Project Goals
Strict conformance to open standards (X3D,XML,Open GL 2.0)
Implement the X3D immersive profile and XML Encoding Format
Leverage the new capabilities offered by J2SE 1.5+,StaX, and JOGL (soon to be JSR 231 compliant) to create a performant X3D browser on current desktop PC harware
Component based architecture modeling that of the X3D specification offering plugability, in the same vein as EJB,OSGI,JBI,JBoss, and Apache Geronimo component models
Implements the X3D Java SAI API
Liberally licensed for use in commercial products or non-commercial projects
Premote the X3D standard
Background
X3D Standard
As stated at the X3D home page www.web3d.org,
"X3D is an Open Standards XML-enabled 3D file format to enable real-time communication of 3D data across all applications and network applications. It has a rich set of features for use in engineering and scientific visualization, CAD and Architecture, Medical visualization, Training and simulation, multimedia, entertainment, educational, and more."
X3D is an an exciting royalty free standard that promises to propel the Web from a two dimensional text driven user experience to an interactive and immersive three dimensional content driven one. This specification has been developed of several years and is a mature, International Standards Organization (ISO) approved standard. Benefits of the standard include:
Open File Format- content is compatible between X3D implementations
Event/Routing Model- Dynamic scenes can be created without the need of procedural coding
Prototyping- new X3D nodes can be added and defined in a standard way
Java Scene Access Interace (SAI) for programatic access to X3D Scenes
specification ammendment that supports OpenGl 2.0 shaders
Java based Implementation Capabilities
Java is the ideal language to implement the X3D specification, as allready proven by the Xj3D Project. However, in the last year Java has added new and planned capabilites to the J2SE platform that may be leveraged to develop a performant X3D Browser
Java gaming- Work has been underway to turn the Java platform into a gaming platform. This includes JSR 231 - Java bindings for OpenGL as well as performance optimizations that are in J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 6.0
Java webstart - the ideal delivery mechanism for a X3D browser. Webstart supports pack200 compression for small download size, versioning and caching, and MIME integration with the OS
Java Annotations - declarative programming that may used to simplify a browsers coding model. For example, annotiations may describe component and dependencies that are managed at compile time
java.nio - allows faster data transfer between Java and the native OS, used extensively in JOGL
java.util.concurrent- exciting new performance enhancing API for multithreading, which is required in any X3D browser implementation
java.util.prefs - storing X3D browser configuration in a configurable, hierachial manor
java management (JMX) - provides browser management capabilities for introspecting configuration and runtime state
staX - streaming API for XML processing, defines a pull model for processing, simplifies procedural XML processing and is performant
JSR 223 scripting support - standard java API's for supporting scripting. X3D requires ECMA script support which can be implemented in a standard, plugable fashion
Road Map
Completion of the NeXus3D Hello World Proof of Concept
Open evaluation and review of component architecture, XML processing model,event model, and rendering pipeline
Definition and implemention of final component model framework, event model, and rendering pipeline
port existing POC Helo World code to final framework and release 0.1
Refine geometry, grouping, and text components and add shader support and release up to 0.5
Further refine components needed for imersive profile support and focus on scripting support and release up to 0.7
Focus on X3D conformance testing and bug fixes release 1.0
Expand component support levels
X3D Full sport
