Applications and Tools, Virtual World Platforms, Visualization in 3D

Standards-Based Mirror World Under Development

Damon at the Metaverse One blog recently wrote about X3D-Earth, a new ‘extensible 3D (X3D) Earth project’ under development by the Web 3D Consortium.

X3D is intended to be used by just about everyone. The X3D Web site describes the mission: “The X3D-Earth project will create a standards-based 3D visualization infrastructure for visualizing all manner of real-world objects and information constructs in a geospatial context.” It is funded by the National Science Foundation and its suppoters include the World Wide Web Consortium and the Open Geospatial Consortium.

The flip-side to X3D is Google Earth (GE), which is the most widely-used mirror world right now. But Damon takes issue with the fact that GE is owned by a company.

Google Earth, he writes, is “not a true mirror world in the sense that no one entity owns our real planet…these 3D cities and other building information models are simply too resource-intensive to be effectively developed by any isolated group or single company.”

According to Damon, “The X3D-Earth project will create a standards-based 3D visualization infrastructure for visualizing all manner of real-world objects and information constructs in a geospatial context.” His blog contains some nifty videos and screenshots of the X3D development.

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