[x3d-public] New Image and Video Sphere X3D examples +

[John Carlson]

Note, for those wanting to view a demo, there are links in the readme.


Thanks, Nicholas!

John
On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 7:26 PM John Carlson <yottzumm at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Nicholas, can you provide a video capture viewable on Google Drive?
> I’ve applied a MovieTexture to a Sphere before, but I acknowledge it might
> work better as an IndexedFaceSet.
>
> Stepping inside the Sphere offers a new way to view X3D movies similar to
> a 360 degree movie, but perhaps it’s 360x360 degrees sphered (not squared,
> lol)?
>
> John
>
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 2:43 PM Don Brutzman via x3d-public <
> x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
>
>> Wow, looks great!  Your team's sustained effort on these capabilities is
>> most impressive.
>>
>> Questions on VideoSphere please:
>>
>>    - Inspecting the source .x3d files, it looks like the VideoSphere
>>    pattern applies prepared MovieTexture and IndexedFaceSet nodes without
>>    creation of any new X3D node.
>>    - Were there any non-trivial additions to X3DOM source?  i.e. will
>>    other browsers need further work to support?
>>    - Do you expect there might be potential benefit to someday defining
>>    a new X3D node in order to encourage adoption?  The X3D specification
>>    doesn't distinguish between 360-degree video and other video formats.
>>       - Potential use case:  VideoSphere bubbles within a larger scene
>>       that permit close-up inspection from certain vantage points.  Such bubbles
>>       might use TwoSidedMaterial to be semitransparent (or other Switch
>>       techniques to be hidden) within the larger scene.
>>       - interesting related capabiltity:  MatterPort, "Scanned-on-Demand
>>       3D Models | Quick-Turn 3D Virtual Tours"
>>       - https://go.matterport.com/Capture-Service.html
>>    - Is the blue car going the wrong direction on a one-way street?
>>    autonomous driver, presumably...   🥴
>>
>> Suggestions regarding MetaverseBookmark: to encourage further
>> experimentation and adoption, it would be good to
>>
>>    - build an example template in X3D using MetadataSet
>>    - build a corresponding prototype for the same data structures,
>>    potentially adding self-validation (via Script) and external validation (by
>>    various tools),
>>    - add these to X3D Examples Archive
>>
>> Standing ovation, again thanks for sharing these significant updates.
>>
>> all the best, Don
>> --
>> X3D Graphics, Maritime Robotics, Distributed Simulation
>> Relative Motion Consulting  https://RelativeMotion.info
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 11:55 AM Polys, Nicholas via x3d-public <
>> x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all~
>>>
>>> I just wanted to share that I have posted the X3DOM
>>> VideoSphere pattern and released on github (MIT license):
>>>  npolys/X3DSpheres
>>> <https://github.com/npolys/X3DSpheres?tab=readme-ov-file>
>>>
>>> Thanks to UND and the Web3D Tools 2025 Competition for the inspiration!
>>> I will continue to create and share repos with our work! 🙂
>>>
>>>
>>> You may notice also that from our papers last year, we released
>>> X3DTest  VT-Visionarium/X3Test
>>> <https://github.com/VT-Visionarium/X3Test>
>>>
>>> Nikhil Narra, Anuj Marisetty, Nicholas Polys, and Ben Sandbrook. 2025.
>>> X3Test: A Headless Browser-Based Framework for Automated Performance
>>> Benchmarking of X3D/X3DOM Scenes. In Proceedings of the 30th International
>>> Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D '25). Association for Computing
>>> Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–5.
>>> https://doi.org/10.1145/3746237.3746315
>>>
>>>  and a MetaverseBookmark concept
>>> VT-Visionarium/MetaverseBookmarks
>>> <https://github.com/VT-Visionarium/MetaverseBookmarks>
>>>
>>> Nikhil Narra, Anuj Marisetty, Nicholas Polys, and Ben Sandbrook. 2025. A
>>> Generalized Web3D API for Metaverse Bookmarks. In Proceedings of the 30th
>>> International Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D '25). Association for
>>> Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–8.
>>> https://doi.org/10.1145/3746237.3746311
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> All improvements and pulls requests welcome!
>>>
>>> yours in 4D,
>>>
>>> n_polys
>>>
>>> --
>>> Nicholas F. Polys, Ph.D.
>>>
>>> Director of Visual Computing
>>> Virginia Tech Research Computing
>>>
>>> Department Editor: @theSource
>>> IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications
>>>
>>> Affiliate Professor
>>> Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science
>>> https://people.cs.vt.edu/~npolys/  <https://people.cs.vt.edu/~npolys/>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> x3d-public mailing list
>>> x3d-public at web3d.org
>>> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>>>
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