Welcome to the main project page for Xi3D, "(k)zee-three-dee" !

This project is based upon source code developed and released under open license by Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is independently being maintained by one of the original authors who currently serves as a Web3D.org Director.

Xi3D is a 3D scene graph and runtime for modeling and rendering X3D content. It was designed as a programmers toolkit to jumpstart VRML'97 browsers on Sun's Java3D. It contains example browsers, file converter utilities, sample tests, and at least 20 combined human years of development.

Several projects have sprung forth from the vrml-java3d days, including Xj3D ( yes 'J' ) which was the project from Sun to define XML - 3D over VRML'97 types that eventually became a very close proximate to the new X3D standard. Xj3D has branched off and has a large ammount of development in its own right, to the point that it really is not architecturally Xj3D anymore without being called a 2.0 or 3.0, and that is where Xi3D buds from, with different goals and interests in mind, the classic lite version.

The state of the code is remarkably decent, runs better now than ever. Needs some work to bring some of the newer X3D nodes in.

The specification team changed all of time and the meaning of "now" in the spec after much debate, it was determined that the time spec couldn't be determined and was completely and not compatilby rewritten rather than fix a simple math assumption. If anybody wants to talk about unit time loop events and synchronized interpolators, vs. hard time coded interpolators ( eg, this thing is set to go off at 8pm 12/19/02, how do I restart the simulation again? ) this is the place. Xi3D will adhere to the original intent of the time spec and do what it can to factor out infinity from the new one. A few half bakers dozen other odds and nuts to be trimmed and tightened, so expectations aside, the code will take some effort to get it to X3D 2003 compliance.

The other main thrust of this effort is to make X3D run on embedded systems. These may not have Java3D available. Xi3D will eventually do its own rendering. Much work has gone into this area by Aniviza, Inc. and needs to be integrated back into the code.