O3D Results

[Jim3D]

Hi,

Check out the latest results using O3D:

http://www.intricad.com/bin/main/gallery.php

Yes, you will need the ol'O3D plugin to view.

Early 2010 I introduced JIG3D. The idea was to simply make importing
3D data and creating basic O3D scenes an easy process. There is an
arsenal of 3D data out there waiting to be uploaded and interactively
viewed.

Developing JIG3D took a lot of time and effort. It was a risk. At that
time it was not exactly clear what the future was for O3D. But I got a
lot of response and assistance from this group which I always
appreciated.

Pro's and con's it had, but O3D offered something unique and had the
potential to jump start a whole new arena of visual information for
the web. And, it was doing so. Otherwise stated; "It worked".

WebGL has taken the leadership position. Or rather, O3D just let go of
it. I am sure that many would disagree with me for many reasons but in
comparison to O3D, WebGL just can't cut it. O3D was in a mature stage
of development.

WebGL still seems far away.

Jim

[Nicolas Kassis]

I have to disagree a little about WebGL being far away. I hope this
won't start a little flame war but then again the O3D list is rather
quiet lately, a little action should be nice ;p

I'm very new to 3D graphics in general so sorry if I'm a little naive
but I think WebGL has progressed rather quickly since the O3D team
decided to join force with it.

It would be cool to see what particular things you find WebGL doesn't
address currently.

WebGL has led to the addition of some really cool features in
javascript lately.
I know in the past binary data was rather hard to work with in
javascript. Typed arrays, Array buffers and such have help me out a
lot lately. There is now the ability to transfer Binary arrays from
the server to the web browser async using XMLHttpRequest objects.

The ability to overlay html on top of 3D elements is something O3D
lack but I find really useful.

I can use my app on my Android phone( Well my app is a little awkward
to use on the phone but that' entirely my fault ;p), that's something
that would have been hard with O3D.

The performance of WebGL and O3D to me are pretty comparable so far.

Also, the conversion to WebGL from the plugin was rather painless to
me. Biggest issue was shaders of course.

Nic

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Nicolas Kassis

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

Really, they are not competitors but complimentary technologies.

WebGL is an OpenGL binding.

O3D is a scene graph.

In fact there is an implementation of O3D on top of WebGL.

JK

It's always darkest just before you are eaten by a grue.

[Nicolas Kassis]

I guess we should rephrase the debate as WebGL vs O3D runtime plugin.
I use O3D on top of WebGL currently but there are features that are
currently not available in the current O3D/WebGL release. Some are
simply not yet reimplemented. But as of now, I haven't needed those
particular things.

Nic

[Dave]

Hi,

Haven't seen you around in the forum Jim, hows your Jig3D been going?

I actually think that you considered using O3D-WebGL for your JIG3D
project. There are a lot of improvements done in WebGL rendering in
Chrome and Firefox. Check out my new annotation client (Need to run at
least Chrome 9, Firefox works a bit dodgy but thats just me being
lazy, Safari haven't tested, absolutely no IE):

http://maenad-yu.cloud.itee.uq.edu.au/3dsa/service.html?modelID=0007_Head&res=low

This prototype is still under development at the moment and is not
even 60% complete, but at least I can attach an annotation written in
HTML instead of putting a 3D arrow and textured plane like before.
Plus I can do a basic manual segmentation tool. There are a lot of
good stuff you can do like overlaying or underlaying HTML elements on
or below 3D objects. I actually considered that WebGL nowadays can do
quite advance stuff, with the help of O3D-WebGL framework.

By the way, I also hope to ask Nicolas about the "Type arrays" and
"Array buffers" you had mentioned. I had heard about these syntax but
haven't touch them yet. Are they capable of translating little endian
encoded data from XHR into normal ascii?

Dave

[Nicolas Kassis]

Hi Dave,

Check out this document from Mozilla:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_typed_arrays/DataView

Basically as you are reading the ArrayBuffer you can set the
littleEndian boolean value to true. So, if you keep reading bytes you
can then create a new Array and covert from char codes.

There might be another way to do this but the info of ArrayBuffers and
Typed arrays is very shallow currently.

Hope that helps

Nic