The X3D technology will enable small, lightweight Web clients to support advanced 3-D capabilities, and to integrate high-performance 3D into broadcast and embedded devices. Compact 3-D clients with X3D can be extended with plug-in components to create standardized profiles for sophisticated vertical applications. X3D will ensure interoperability of 3D with Web standards such as XHTML, XML, SVG, DOM and SMIL.

To that end, the Web3D Consortium announced at Siggraph that it has joined the World Wide Web consortium (W3C). By joining and integrating W3C specifications into its current work, the Web3D Consortium hopes to ensure that the next generation of multimedia standards for the Web include seamlessly integrated 3-D graphics.

"The Web3D Consortium is pleased to join and participate within the W3C so that 3D will become a first-class citizen in the family of next-generation Web multimedia data types," said Neil Trevett, vice president of 3Dlabs and president of the Web3D Consortium. "The Web3D Consortium is achieving remarkable progress in defining the advanced X3D technology, and on a timetable that makes it very relevant to the W3C's Web standardization efforts."

The Web3D Consortium will issue a fast-tracked series of X3D specifications to ensure the technology's rapid adoption. X3D will culminate with the specification's incorporation into the next-generation open, non-proprietary VRML ISO standard — VRML 2002. X3D has evolved from, and retains compatibility with, VRML 97.

X3D profiles can include complete VRML functionality, thereby ensuring compatibility between VRML 97 content and X3D-capable browsers.

X3D will include advanced rendering capabilities such as realistic character animation, and advanced rendering effects such as multiple textures, streamable data types and non-polygonal surface descriptions.

A significant step in accepting the premises of an open-source document is the Web3D Consortium's decision to enter into a cooperative licensing agreement with blaxxun interactive whereby the source code of blaxxun's VRML browser will be made openly available from the Web3D Consortium under a Community Source license. Licensees will gain full access to the source code and retain full rights to their modifications, royalty-free, for non-commercial use.

blaxxun interactive's technology browser platform ties multimedia with rich communication features, which allows the building of visually striking communities and venues where users may interact with each other in 2D and 3D. The company's applications are tailored to commerce, to collaboration with online education/training forums and virtual offices, and to communities like the award-winning Cybertown.

blaxxun and the Web3D Consortium are cooperating to leverage the source code to encourage browser availability, conformance testing and further innovation in existing and future 3-D Web standards. "blaxxun is highly motivated to encourage further widespread distribution of stable, conformant VRML browsers with support for advanced functionality including multi-user interfaces," said Franz Buchenberger, president and chief executive officer of blaxxun (San Francisco). Web3D's Trevett said, "through this cooperation with blaxxun, the Web3D Consortium will be able to launch a widespread source development initiative that will enable the industry and the Web3D community to significantly further the momentum of the VRML standard."

The Web3D Consortium (formerly the VRML Consortium) is a non-profit organization with a mandate to develop and promote open standards to enable 3-D Web and broadcast applications.

Four companies have have already submitted draft proposals for a lightweight extensible X3D core. Shout Interactive (San Francisco) provided small (under 50 kbytes) pure-Java applets with compelling interactive content. blaxxun interactive contributed similarly small demonstration applets, and also proposed to extend VRML 97 with NURBS geometry. Draw Computing (Philadelphia) has contributed a third complementary X3D proposal that it implemented using the Fahrenheit Scene Graph from Microsoft/SGI, and able to parse both VRML 97 and XML-based X3D scenes. Sony Corp. submitted a further contribution for an extensible media modeling architecture, which is now undergoing review by the consortium's technical committee.

"X3D is building on the firm foundation of VRML 97, and is evolving the standard so that 3D will exist seamlessly in the increasingly sophisticated standards-based Web of tomorrow," said Don Brutzman, vice president of technology for the Web3D Consortium. "The Consortium has a well-defined road map that is enabling us to rapidly develop our X3D next-generation technology while strengthening the momentum of existing 3D Web standards and applications."

While at Siggraph 99, Web3D Consortium members voted to advance the X3D project from the Design Phase to the Implementation & Evaluation Phase. Multiple software implementation projects will validate X3D specification improvements, using Sun's open-source VRML/X3D loader written using Java3D and blaxxun's community-source Contact browser written in C++.

The consortium is comprised of over 50 organizations, including charter members 3Dlabs, blaxxun interactive, Cybelius Software, MathEngine, Panasonic/Matsushita, Microsoft, SGI, Sony, Superscape and others.