VRML - Is X3D evolution or divergence ?

Author

Is X3D evolution or divergence ?

Steve Smith

2004-01-18, 8:28 am

I'm returning to web 3D after a few years away and I can't decide if X3D is
the way to go.

VRML is a readable/writable language, where as X3D is merely a file format ?

Having worked as a database developer for the last few years I find that XML
is an excellent method of bloating and destabilising applications.

Steve Smith

Muaddib

2004-01-18, 8:28 am

Steve,

X3D is a lot more than just an XMLanization of VRML. As far as
the XML component goes though: agreed that in some application areas you
are paying a price for using XML. Perhaps less readability, perhaps
code bloating (matters what format you start from). But VRML really is
an XML language in disguise anyways. What I mean by that is VRML has a
tree structure, within that tree are properties, and member nodes. The
price you pay for putting in new XML structure ( end tags, name, value
pairs ) is made up for by putting VRML in a standard where a wide
variety of tools are available. I don't think that is much of a price,
given the use a good XML editor with nice syntactic highlighting. I
think it's a good move.

Muaddib

Steve Smith wrote:

quote:

> I'm returning to web 3D after a few years away and I can't decide if X3D is
> the way to go.
>
> VRML is a readable/writable language, where as X3D is merely a file format ?
>
> Having worked as a database developer for the last few years I find that XML
> is an excellent method of bloating and destabilising applications.
>
> Steve Smith
>
>

Joe D Williams

2004-01-19, 4:30 pm

> >

quote:

Have a look at the X3D standard projects at web3d.org.
Please notice from the encodings spec that there are two ways to
express the VRML scene, XML encoding and classic vrml.
And there are 'simple' transcoding tools available.
[QUOTE][color=darkred]
> VRML has a
> tree structure, within that tree are properties, and member nodes.

A big difference between XML markup and vrml was the
idea of DEF and USE.
This makes it an acyclic graph,

http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/directAcycGraph.html

which I think means that a while a USE node can ge shown
on the tree, it is not actually there; it an instance of another node.
The node has multiple parents.
Standards track XML tools are sorting out how to handle this.
VRML and X3D have a specified behavior.

Since X3D is in the spec development process few
tools can handle it, although several (probably all)
active VRML97 tools are evolving toward X3D conformance.
But all the keystrokes in the specs are not yet complete.
In the meantime, use VRML97 and learn about X3D.

For example, I have been looking at the new new h-anim
draft for which at this point is only partly expressed in VRML97.

http://hypermultimedia.com/aaFTP/LOA3A8.WRL

http://hypermultimedia.com/aaFTP/LOA3A8-2.WRL

Will the X3D Classic VRML and X3D XML versions of
this exist someday? I think so.

Thanks and Best Regards,
Joe