The current version of X3DOM extend the X3D Inline functionality with the possibility of reflection. If you include an external scene with the use of inline  into another scene, you can set the attribute “nameSpaceName”. This attribute causes the attached scene to be represented in the DOM. This feature makes it possible to access the elements inside the inlined scene with JavaScript.

This is an extension of the official specification, which does not yet include reflection.

If you inline a scene <inline nameSpaceName=’foo’ url=’someScene.x3d’ /> with a named element <Box id=’bar’ /> you can address this element with getElementById(‘foo__bar’).

The x3d specification describes eight 2D Nodes:

• Arc2D
• ArcClose2D (“PIE”/”CHORD”)
• Circle2D
• Disk2D
• Polyline2D
• Polypoint2D
• Rectangle2D
• TriangleSet2D.

Recently you can use it to build you scene in X3DOM.

This component and those nodes are not part of the X3DOM core but provides by a extra component plugin.

You can use it with include the Geometry2D.js component

The Attributes of all these components you could change with javascript. For example, you could change the length of the radius of Arc2D as follows:

In the new version of x3dom it is possible to use IndexedFaceSet nodes with concave polygons.

To use this features you only need to add an attribut like convex=’false’ to the IndexedFaceSet  element.

This features is realized on the basis of the Ear Clipping  algorithm. This algorithm has two restrictions:

• you should not use polygons with hole
• and you should not use polygons with overlap.

Example:

With the current developer build of X3DOM we provide a component system which allows you to load a core X3DOM library and then subsequently add extensions from separate files. You can also create your own extensions to X3DOM.

Resources:

• Documentation
• Example

TU Darmstadt offers two scholarships in Visual Computing technologies. One position has a strong focus on declarative 3D in the web (esp. X3DOM and WebGL development) :

• Declarative 3D in the Web – Efficient and flexible declaration and visualization of interactive 3D web content

The other one is more focused on the development of a software platform for Augmented and Mixed Reality applications:

• Visual Computing Platforms – A “unified reality” platform for a direct coupling of image analysis and synthesis metaphors

More information can be found here: http://www.gris.tu-darmstadt.de/home/jobs/

These PhD positions at the TU Darmstadt will give the possibility to perform the PhD studies in close cooperation with Fraunhofer IGD, an internationally renowned research institute. The scholarships are initially limited to two years and can be complemented with an additional contract at Fraunhofer IGD in Darmstadt.

The Technical University of Darmstadt is an equal opportunity employer. Women are especially encouraged to apply. Handicapped applicants with comparable qualification will be given preferential treatment.

In our ongoing mission to improve quality of X3DOM our recent addition is an attempt in creating a more comprehensive documentation. The new developer documentation focuses on developers who want to create applications using X3DOM. It features introduction, step-by-step guides, reference material, and notes on various topics of interest.

The documentation is in its very early stages and is in constant flux. We hope to release a stable documentation with the 1.3 release. In the interim, just consider it work in progress.  In order to constantly improve it we need help from you. We are especially interested in the needs of developers, things like

• what is your background (designer, web developer, etc.),
• what info do you need,
• which aspects should be emphasized,
• which are less important,

would help us in improving it. Patches and corrections are also most welcome, as are bug reports.

There is a new effort underway in order to improve code quality of X3DOM. In addition to the more casual functional tests, we started flesh out some  unit tests for portions of the library code. You can run the tests in your browser by visiting this link.

Test coverage is pretty low at the moment and we need help from the community to continuously improve that. Interested in getting involved with X3DOM? This is a very good opportunity to start. If tackling Unit tests seems too adventurous to you, no problem, the documentation needs some work as well.

In order to get involved, please contact us via the developers mailing list.

Today the W3C announced the Launch of Community Groups. We are proud to be co-founder of one of these groups. Our mission is to create a declarative standard for 3D content which will become a part of HTML. Feel free to join the ongoing discussion about how an integration of declarative 3D content should look like.

There will be two BOFs at Siggraph next week related to X3DOM. Both in Room 101:

“Web3D Consortium – Declarative 3D for the Web “, 9 Aug, 2:00-3:00
“X3D and HTML5/X3DOM”, 10 Aug, 3:15-4:30

Come by if you would like to talk to x3dom developer, see some new demos or even better: Show your own related stuff.

