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

Mon Mar 17 11:31:31 PDT 2025

Michalis, thanks for the report.   My highest priority is the setting the
scene .x3d in the URL of the web browser, so I can easily demo with the
model viewer with a link on a web page or email.   There should be a way to
turn on the log, if that’s not the default.

Joe and I are working on converting displacers to a coordinate
interpolator, maybe I’ll have some kind of demo, say in 3 months, that can
be converted to pascal to enable displacers in castle.   We’ll try to reach
a consensus around the interpolator vs the displacers such that common view
is achieved.

John

On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 12:44 PM Michalis Kamburelis <
michalis.kambi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the good words! Some things you ask for are coming (and
> soon), some... are possible, but not so soon :)
>
> 1. I do plan to make "Castle Model Viewer for the web" expose some
> capabilities similar to X3DOM and X_ITE. I do hope that Holger,
> Andreas and other developers of web X3D browsers will forgive me for
> creating a little extra competition :)
>
> 1.1. We will have ability to easily use precompiled "Castle Model
> Viewer for the web" (either hosted on our servers, on your own
> servers) to view arbitrary X3D model.
>
>     Either with X3D content inside the webpage DOM, or with an URL
> pointing an X3D file.
>
>     E.g. "just place <script
> src="http://castle-engine.io/viewer.js"></script> and it will change
> the <x3d>...</x3d> in your webpage content into an interactive
> canvas". So we can have something similar to basic usage of X3DOM on
> https://doc.x3dom.org/tutorials/basics/hello/index.html . (This is
> just an example! URL "http://castle-engine.io/viewer.js" doesn't work
> yet, I just give it here as an example of how it may look like in
> future).
>
> 1.2. We should have ability to point the precompiled "Castle Model
> Viewer for the web" using a URL parameter to an arbitrary file.
> Editing the X3D contents with a textarea should be doable too. So we
> can have a playground like
>
> https://create3000.github.io/x_ite/playground/?url=https://create3000.github.io/media/examples/X3D/TreasureIsland/TreasureIsland.x3d
> .
>
> Neither are possible yet, but it's on the nearest TODO list.
>
> 2. Using the browser's JS engine to run arbitrary JS from the X3D
> Script node... Likely yes, I think this is possible, but more work.
>
> Expect AD 1 sometime in April 2025. I cannot say when AD 2 may be
> available, if it will be available (but encouraging me to do this
> really works :), so yes, I may do it sooner when many people request
> it).
>
> Our Pascal code, both when compiled with pas2js and when compiled with
> FPC+WebAssembly, has full access to the webpage's DOM and can interact
> with it, and it can call / be called by regular JS code in the
> browser. So, all sorts of interoperability are possible :)
>
> Regards,
> Michalis
>
> pon., 17 mar 2025 o 16:29 John Carlson <yottzumm at gmail.com> napisał(a):
> >
> > Michalis,
> >
> > This looks like a quantum leap in capability. Great work!
> >
> > Will we see the ability to include any JavaScript in an X3D Script
> node?  Is this already available?  I heard some rumors from Aaron.  Any
> instructions on doing something like X3DOM editor or X_ITE playground,
> especially with the mobile model viewer?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > John
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 9:17 AM Michalis Kamburelis via x3d-public <
> x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> x3d-public mailing list
> >> x3d-public at web3d.org
> >> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>
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