Update: In Internet Explorer 11, native WebGL support was added. Chrome frame has been discontinued by Google.

Currently Internet Explorer does not sport a native WebGL implementation. This means X3DOM has to fallback to the Flash Player in order to render 3D content. However, there is a way around this: Chrome Frame. The plugin developed by Google replaces the default rendering engine of Internet Explorer with Google Chrome. What you get is the User Interface of Internet Explorer and the rendering capabilities of  Google Chrome – including a native WebGL implementation.

As an IE user, we recommend you install the Chrome Frame plugin to experience the full power of X3DOM. As a developer, you can target the Chrome Frame rendering engine, by placing the following meta tag in your HTML head section:

    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1" />

Alternatively, if you do not want to edit all your HTML files for this, you can set a HTTP header on your server to trigger Chrome Frame. More info can be found here:

• Chrome Frame developer guide
• X3DOM documentation

Our X3DOM examples already use that technique to enable Chrome Frame if you have it installed.

Here’s a introduction of Chrome Frame by Google:

The WebGL Liver Anatomy Browser is developed within a german research project supported by the BMBF. The browser is part of a eLearning application and provides interactive web-based 3D models derived from patient-specific image data. 3D visualizations are accessible in real-time with a newly developed viewer based on X3D, X3DOM and WebGL.

The Portuguese research project called ColaDI, a national funded project led by inEvo, focused on developing a collaborative document management solution (DMS) for industrial design. The project uses X3DOM to show and annotate 3D models.

This external showcase by Tampere University of Technology, demonstrates displaying CAD-imported models in browser and changing the model on-the-fly from a simulation.

X3DOM is used to render a X3D model exported from a native CAD application. The model is update REAL-TIME from a Matlab simulation model. It also integrates the 3D view with our other tools like semantic search by capturing DOM events (video around 2:53). Interfacing with the simulation from the browser is done via WebSockets. It displays the performance X3DOM is capable of: latency for visualization is constantly less than 50-100 ms.