[thelist] Whatever happened to VRML?

[John Dowdell]

At 8:27 PM 3/12/1, viveka wrote:
> I've seen the Shockwave 3D stuff (there was a demo
> at the MacWeb3D BOF at SIGGRAPH 2000), and I was
> impressed, even at that stage. It's for Shockwave
> though, not for Flash? I'd love to see interactive 3D
> inside Flash as well.

You're right, it's the Shockwave Player which has the extensibility layer
for drop-in renderers. The Macromedia Flash Player is optimized for small
download and easy portability (in order to get widespread viewability),
while the larger Shockwave Player instead takes deeper advantage of Mac and
Win computers.

Shockwave just does more than Flash, and it's this larger player which has
the realtime 3D rendering abilities.



> what's the install base like, compared to the Flash install base?

Media Metrix does quarterly audits of what types of content their regular
consumer focus groups can see on the web... in the Dec'00 audit they had
>90% viewing SWF with a third of these at the current player, and >50%
viewing Shockwave with a third at the current player.

Nothing else is as widespread as the Macromedia Flash Player, true, but
Shockwave is right up there with RealPlayer, Adobe Acrobat, other common
technologies.

Results, version penetration, methodology, sample tests:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/



> Can you give us any details on authoring?

Sorry, I don't have good authoring details yet... I understand that full
info here will be arriving shortly.



> And where will the 3D models come from? Import of
> standard formats, or will we need to have 3D Studio
> Max, like you do for Viewpoint .mts and Vecta3D?

Most of the popular 3D creation tools have already committed to direct
export of the Shockwave 3D model files, including those from
Alias|Wavefront, Discreet Logic, NxView, SoftImage Maxon, NewTek, Right
Hemisphere. There will be more support announced at the actual launch.



> ...Shockwave 3D stands to be a very fun toy. I wanna play ;)

Me too. It's hard to wait, but it's almost here.


jd








John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US
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