[x3d-public] Castle Game Engine / Castle Model Viewer news: IFC support, work on the web target

[Michalis Kamburelis]

Hello all,

This weekend, I published a new video summarizing the recent
developments at Castle Game Engine (and Castle Model Viewer and our
related tools). I think it may be interesting here too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJcMqfx6u98

Recap and links:

1. We work on the web target, which means that you can recompile any
application developed using Castle Game Engine to the web.

    There's a lot (probably too much :) ) technical details on
https://castle-engine.io/web .

    If you just want to see something working, simply run one of the
examples linked there.

    Of particular interest here will be *really early pre-release* of
our model viewer for the web:
https://castle-engine.io/web-demos/castle-model-viewer-mobile/ .

    It can display "pre-packaged" files in a number of formats (X3D,
glTF, IFC, Spine JSON), it can switch between viewpoints, run
animations, use Walk/Examine modes etc. It's still a work-in-progress,
with the most obvious missing feature being: it cannot load yet
arbitrary files from your disk, you can only choose from the few
"pre-packaged" files.

    Much more updates to this are coming!

2. We have added support for the IFC standard, which is a 3D standard
commonly used by the BIM (building information modeling) industry and
supported by software like FreeCAD, BonsaiBIM (Blender plugin),
ArchiCAD, Revit.

    In way, it's "another 3D standard" we support. I tell at all
conferences that I like 3D standards, so I'm happy to add another one
to our collection, alongside X3D and glTF.

    First of all, we provide the "usual" support you would expect for
a 3D format from us: we can display it in all our tools, save it,
convert to/from X3D and other formats.

    Second of all: you can use our Pascal API to develop applications
that "think" using IFC classes. There are almost 800 IFC classes that
express various aspects of "real-world things" and all this
information is useful for people who actually design and build real
houses, bridges, factories, windows etc.

    This is all described in details on our page
https://castle-engine.io/ifc , and demonstrated quickly in the video I
linked above.

    As said, all our tools get IFC support, and can convert IFC <->
X3D, in particular

    - Castle Model Viewer (
https://castle-engine.io/castle-model-viewer ) (snapshot version now)
can view IFC files, and convert IFC <-> X3D, any 3D format (glTF, STL
etc.) -> IFC, IFC -> STL etc.

    - Castle Model Converter (
https://castle-engine.io/castle-model-converter ) can perform the same
conversions but from the command-line, nice for batch mode /
scripting.

    - Our mobile viewer (
https://castle-engine.io/castle-model-viewer-mobile ) should be
updated soon to support IFC too.

    - The pre-release of the web viewer, that I already linked in AD
1, https://castle-engine.io/web-demos/castle-model-viewer-mobile/ also
already supports IFC.

    - Our online model converter (
https://castle-engine.io/convert.php ) can also handle IFC now, and
perform conversions mentioned above.

Have fun with 3D standards :)!
Michalis