What is O3D?
O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. This API is shared at an early stage as part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.
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Technical Overview:
O3D is an open-source JavaScript API for creating interactive 3D graphics applications that run in a browser window—games, ads, 3D model viewers, product demos, virtual worlds. O3D extends the client-side software of a web application by providing features at the following levels:
- System: O3D provides a browser plug-in that adds graphics capabilities inside standard web browsers on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux (TBP) platforms.
- Content: Content for today's web is in the form of HTML, image files, and video files. The Developer's Guide provides information on how to create a fileconverter and loader for any 3D content. O3D provides a sample COLLADA Converter, which can be used to import files in the COLLADA format, an open standard for 3D assets that is supported by popular content creation applications such as SketchUp, 3ds Max, and Maya. Use this sample converter directly, or write your own converter and loader for other formats.
- Code: O3D extends application JavaScript code with an API for 3D graphics. It uses standard JavaScript event processing and callback methods.
Audience:
The O3D API is intended for web developers who are familiar with JavaScript and have some background in 3D graphics. It is also intended for game developers eager to share their work with users of popular browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Because the O3D application runs as a browser plug-in, users do not have to overcome the hurdles of downloading and running standalone application code on their systems. The O3D API maximizes performance by programming to the GPU's shader language directly, an advantage over pure software rendering.
If you're new to graphics programming, you'll probably also want to consult some additional resources for background on basic 3D graphics programming concepts. This guide is intended to help you get started, and to explain the features unique to O3D in detail.
Architecture:
The following figure shows a simplified view of the various components of the O3D software and how they communicate with the graphics hardware on your computer.
The green blocks are the major components of the O3D software:
- Your O3D JavaScript application
- JavaScript Utilities provided as sample code to help you with common programming tasks
- Scene Graph API, which is the JavaScript API of classes and functions used in your application
The O3D JavaScript application code is completely contained in an HTML document that is loaded into a web browser. To develop a O3D application, all you need is the O3D plug-in and a text editor for writing JavaScript code.
As the architecture diagram shows, the O3D software communicates with your system's graphics hardware (its GPU—graphics processing unit) through either the OpenGL or Direct3D library.
Inspiration
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