[x3d-public] X3D Working Group agenda 9 OCT 2020: game plan and trajectory for voting on release of X3D4 specification

[Don Brutzman]

Attendees: John Carlson, Anita Havele, Vince Marchetti, Nicholas Polys, Dick Puk, Don Brutzman.

No member-restricted information is included in these minutes.

Participation:

[0.1] Web3D Teleconference Information
        https://www.web3d.org/member/teleconference-information

> Please use the following link for all Web3D Consortium Meetings.
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> Join URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81634670698?pwd=a1VPeU5tN01rc21Oa3hScUlHK0Rxdz09

Last week's minutes:

[0.2] [x3d-public] X3D minutes 2 OCT 2020: draft X3D4 Shape component, 3 approaches to X3D4 shadows, RenderingEnvironment node, audio concepts
       http://web3d.org/pipermail/x3d-public_web3d.org/2020-October/013726.html

Web3D 2020 Conference registration is FREE and open, schedule continues getting released online.

[0.3] Web3D 2020 Conference registration
        https://web3d.siggraph.org

[0.4] blog entry "X3D in a Box"
        https://webx3d.org/box-of-x3d

Warmup calisthenics:  Anita asked how to add transparency to the Background of the overlay there.

* https://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/X3dTooltips.html#Background.transparency
* <Background transparency='1'/>

It... works? Still testing, stay tuned...

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1. *Timeline*

a. October. We are preparing for final public review of X3D4 Working Draft at the Web3D 2020 Conference, 9-13 November 2020.  Seeing all of the latest-greatest work by everyone - papers posters tutorials workshops - and letting contributors comment can have value to everyone.  We have always had public review of every prior specification release.

We specifically discussed whether to release a WD3 version, we have changes to rendering and audio but most everything else is the same.  We decided not to release another intermediate working draft 3 (WD3) to avoid confusion.

b. November. Subsequent to broad scrutiny and public discussion, the editors remove all styling and markup from the draft specification.  A clean-ed up reviewable "release-ready" Committee Draft (CD) Proposal is shared inside the Consortium.  The specification editors will also prepare a 2-4 page New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) that will formally initiate the work.  A vote by Web3D Consortium members is then conducted that X3D4 is ready to proceed with standardization.

c. December. Subject to approval by Web3D Consortium Board of Directors, X3D4 can then be submitted to ISO IEC/JTC 1/SC 24/ as Committee Draft (CD).  Once approved, deliver to ISO.

d. January. We plan to release the submitted X3D4 CD version publicly under Web3D Consortium copyright.

e. 2021.  Separate plans also published in recent minutes on how we will upgrade X3D SAI and each of the X3D file encodings and programming language bindings.  We hope to reach and sustain a "one specification update per month" rate of submission.

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2. *Specification Tasks*

a. Editorial review of prose:  glTF and PBR-related components

b. Informative section on X3D4 HTML5 integration: embedded (as per X3DOM) or loaded (as per X_ITE).

c. Include author-definable shadow capability (e.g. shadowIntensity)?

d. Mantis review: all critical issues resolved?

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3. *Validation Infrastructure*

a. X3D XML Schema, X3D DOCTYPE, X3D Unified Object Model

b. X3D Unified Object Model (X3DUOM)

c. X3D Java (X3DJSAIL) and X3D Python (X3DPSAIL)

d. X3D Tooltips (used by authors and tools)

e. X3D conversion stylesheets

f. X3D Regular Expressions (regexes)

g. X3D Tidy

h. X3D Validator

Related, ongoing:

i. JavaScript X3DJSONLD implementation efforts to continue at best speed.  ES6 type-safe TypeScript is part of this implementation endeavor.

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4. *Player Implementations*

We invite feedback from each of the primary implementers involved in these codebases.

a. X_ITE

b. X3DOM

c. Castle Game Engine (view3dscene)

d. FreeWrl

e. Other X3D4 applications of note?  Perhaps the CAD-related tools?

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5. *Documentation*

a. Reference pages

* https://www.web3d.org/x3d4

b. X3D4 Support Inventory Stylesheet

c. X3D Resources

d. X3D Scene Authoring Hints

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6. *Examples*

a. Web3D Consortium's X3D Example Archives

b. glTF, PBR, NPR examples

c. Audio examples

d. Gap analysis, do we have coverage of each node?

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It was great to discuss all these today and ensure we have a thorough "game plan" for release.

Good to go, our trajectory is in progress.  All inputs always remain welcome.

Have fun with X3D4!  No really!  8)

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