Following up Michael’s and Jens’  Kinect-Experiment: Freezing like Han Solo earlier this year, we ported their Processing version to our instantreality platform.

Come meet us at Siggraph, booth #814, Vancouver, and get freezed through our demo and learn about the power of instantreality, X3D and X3DOM which livens every single triangle and all your 3D content in your browser — plugin-free.

The wonderful blender 2.5 tool comes with an improved X3D exporter and now X3DOM is even featured on blendernation.com. Looks like an content path we really should build on even further.

The internet is reaching the next dimension. Three-dimensional content adds value to the web. Fraunhofer IGD invites participants to discuss the future of the internet together with representatives from research and business.

What used to be only possible with additional programs will be directly visible in the browser. Together with our partners, we are working on standards which will make this possible. On August 17, 2011, we will discuss the solutions so far available on the market together with designers and users at our Science-meets-Business workshop “WWW goes 3D” in Darmstadt.

The workshop is focused on researcher, developer and user in Germany and hold in German. The programm and more informations you can find at www.goes-3d.de (in German).

We have moved our main Repository from SourceForge to GitHub. We think that this will facilitate the community development of X3DOM through the Fork and Pull convenience.

The X3DOM/VCST team (Johannes, Tobias, Karsten, and Yvonne — except for Timm, who has fun in Spain) is currently at Web3D 2011 in Paris for presenting our latest paper on X3DOM. So, if you’re around, feel free to ask or discuss topics…

EDIT: Below is a photo of the first “Declarative 3D – W3C Community Group Meeting”, which took place directly after the conference on June 22nd.

We already have a quite active forum, but some users (and developers) really prefer email-lists and there it is:

x3dom-users@lists.sourceforge.net

Feel free to post any question, comment or links to your own cool x3dom-application on the list.

(Side node: This is still hosted on sourceforge even so we will move the code repository to github soon, but github does not provide email-lists.)

The X3D spec includes the SAI (Scene access interface ) API to manipulate the scene during runtime. X3DOM uses the DOM for this purpose. However, we need a small API to access runtime properties which are not reflected through the DOM-structure. Therefore we have started to create an runtime API for X3DOM. Such an API would allow the developer to access and modify various runtime dependent parameters of the 3D scene and the renderer. For example: resetting views, cycling cameras or changing navigation modes. We are pleased to annouce that a first revision of this API is now available in the latest development version of X3DOM.

You will find examples of API functionality in action here: http://x3dom.org/x3dom/example/x3dom_runtime.html

Developer API documentation can be found at: http://x3dom.org/x3dom/doc/api/ (we are still improving this, so give us some slack on that front).

Be aware that this API might change until the next stable release of X3DOM. If you are hotlinking the development version from this sever, please track the commit logs of the source repository for changes that might break your code.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy experimenting with the new API functionality and we are very appreciative of any feedback you might have.

With the latest development release of X3DOM we are utilizing requestAnimationFrame (here, and here) with browser that provide this feature. The developer versions of Chrome and Firefox (Chromium and Minefiled) already do so. With requestAnimationFrame, the scene is only redrawn when  it isvisible. Hence saving a considerable amount of CPU/GPU power when the browser window/tab is hidden.

There are some people who have issues with the latest Firefox and Chrome versions and x3dom. This could be a driver related problem.

We have an official spot at the Fraunhofer booth (Hall 9, booth B36) and demo the latest x3dom.org and instantreality.org feature! This includes multi-touch-events, native ios-brower with “declarative vision pipeline” in HTML and X3DOM running in Internet-Explorer utilizing the IR-plugin.

Come by to see some interesting demos, talk to the developers and chat about the idea, design and implementation issues you have. Look for the large L-shaped multi-touch table!

Good news for all people who prefer to work with a DCVS. We created a nightly updated mirror of our Subversion repository on GitHub.

https://github.com/x3dom/x3dom

We also would like to try the GitHub issue tracker, so feel free to report issues there.

https://github.com/x3dom/x3dom/issues

Of course, we are open for pull requests.