Web3D applications have been actively pursued by many organizations for quite some time. This community has spearheaded the development of the VRML 1.0 and 2.0 specifications, as well as other standards. On one hand, organizations such as the Web3D Consortium provide forums for the creation of open standards for Web3D specifications and to accelerate the worldwide demand for products based on these standards. On the other hand, companies and individuals are constantly pushing the boundaries of the standards and defining their own workflows and applications to author, publish and stream 3D content on the web.

Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to present an evening dedicated to Web 3D. This evening will cover the topic from two different but complementary points of view:

FreeWRL and 3D Standards on the Web
John Stuart will explore the Web3D by presenting the open-source FreeWRL project. He will also discuss some of the existing Web3D standards and talk about the web3d consortium.

The Design Challenges of Interactive Web3D
Anthony Reed and Benoit Cloutier will present the challenges of designing interactive Web3D content and authoring tools. They will demonstrate AXEL, an authoring solution for high-impact, programming-free, interactive 3D web content.