The present & future of Web3D
David P. Luebke · 2008
The Web3D concept has moved from a primarily academic enterprise to a commercial reality, and is poised to explode into a full-blown industry. But what shape will that industry take? The answer depends on the interplay of several converging trends that are fueling this growth. Increasing bandwidth makes remote rendering a reality. An ecosystem of content and "killer apps" has sprung up, catalyzed by massive multiplayer online games and more recently by social networking. Graphics hardware has made amazing strides in power and mobility. GPU computing has unleashed tremendous and ubiquitous computational horsepower in just the right place: at the edge. I will explore these trends, using examples drawn from commercial and academic efforts around the globe. Meanwhile, realities of commercial distribution have generated some growing pains and tough questions that I will discuss. Finally, looking through the lens of my own experience with real-time rendering, virtual tourism, GPU computing, and the GPU industry, I will speculate on the most important research problems facing Web3D researchers.