You can now register online for Web3D 2012 at Los Angeles, 4-5 August 2012. The Web3D 2012 is the 17th annual conference International Conference on 3D Web Technology. Registration information is at http://web3d2012.org/registration.html, including a link to the on-line form. Early registration is until 18 June 2012.

X3D authors now have an excellent new tool for checking their scenes. The X3D Validator bundles a comprehensive suite of tests to help ensure the quality of X3D scenes and metadata. Because X3D has an XML encoding, multiple Web-based verification checks have been integrated into a single comprehensive tool. Validation tests include:

• XML header and DOCTYPE checking for correct document headers
• Well-formed XML checking
• X3D DTD and XML Schema checking for valid X3D nodes, fields and values
• X3D Schematron rule checking to verify semantic correctness and detect internal-consistency problems
• X3D to ClassicVRML conversion checks a variety of legal X3D constructs
• Regular expression checking for malformed floating-point numbers and excess leading zeros
• X3D to XHTML pretty-print listing to check online URL links and to document ROUTE connections

Eliminating errors and warnings makes X3D content more portable and reliable. All of the several thousand scenes that are checked into the X3D Example Archives undergo these checks each night through continuous-integration Jenkins builds.

This work is entirely open source and produced by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) Institute.

The test suite is quite flexible and is capable of running via a Web server, in authoring tools (such as X3D-Edit), as part of conversion tool chains, and in offline build processes.

The X3D Specifications, produced by the Web3D Consortium for the International Standards Organization (ISO), remains the authoritative formal reference for determining correctness of all X3D scenes.

References:
https://savage.nps.edu/X3dValidator
http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/X3dResources.html#QualityAssur...

The Web3D Consortium is pleased to announce that Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), has advanced its Web3D Consortium membership level to Directing Member. Virginia Tech (VT) has been an active Organizational member in the Web3D Consortium since 2007, contributing to the significant progress of several Web3D Technical Working Groups including X3D, X3D-Earth, User Interface and Medical.

VT's move to Directing Membership in the Web3D Consortium is a recognition of the acute importance of international standards development and support in the ecology of networked information and services. As research, education and commercial enterprises are increasingly managing interactive, time-varying virtual environments, cross-platform publishing can only scale through the portability, interoperability and durability that standards provide.
 

The annual ACM Web3D Conference is a major event that gathers researchers, developers, entrepreneurs, experimenters, artists, and content creators in a dynamic environment. Attendees can share and explore methods of using, enhancing, and creating new 3D Web and Multimedia technologies, such as WebGL and HTML5 (which is a hot topic in Computer Graphics), Flash/ Stage 3D, X3D, COLLADA, and the MPEG family. The conference highlights capabilities and trends in interactive 3D graphics across a wide range of applications and supports research from mobile devices up to high-end immersive environments.

The conference site is http://www.web3d2012.org/

Topics

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
 

• Modeling, processing, analysis and rendering of complex geometry, structure, and behaviors
• 3D search, shape matching and indexing
• Rendering algorithms and standardization and visualization of large data sets
• Interaction methods for online 3D content
• Interactive 3D graphics for mobile devices
• Mixed and Augmented Reality (including standardization aspects)
• Agents, animated humanoids, and complex reactive characters
• Remote rendering and streaming
• Stereo and multi-view visualization of 3D graphic interfaces
• High-performance 3D graphics for distributed environments, tele-presence, tele-operation, and 3D broadcasting
• Web, multimedia and standards integration and interoperation.

Authors are also invited to submit advances in the above technologies applied to multimedia applications in:
 

• Automotive, Security, Transport Industries
• Life sciences and healthcare
• Geospatial modeling and digital cities
• Public sector and tourism
• Cultural heritage and E-learning.

The full call for papers is at http://web3d2012.org/submission.html.

You are invited to submit your papers to the workshop. The workshop aims to encourage researchers and practitioners from both the Web and 3D graphics communities to meet and talk about an integration of interactive 3D graphics capabilities into the Web technology stack in a declarative way.

Workshop webpage: http://events.declarative3d.org/Dec3D2012/

Topics

Topics of interest for the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Declarative 3D Use-Cases and Requirements: Discussion of the use cases, where embedding 3D data in HTML using declarative approach provides significant benefit; deduction of the requirements for the D3D specification.
• Declarative 3D and DOM: Discussion of integration of 3D with existing and future W3C standards, specifically: integration of high-level scene concepts; integration with client and server side rendering services, 3D REST; integration with existing security aspects for content delivery and visualization; content portability and platform independence.
• Declarative 3D in current web browsers: Exploring how the incorporation of declarative 3D graphics can be done in currently popular web browsers (e.g., by using WebGL in WebKit or Gecko); what are the possible difficulties?
• Semantics of 3D objects in DOM: Discussion of how descriptive 3D can be combined with semantics. This includes topics such as querying and manipulation of graphical objects, mash-up from several sources, integration of RDF technology, creation of useful APIs based on web services etc
• Declarative 3D User Interface Issues: Novel interfaces and interaction methods for online 3D + HTML content; mobile 3D Web interfaces, interaction techniques; accessibility and usability of 3D Web content.

Submissions

We seek three kinds of submissions:

• Full technical papers – should not exceed eight pages in length in ACM format;
• Short technical papers and position papers – up to four pages in ACM format;
• Demo descriptions – two-page description of the application in ACM format, ideally accompanied with a link to a demo;

Submissions must be formatted using the ACM SIG Proceedings Templates. Please note that the author list does not need to be anonymized, as we do not follow a double-blind review process.

Speed and memory improvements such as X3D binary geometry compression, script sharing, geometry instancing, a new BS SDK update and many more features result in the best BS Contact ever. BS Contact 8.0 offers besides a new designed optional user interface, a game pad interface and multi-touch screen functionality. This new release gives you substantial benefits compared to former versions as it was designed with the goal of rendering speed and alocated memory optimization and comes with a download speed gain of 3D assets and scenes for content authors. So using BS Contact 8.0 can bring you performance leaps of your 3D projects in well prepared cases of more than 50 percent.

Newsletter December: http://www.bitmanagement.de/newsletter/201112.en.html

Technical release notes: http://www.bitmanagement.com/developer/contact/relnotes8.html