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Ask Slashdot: Why Doesn't the Internet In 2019 Use More Interactive 3D? 153

Posted by BeauHD from the then-and-now dept.
dryriver writes: For the benefit of those who are not much into 3D technologies, as far back as the year 2000 and even earlier, there was excitement about "Web3D" -- interactive 3D content embedded in HTML webpages, using technologies like VRML and ShockWave 3D. 2D vector-based Flash and Flash animation was a big deal back then. Very popular with internet users. The more powerful but less installed ShockWave browser plugin -- also made by Macromedia -- got a fairly capable DirectX 7/OpenGL-based realtime 3D engine developed by Intel Labs around 2001 that could put 3D games, 3D product configurators and VR-style building/environment walkthroughs into an HTML page, and also go full-screen on demand. There were significant problems on the hardware side -- 20 years ago, not every PC or Mac connected to the internet had a decently capable 3D GPU by a long shot. But the 3D software technology was there, it was promising even then, and somehow it died -- ShockWave3D was neglected and killed off by Adobe shortly after they bought Macromedia, and VRML died pretty much on its own.

Now we are in 2019. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, PCs/Macs as well as Game Consoles have powerful 3D GPUs in them that could render great interactive 3D experiences in a web browser. The hardware is there, but 99% of the internet today is in flat 2D. Why is this? Why do tens of millions of gamers spend hours in 3D game worlds every day, and even the websites that cater to this "3D loving" demographic use nothing but text, 2D JPEGs and 2D YouTube videos on their webpages? Everything 3D -- 3D software, 3D hardware, 3D programming and scripting languages -- is far more evolved than it was around 2000. And yet there appears to be very little interest in putting interactive 3D anything into webpages. What causes this? Do people want to go into the 2020s with a 2D-based internet? Is the future of the internet text, 2D images, and streaming 2D videos?
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Ask Slashdot: Why Doesn't the Internet In 2019 Use More Interactive 3D?

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  • As if it's not bloated enough already!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:28PM (#59229218) Journal
    Seriously?

    • Ha! CHTST

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )

      It doesn't have to be. When WebGL was fairly new, I made a photo gallery with nice smooth zooms, transitions, geotagged maps, and all sorts of stuff. It was like 500 lines of JS. But of course modern web "developers" need 20 different frameworks to make a clickable button so who knows what they'd do with it.

      I'm not at all surprised that the /. reaction is overwhelmingly negative, but I disagree. Not that everything has to be 3d, but there are countless scenarios where it would be extremely beneficial. Thing

      • You responded to a question of "why don't people do X" with a list of reasons that they could do X. I don't think you get how this works. Given what you wrote, why don't people do X?

  • Because itâ(TM)s inefficient and stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:30PM (#59229224)

    Text is a 2D experience. Itâ(TM)s the most efficient way we have to cram information into our heads.

    2D video is an extension of that. You look at the screen and you see stuff. 3D TV was a hilarious flop because nobody wants to wear stupid shit on their head. They want to sit down and look at a video.

    3D is huge, where it belongs, in video games.

    Itâ(TM)s that simple.

    • ..and for the love of all that you find holy fix the ducking text boxes on mobile devices here. Itâ(TM)s almost 2020!

      • I'm on mobile and my textboxes don't duck. Maybe it's just your iPhone's 3d touch making them duck.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )

        ..and for the love of all that you find holy fix the ducking text boxes on mobile devices here. Itâ(TM)s almost 2020!

        Maybe get a phone that doesn't screw with the text so bad it can't be rendered properly on PC's and non iDevices. Perhaps then you will find the text boxes look proper as well.

        • It's not the phone, it's Slashdot (though it would be nice if iPhone users could disable this quickly and easily). A Right curved single quote [fileformat.info], or apostrophe, is proper typography. I mean, come on - it's 2019! (’, that is). ’

      • ..and for the love of all that you find holy fix the ducking text boxes on mobile devices here. Itâ(TM)s almost 2020!

        You know your iDevice has an option to type normal apostrophes, right?

    • Text is a 2D experience.

      I am flat earther. Our world is 2D anyway.

      Y'all been reading too much String Theory . . . when they hit a problem, they just add another imaginary dimension too "fix" it!

      • Flat Earther's believe in 3-D. The flat-earther debate is about whether any point in the world is more appropriately described by Cartesian rectlinear co-ordinates [wolfram.com] or spherical co-ordinate systems [wolfram.com].

        The 2-D vs 3-D debate is a major subject in both fine art and graphics arts. Many artists believe in the power of 2-D. It allows the expression of non-physically realizable images. Some of the most famous stunts in Star Wars (the original) were against matte screens. It's much easier to create a 3-D lookin

    • But pop-up books are much better than old 2d books!

