I am a fundamental believer in the power of open standards.  I think that most of the key standards that the web is built on are open standards.  It's the internet way, itâs the way to build rapid momentum.   There are lots of cool 3D technologies out there, a great long list of proprietary technologies.  Lots of super innovation is going on that the industry will really benefit from, but if we donât have a foundation of open standards, weâre just going to end up what I call "Babelizing" the 3D web.  There will be a mish-mash of different technologies that don't inter-operate together.  Each is very good at their own specific application focus, but aren't a complete, broad, general-purpose solution.  The reason why I'm involved in the Web3D Consortium is, I think that the open standards route is the best way to grow the market for 3D on the web.  If we look around in the industry, it's important to remind ourselves that the Web3D Consortium is currently the ONLY open, industry forum that's working on open standards for 3D on the web.  There is no other.  The Consortium is in a pivotal role in the industry.  In addition, they have done a very good thing in forging cooperative partnerships with the W3C - the architects of most of the key web standards. What this says is that when they need 3D, they will come to the Web3D Consortium to get their 3D standards.  By this partnership, VRML97 and X3D will be W3C's play in 3D.  This a very fundamental dynamic.

 The other good cooperative relationship we have is with MPEG 4: the group of companies doing the MPEG standard which includes 3D based on VRML97.  As X3D gets developed, we are working hard to ensure that this cooperative relationship continues.  So as MPEG4 evolves and needs more advanced 3D, that 3D component will be X3D.  These 2 very influential bodies out there are directly basing their 3D initiatives on the work of the Consortium.  So we are in a very central and pivotal position·

 And X3D is the ball all these players will use·  How is the spec developing?

A recent thread on the VRML mailing list asked this question which web developers are constantly faced from their management or clients:
IS VRML DEAD? and Why?
If it isn't dead, surely you acknowledge that it has gotten a bad reputation·

First of all, the VRML97 specification is a great specification.  There's nothing wrong with it from a technical point of view.  It is enabling for a whole bunch of applications out there.  As you correctly say, the failure is largely because VRML97 was· it wasn't deliberate- there was so much excitement about the original concept of 3D on the web, but inevitably it caused a lot of people to think ahead and dream of what 3D will be on the web one day.  When the reality hit home that ãWait- we don't really know what to do with 3D on the web yetä - the fact that this is going to take a little bit longer than people had originally imagined - the blame for that got laid at VRMLâs door which is not fair because in reality, VRML97 is the first step and a good positive first step to making 3D on the internet a reality.  We are beginning to understand that itâs not going to happen overnight. 

People say, "Well, why hasnât 3D on the internet happened overnight?".  I say, "Well, how can you expect 3D to happen in the internet overnight when haven't yet figured out what 3D is good for on the mainstream desktop."  Forget the Multi-User, forget the internet as a medium .. normal people at this point donât use 3D on their desktops· devout game players do· people frag-ing each other in Quake.. or using workstations to do CAD or DCC·  but thereâs no one in the middle .  I think the natural evolution of the way that 3D is going to make it onto the internet is,  first we have to figure out useful user interfaces and useful applications on the desktop, and then the Web3D Consortium is working to make sure those useful paradigms can be naturally extended out across the internet.  That's the evolutionary part that we need.

When thinking about useful interfaces for the end-user, How about applications like e-commerce, product demos, and online shopping?

I would agree that getting the geometry into the file format is a major task.  I was excited to hear of some cool tools coming out of the west coast like video capture & video modeling tools. 

Now, we hear all this talk about VRML being dead, and Iâm surfing the web- places like Sandy Resslerâs site and finding that in the last year or two that many educational institutions and colleges are beginning to sponsor research and courses using VRML97. 

And as you say, this learning process is going on right now, today.  It's in universities, it is out there in commercial websites, not mainstream, but it's there and itâs growing.  Itâs a necessary step I believe in making 3D a reality and itâs happening at a pace that is commensurate with the size of the problem- itâs not a trivial problem to get the authoring tools, the content, and user interfaces that are actually useful, not just gimmicky.  So it's important to get people to realize that 3D is building momentum.  The good news is that VRML97 is the foundation for lots of stuff and thereâs lots of learning going on.  The bad news at the moment is the notion that since we haven't gone hyper-exponential with web 3D, that it is a failure; thatâs unfortunate but we'll work through that.

There have been some great milestones lately as the X3D Task Group has posted their deliverables for the W3C which include a spec and implementation, authoring tools· what happens between now and Feb when we come to Monterey?

Excellent answer!  So MPEG4 is about streaming media- geometry and animations right?

 From a logical point of view the rewards of partnership are potentially huge because the MPEG4 peopleâs area of expertise is not 3D so they've benefited substantially from taking the encapsulation of our expertise (VRML97) and taking it into their work, saving them years of first principle design. 
On our side, we can benefit because MPEG4 are the masters of streaming technology.  They have put a lot of thought into how you stream 3D and synchronize 3D with other media types that are being streamed concurrently.  If we leverage their work, we can save ourselves years of work trying to figure that out.  The only potential barrier is: Can we find our way through the Intellectual Property minefield?  That's something we are working on right now.  We send representatives to their meetings and are positively working for resolution on that.

That brings up a question: Does MPEG4 present any conflict with an open standard like SMIL technology which is endorsed by the W3C and attempts to solve the same problem space?

It is interesting seeing the Web 3D Consortium and the W3C continue to go down the "IP-free" route, and the MPEG4 folks continue to go down their proven successful path of "IP-laden" standards.  I think because the tech advantages to finding common ground· MP3 is an IP laden standard, but most people who are downloading MP3 and playing them on their PC and Rio players donât really realize that's the case because the MP3 royalty model is one that burdens the production tools and authoring, not the listener.

