Creating 3D Worlds with HTML and CSS (2013)
I remember the promise of VRML, but never had a machine powerful enough to render anything but the simplest examples.
I worked on SGI machines at the time and even that wasn't powerful enough. Even though Indy was dubbed as "the web machine" (I worked on Indigo2). It was a bit too early when it was promised.
wild that I booted up my SGI O2 the other night just to remember the name of the tech used in the demos that ran inside Netscape! And then spent a whole while reading about VRML.
I wish we had something as easy to deploy interactive experiences on the web like that today.
Well, you can still use it — the plugins are dead but there's a couple of JS libraries that will render VRML files in the browser using WebGL:
the VRML people migrated to X3D https://webx3d.org/
I don't believe it ever had any real uptake. It arguably has (had?) lots of issues.
Is there any universe where CSS can do 60fps?
My guy here did what Sega Saturn's VDP1 did. Instead of triangle based rendering, which most did, Saturn used quads, or "distorted sprites" to do 3D. Trivia: Nvidia's first accelerator NV1 was based on what VDP1 did and also used quads and failed on the market (mostly due to it).
Both three.js and Lume have css 3d renderers, fwiw. I forget where there.js is but Lume's also supports a mixed mode too.
https://docs.lume.io/guide/rendering-modes https://threejs.org/docs/#examples/en/renderers/CSS3DRendere...
I don't think either has lighting though! Holy macrel!
Looks like Lume is a layer atop Three.js?