    • No, it was because 3D-ready TVs exploited a side-effect of the way DLP light engines did "diagonal" interlacing that made it almost a "freebie" feature to add (requiring little more than a way to externally signal to shutter glasses whether the TV was drawing a 'left' or 'right' view), but by the time the Blu-Ray association FINALLY got its shit together, DLP was essentially dead... and 3d just didn't work well at all with the LCD TVs available at the time (ghosting, crosstalk, etc).

      I believe 3-chip DLP had

    • Itâ(TM)s the most efficient way we have to cram information into our heads.

      I can not get behind this reasoning at all. To be clear there are many reasons, but depending on the information conveyed a 3D interactive model can be worth more than an entire textbook of text.

      3D TV was a hilarious flop because nobody wants to wear stupid shit on their head.

      Likewise this. "stupid shit"? I take it you've never been outside and worn stupid shit to protect your eyes from UV, or wear "stupid shit" to correct you nearsightedness? Again 3D in the living room failed for many technical and non technical reasons, but none of those had to do with having to wear glasses.

      Itâ(TM)s that simple.

      No it is

  • Because . . . . reasons (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:36PM (#59229246)

    Reasons:

    1) 3D isn't easy to do. Requires specialized knowledge, software, experience and LOTS OF TIME to get it right.
    2) Do you really need a Blue Ribbon, Gold Plated, spotlights and fireworks presentation for EVERYTHING ? ( no )

    Basically, you don't need over the top presentations for the mundane when a simple photo and a block of text will do.

    • Yeah, although I admit I want to put 3d on my website, I don't have anywhere near the artistic skills required to actually do it. That is hard, and most artists can't either.

      • And you're already skipping the most important question: Do you have content that would profit from 3D on your website?

        Hiring skill and development time boil down to just a price tag for commercial site and spending more money may be worth it - if but only IF you have content.

        • >Do you have content that would profit from 3D on your website?

          What does that have to do with anything? Modern web design seems to amount to hiding any and all useful content behind a maze of useless glitz and as many ads as they think their visitors will tolerate.

          The cost of course is a separate issue - but the fact that there's so many web designers building mazes of counter-productive glitz suggests employers are quite willing to pay extra to reduce the value of their site.

        • Not in particular, but most websites don't benefit from images, either. It's mostly a bunch of stock images to get your attention (like Medium for the most obvious example)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tsa ( 15680 )

      Over the top presentations make me leave the page because the fancier the presentation, the worse the product must be.

  • Because no one wants it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ugen ( 93902 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:36PM (#59229248)

    There, that's your answer.

    • No one wants it, there are no unified or compatible hardware platforms, there is no real media, there is no real fun, can't be done on mobiles (with any sanity, see ditch full of failures), there are very few reasonably-priced development platforms, and no real market.

      Worse, some parts of the Internet still work with speeds that were hot in 1998. Get some congestion, and 3D falls not only flat, but fails miserably.

      Did I mention dearth of content, and nobody gives a fsck?

    • Everything I see all day every day is 3D. Why would I need more?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Gonoff ( 88518 )

        Everything I see all day every day is 3D. Why would I need more?

        Most of the things I deal with are 2D items - books, TV, keyboards, monitor screens and so on.

        A few are only 1D - telephones, radio (I know stereo IDC), verbal communication etc.

        The item that affects society the most is politicians and they are 1D.

        Why do I need a 3D interface when I just navigate the 3D world to deal with the 2D things?

    • It's arguably even slightly simpler than that: TFS essentially excluded by definition all the cases where 3d environments(frequently though not exclusively coordinated over the internet for interactivity) are wildly popular; then asked why 3d wasn't more popular among the people not yet excluded.

      If there is an interesting question here at all, it's not why so much of the internet remains 2d media; but why browsers have not, for 3d applications, seized the crown of ubiquity through accessibility. Odds are

    • Re:Because no one wants it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fph il quozientatore ( 971015 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @07:29AM (#59230262)
      This. I already hate when people publish instructions as a video rather than text instructions with one or two well-placed pictures. I want text I can skim and search, not a video that will needlessly take away 10 minutes of my life and annoy everyone in the same room.
      • Depends on the subject. I've learned a ton about cooking from youtube videos. Doing the same thing based on text instructions is like reading something that was poorly translated. Being able to see the actions rather than read about them is much more accurate in that case.

  • As much as we want 3D to exist, it simply doesn't work yet. I've tried many, many systems and they're all somehow flawed.

    Whether it's the fact they don't work with corrective glasses or need special glasses of their own, they all need high frame-rates and high processing power and still can't quite match the frames together to make a non-glitchy experience that doesn't give you a throbbing migraine 15 minutes in.

