

The 3D Web Fest happened on May 13th in San Francisco, and Silicon Publishing was in attendance. Click on the links below (directly from the event program) to see some stunning WebGL (generally view in Chrome for best results):



From a music-enabled modern rendition of the classic "Pong" game, to interactive multimedia, to visualization of the human heart, to navigation of sophisticated 3D models, the offerings were completely eclectic, showing the wild breadth of 3D on the web as of 2015. Perhaps this is the last time we will see this sort of breadth at such an event: it was understandable to gather under the banner of "Web 3D" back when it was the dream of visionaries such as Tony Parisi, but now that technology has caught up to this vision, it enables such a vast number of use cases across completely diverse domains: there will have to be specialization at some point.

Tony Parisi is to Web 3D as Charles Goldfarb is to XML. Charles used to write his "XML Handbook" back in the day when XML was something new, yet by the 5th edition, he had to shoehorn in such an extreme number of XML use cases that it became untenable: from the config file to the eCommerce standard to the Web Services endpoint to the Help document... At some point XML became so broad in its applications that evangelization efforts were no longer needed and conferences would focus on specialized uses of the base technology. Tony is at a similar point in his career championing this cause: he won, it's everywhere, we soon won't be able to keep track of all of it.

There is art, there is science, and this technology is most frequently straddling the two. Character Study, for example, lets you try "multiple characters mode" to "stress test" the character models while you "play with gravity." You can thus see dozens of geeks fall through the virtual floor or ascend to virtual heaven.

It is clear that this is still just the beginning, especially when it comes to input devices and the ways people interact with 3D rendition. While mouse interaction is a common input to most of these demos, some interface with gamepad, Leap Motion, or other types of input device. "Just a Reflektor" is quite stunning in this respect, as it lets you use your smart phone to control your PC screen, with synchronized music coming out of both.

And of course while most demos had to be shown on a 2D screen for practicality, plenty of the content would be better suited to an immersive 3D experience as we'll have when "head-mounted displays" become somewhat standardized and alot less clunky. So there is plenty to look forward to.

All in all it was a very exciting event, with some incredible talent in terms of both art and science. The 3D Web is here.