We now use Typed Arrays instead of WebGL*Arrays, since all browsers switched to this new interface. Please, as always, update to the latest version of Firefox, Chrome or WebKit to use the currently online dev-build.

Some people had problems with the existing global key-handler per x3dom window. We fixed this in the current build ( >= 620) and now register EventListener per canvas. You can also switch off the key-mapping altogether with <x3d keysEnabled=’false’ …>. Talking about key-mapping: We do not support the X3D-KeySensor/StringSensor in our profile. Use an extra <div> with addEventListener(‘keypress’) to register a key-handler per x3d-element.

We did some cleanups on the server after Siggraph and killed a few examples. Especially the AR-example had an extra debug-window, which prevented the tracker to work.

AR works again

We fixed the code and links, and thereby everything should work again.

Another show-case from Dennis Ippel which is not just nice but also shows a limitation of the current implementation.

Pixelfaces in x3dom

If the user does not give any normals the system creates always smooth normals for every vertices. This is (almost) right for the support Level 2 we proposed  but this will also irritate people. So we  really should increase the support Level to 4 and fully support any creaseAngle value. There is already a ticket for this

Dennis Ippel was also at the WebGL BOF last week in LA and really liked the declarative 3D and HTML integration approach we provided with X3DOM.

He promised to do some expermiments with x3dom and already has a Mutal Twitter Friends show-case on his blog

Visualising Mutual Twitter Friends

We love his conclusion so far: “My first impression of X3DOM is that it’s very easy to work with. Specifying the scene through XML nodes is actually very convenient“

We meet Francesco Di Cerbo, from the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy,  last week at the Web3D-conference in LA. He presented in his talk a new e-lerning system called  DIEL which uses x3dom.

user-interface for the DIEL e-learning system

DIEL is an extension to an e-learning platform that provides new paradigms of user interactivity and data representation in a web-based real-time environment. DIEL aims at creating a dynamic and interaction-friendly graphical interface for learning communities.

The system uses a client server architecture, where the client side is based on a HTML5/X3DOM, and the server side is implemented as a standalone PHP application, embedded into the open source course management system Moodle.

Combining X3DOM and AJAX patterns, it is possible to obtain a live graphical representation of a virtual environment, where users can interact with each other or with available resources. A server-push mechanism (using Orbited) has been used to synchronize the different clients. The user can even upload their avatars and other resources as standard X3D datasets.

https://code.inf.unibz.it/projects/diel/

X3DOM was presented at the HTML/X3D and Khronos/WebGL BOF during Siggraph 2010 last week. We introduced the framework and general idea using some slides and showed some of the examples. There was a large interest in declarative (X)3D at both meetings and we got very good feedback and had some interesting discussions with potential users of the system.

HTML/X3D BOF at Siggraph 2010

There where around 120 people at the HTML/X3D BOF and more than 150 at the WebGL BOF. Both meetings where packed and it was really fun to match some faces to email-addresses.