman