We have moved our main Repository from SourceForge to GitHub. We think that this will facilitate the community development of X3DOM through the Fork and Pull convenience.

After many months of work, we’re proud to announce the release today of X3DOM 1.2. There’s plenty of cool stuff we have worked on since the last release. You can also swing by the downloads page to grab a copy of the release package.

Major Feature: Flash11/MoleHill Render backend

The new version supports an additional render-backend. The system now looks for a Flash11 plugin if the browser does not provide a SAI-Plugin or WebGL interface. This enables the user to view X3DOM pages, with some restrictions, using the Internet Explorer 9 browser. It utilizes the Adobe Flash MoleHill 3D-API for GPU-Accelerated rendering. To use Adobe Flash-based X3DOM you need the latest Adobe Flash Player Incubator build (11.01.3d).

Our x3dom.swf must either be placed in the same folder as your xhtml/html files, or you can specify a path with the swfpath-Parameter of the X3D-Node. With the X3D-Nodes backend-Parameter you can set Flash as default backend.

• At the moment the Flash-backend is still in an early beta state with most of base nodes working.
• Special features like multiple lights, shadows, CommonSurfaceShader, etc. are being worked on

Additional Changes

• Internal reorganization of sources. Node type have now their own submodule (src/nodes) and are split into groups.
• Text node is partially working now. You can use any font available to the browser. This includes WebFonts of CSS3.
• Added system to pass parameters to runtime. The use attributes with the X3D element will be deprecated in 1.3. Currently supported parameters
• Partially working MT support with on Firefox beta. Experimental.
• It is now possible to directly apply CSS styles to the X3D element.
• Fixed display problem with textures which have dimensions not to the power of two.

The X3DOM/VCST team (Johannes, Tobias, Karsten, and Yvonne — except for Timm, who has fun in Spain) is currently at Web3D 2011 in Paris for presenting our latest paper on X3DOM. So, if you’re around, feel free to ask or discuss topics…

EDIT: Below is a photo of the first “Declarative 3D – W3C Community Group Meeting”, which took place directly after the conference on June 22nd.

Adam Park, University of Sheffield, has build this impressive showcase which recreate parts of Hull for the documentation of a site-specific theatre performance. Follow the links to ‘walk the city’