[O3D-discuss:2795] The future of O3D

[Peterson Trethewey]

Today, there was an announcement on the O3D API blog about the future
direction of O3D development.

http://o3d.blogspot.com/2010/05/future-of-o3d.html

The O3D plugin and source code will continue to be available for
download, but after the next revision, we will stop development on the
plugin. We will, however, continue supporting the O3D API in the form
of a JavaScript library. We have been working on a new project to
implement the O3D API in WebGL, and today we launched a website for
that project.

http://code.google.com/p/o3d/

WebGL cannot do everything the O3D plugin could do, so some of the
original functionality is missing in the WebGL implementation. On the
website you will find a description of what we are keeping from the
O3D plugin, as well as instructions on how to convert existing O3D
code to use the new javascript library. You can also download source
code and view sample webpages which are ready to run in your
webgl-capible browser of choice.

Feel free to post questions to this mailing list about the new O3D
implementation and how to convert webpages that use the O3D plugin to
use the javascript library.

--pt

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "O3D-discuss" group.
To post to this group, send email to o3d-d...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to o3d-discuss...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/o3d-discuss?hl=en.

[Angelo Franco]

My two cents...

I wonder what is the user of a web 3d tool if the end user has to install some special version of their browers in order to run it.

What I liked about O3D is that it was very easy to install and, therefore, could reach a lot more people.

Now try to imagine us, developers, trying to sell a product (some web3d solution) and saying that the users will have to reinstall their browsers in order to see the 3d content. No one will buy that.

I spent a lot of time learning and developing for o3d and now I got stabbed in the back. Very disappointing.

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

I think its just the opposite.

WebGL is part of HTML5 and should be on all browsers fairly soon.

This way, you don't have to install anything additional into your browser and itll work across al HTML5 browsers.

To me that makes the market much bigger.  You'll never get the plugin on an Ipad for instance, but we will get HTML5  (Apple's a big supporter.)

As long as they can get the required speed, this is an all around win.

JK

--
~~ Microsoft help desk says: reply hazy, ask again later. ~~

[Nicolas Kassis]

That's one major reason I was hopping O3D plugin would morph into a webgl and o3d runtime plugin allowing us to give this plugin to users who don't have webgl enabled browsers. It would be nice if the plugin was supported until WebGL becomes ubiquitous. RIght now, there no real solution to do 3D on the web except for O3D and commercial stuff. If WebGL was finalized and available today, it would be a different thing. I guess I'll begin the converstion of my app to WebGL and hope browsers have it integrated this summer in their stable release.

Nic

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Angelo Franco <angelo...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
-----------------
Nicolas Kassis

[Rinesh Thomas]

I had made a game in O3D which i was promised would be listed in the o3d gallery,i was waiting to see it there for a long time,wondering whats up with O3D. Anyways the WebGL implementation looks promising.Here is the game that i tried in O3D,hope its easily converted to the never implementation,will try it soon.

 http://rineshairhockey.appspot.com/

A facebook app of the game.
http://apps.facebook.com/rhockey/

All the best to the O3D team. Hope to see some more great demos and tutorials soon.

[Henry Bridge]

@Angelo and @Rinesh

We realize that the lack WebGL shipping in every browser is a problem for developers, which is why we will keep O3D available and will do a release that fixes many of our outstanding bugs.  We expect to see WebGL ship to users of all the modern browsers by the end of the year, so that should help a lot.

As for IE, we could have gone down the route of making the O3D plugin also ship WebGL for IE, but we realized that then developers would be lacking other APIs that they need for their apps, like Audio or WebSockets.  If we then added those APIs to the O3D plugin also, well, it starts to look a lot like ChromeFrame: a plugin implementation of web APIs for IE.  We're confident that ChromeFrame will be as easy if not easier to install than O3D, so it seemed better to focus the team's graphics expertise on making WebGL great in Chrome/ChromeFrame and on making the O3D library useful to develolpers.

Hope that explain our thinking a bit.

@Rinesh

Sorry to leave you hanging with the gallery

Henry

[Nicolas Kassis]

I think Google Frame is a fair option for IE. At least if WebGL is available this year for other browsers, it's not too long of a wait for my project.

Thank you for answering our concerns. O3D has worked great for us so thanks for that too.

Nic

[Angelo Franco]

I agree with you Jeffrey, but I don't see much activity on the WebGL side either. I know about it for some time now, but the implementation status hasn't changed much since then. We are all expecting webgl to become a stardard soon, but I'm not as optimistic as you guys.

But, anyway, I might have sounded a bit ungrateful in the other note. I really do like O3D. It's a great tool. Please keep up the good work with the javascript library. For sure, I'll continue to use it, despite the webgl question.

[yopyop]

cross posting comment from http://o3d.blogspot.com/2010/05/future-of-o3d.html

While I agree on the long term direction, I think it is way too early
to drop O3D as a plug-in right now.

Not only WebGL is far to be available in a large market share of the
available released browsers, but a lot of issues are still to be
resolved to make it as relevant/powerful as plug-ins such as Unity and
Shiva (or the now abandoned O3D plug-in) as mentioned in this message
"Because browsers lack some requisite functionality.. "

O3D as a plug-in should be maintained and exist to help content
developer to create content today, and O3D as a javascrip/WebGL engine
should be developed in parallel, with the mindset to help today
content developers to migrate to this new technology when available
and all browser issues have been resolved.

As it stand, an O3D javascript WebGL project without existing plug-in
based content is not much different than existing open source projects
such as SceneJS (http://www.scenejs.org/) and plenty other. I would
rather see the O3D/Google team reach out to those existing opensource
project, rather than creating another project.