Many VRML purists throw their hands up in horror saying, "You can't make X3D have a license fee!"  I think everyone in the Consortium is doing every thing they can to avoid that but potentially the advantages may be high enough that some compromise might be appropriate down the line.  Weâre not discounting that.  A vote recently inside the Consortium voted to continue to work with MPEG4 to try and find resolution on this issue. 

There are a number of companies and contributors in on building the X3D spec and browser implementations.  Some of the core implementations are down to 50-100 k!  Is it true that these contributors have signed off on Intellectual Property Rights for the Core and the full VRML97 Profile?

Is this the goal for the Core Profile or the VRML97 Profile?

Going forward, once we do make the transition to X3D, the componentized architecture is such a powerful tool for building industry momentum.  To compare the power of engagement of X3D with this architecture versus the good but monolithic standard that is VRML97, it's so much more enabling.  Put yourself in the position of a Working Group inside the Web 3D Consortium, for example, working on a specialized application like geographic visualization on the web.  If I'm working on that in the context of VRML97, how do I get it deployed?  Basically, you have to convince a browser vendor to implement your neat bits and tricks.  That is pretty nigh-well impossible.  There is a lot of good work going on inside the Working Groups, but none of them have had an outlet for all their good ideas and efforts.  With X3D, because we have a componentized architecture, any constituency can develop its own components to plug-in to the X3D framework and be totally enabled to provide precisely the capabilities that their particular market segment needs.  That's a fundamentally different and more positive dynamic than we have with VRML97.

Much more in the egalitarian philosophy of the internet.  There was a thread on the VRML list about John Carmack's (of ID software) statement that proprietary efforts for 3D would win out because they are more funded and focused and unencumbered by the standards process. Does the Consortium have a strategy to change this kind of mentality among various companies building pieces of the puzzle in proprietary technologies?

We want the Consortium to be the natural forum that they come to help make 3D as pervasive as we all want it to be.  This goes back to our changing the name and charter of the Consortium about a year ago from the VRML Consortium to the Web3D Consortium. This change was an external instantiation of a fundamental philosophy shift because frankly, we were initially set up and funded to do one thing and that was VRML.  But it very quickly became clear that as soon as anything else came up that was good from a technological point of view, but wasnât VRML, these religious wars broke out· weird negative discussions started up.  It seemed more important to bring in all these good ideas if possible, and work in a more cooperative forum to reduce this Babelization and work towards more inter-operability. 

So now the reality is that if there is a company out there that has a 3D technology for the web, there are a number of different levels they can come, join and engage with the Consortium to reduce Babelization. If they see an advantage in the open standard route for their own technology a company can join and put their own technology through the standardization process that we have proven in the Consortium. We will work to standardize any appropriate piece of technology that will further 3D on the web. It will have to be voted for by the membership, so you won't get some useless or irrelevant technology through the process. The minimum that any company involved with 3D on the Web should do is work inside the Consortium to encourage interoperability between their technology and other 3D standards - including VRML97 and X3D.

Now, as we have this componentized architecture in X3D there is a third way that a company with 3D technology can engage with the Consortium, I am hoping that companies will join the Consortium and convert their proprietary technologies into X3D components.   Some might see advantage in making their component open-source, some may want to keep its internal working closed, itâs up to them.  By working within the Consortium, they can make sure their component inter-operates correctly with X3D and other components being developed.  With these multiple levels of engagement, we are going out there to use X3D as a tool for unification rather than a tool for dividing. 

We are considering expanding membership to individuals.  We are taking the membership votes and doing the math.  We want to enable people getting involved, we donât want the financial barrier to be one that would prevent people from contributing.  It should not be the sole prevention for people to come in and get involved.  We need to have a critical mass to reach its full potential.  We are getting feedback that we should have a membership more conducive to small companies and individuals engaging with us.  We will probably sort out this policy in January.

Some of the most exciting developments are the proposed hardware accelerated functionalities for X3D.  A new level of rendering and visual aesthetic beyond what we experience with VRML97 is on the horizon.

We now have a functional VRML97 to X3D converter.  They have proven it has 100% VRML97 compliance already, and its up and running.  NIST is already running through their VRML97 conformance suites with is and it working.

Oooh! So thatâs another GREAT piece of the puzzle!

We have covered a lot of great stuff! 
In the August issue of 3D (gate) magazine, you predicted that:
 "In two yearsâ time, our desktops will be all 3D.  In another year or so, with the exception of data thatâs better done in 2D, the web could go all 3D."
Could you comment on that further? 
Are we really on target for your prediction?

As you probably know, there is a huge chasm in the operating system between 2D and 3D.  In Windows, you use GDI for 2D stuff, and you use Direct 3D or Open GL for 3D and the 2 don't meet.  You canât make a 3D object and composit into a 2D web or wod window.  Youâre not able to do it.  GDI+ brings them together.  Thatâs a technological enabler· but the hope is that all the PHDs up in Redmond are working on cool 3D user-interfaces that exploit that GDI+ technology and begin to make 3D a useful element in the user-interface of the Operating System itself.  If the can do that, I think you will see the floodgates open and the 3D user-interface elements will become basic throughout applications as well and youâll get into that upward spiral.  I think- and hope- that thats going to be the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place and make 3D pervasive.  That can happen in the next couple of years, and hence my prediction.

Neil, thank you so much!  You've really given a lot of perspective on the industry and how its evolving.  Thanks for your time!

Neil: You're more than welcome·