    Doing it in a browser is (for now) a pipe dream because you won't be able to load the gigabytes

    • 3D with WebGL doesn't take all that much data over the wire. Textures might, but textures are often not even necessary for many apps. If you're looking to display a 3D rendered auto-part, for example, simple shaders are fine. And those don't take much bandwidth.

  • 1. Accessibility laws: https://www.w3.org/WAI/policie... [w3.org]
    2. Harder to make 3d sites, costs more money, takes more time, etc.
    3. No additional benefit in 99% of cases.
    -Faster navigation by links and search box
    -Difficult/impossible to select/copy text in a 3d environment
    -No agreed upon standards for a 3d interface
    -Many users would be unfamiliar unable to technically use a 3d enviroment
    -Users go to pages for text/image/video content, and can already accomplish this goal without 3d

    I'm sure theres more reasons but

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )

      To add to your list:

      - Flash, shockwave, directx, java applets, and most other methods we used for those GUIs turned out to be massive security vulnerabilities

      Also... I was a developer on a site where the customer really wanted a kind of 'visual' search that would be the focus of that aspect of the site. We implemented it, and it worked great, and it was pretty to look at, and the customer was happy. So we put it in production. Time passed, and they wanted to refresh the site, and we started out by looking a

      • Curl [wikipedia.org]

      • To add to your list:

        - Flash, shockwave, directx, java applets, and most other methods we used for those GUIs turned out to be massive security vulnerabilities

        And that even probably could have been fixed over time if not every one of these were more or less closed platforms. When flash went down due to said problems, all the flash content went with it. An insecure VRML player could have been replaced with a new player just like Chrome replaced Mozilla.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by imidan ( 559239 )
          I think you're right about that. Oracle's solution to the vulnerability of Java applets seemed to be having programmers sign applets, rather than fixing the problems with Java. And then, over time, invalidating self-signed applets in favor of certs that you had to buy. And so on. We followed the moving goalposts to keep our applet working for several years, and then gave up on Java entirely because they never addressed the problem, they just kept applying bandaids, and our job was never to make our code mor

  • I have the answer ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:42PM (#59229262)

    ... and it's the content.

    The 2-d stuff you mention ...

    Why add dancing bunnies? I've been at this since the Internet hit and dancing bunnies are annoying if they aren't part of the content. Ads that moved, flashed, and made noise were a distraction in a 2-D world.

    3-D is more suitable in context, like games, where dancing bunnies IS the content.

  • You've got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:43PM (#59229266)

    And yet there appears to be very little interest in putting interactive 3D anything into webpages. What causes this? Do people want to go into the 2020s with a 2D-based internet?

    Holy Fucking Shit. Just when you think Slashdot couldn't get any more stupid.

    Your monitor is 2D, dumbass. The "3D" you are babbling about is fake 3D that nobody cares about. Nobody. It was a fad that was hyped for 5 minutes. 20 years ago. Not to mention that web pages are already too bloated without adding even more bloat for your fake 3D bullshit that adds ZERO value.

  • Because 3D is generally a gimmick. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:43PM (#59229268)

    Especially if you're talking about 3D on a 2D screen.

    There's very few legitimate ways to use 3D where a 2D presentation isn't fine (and a lot less work).
    VR is the only real must-need-3D application, and even if every computer out there had the processing/graphics requirements to do it, most people would not want to hassle with putting on a headset as often as they use the web.

    Come back with this question when the holodeck's been invented, though...

    • But would you really want to go to the holodeck just to check your emails? It's like why are people still writing text messages when every phone is able to record and transmit a video message? Because it's friggin easier! (at least as long as people still know how to read and write. The art of creating homepages and writing emails seems to be already lost to facebook timelines and messenger. and I'm seeing an alarming rise of facebook posts asking for stuff that could be googled for in 5 seconds)

  • Have you ever tried to make a 3D UI? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:50PM (#59229282)

    It's really not an interface, it's a worldview. You need an entire environment that mimics the real world, it's ok if people are doing something the same as a real activity but much of the info on the net would be 2D even in the real world. We need a critical mass of 3D useable space in order to attract the numbers that would make it worthwhile for people to use it.

    Game companies, especially companies like Epic, should be the ones developing 3D space for more than just their games. You should be able to stay in game UI and manage your account, buy,try and sell your game items, all in 3D. However, the people in charge of things are generally only interested in spending their profits on themselves and not on developing things that everyone could actually use. It just sees so sad to me how much money is wasted on gratuitous lifestyles by overpaid executives.

    So I'd say the reason we don't have a VR web is selfishness and greed on the part of the tech companies owners and executives. The oldest story on the planet.

    • The whole point of a computer is not to have a 'real' stuff because it is inconvenient. If I was going to make a practical 3d UI I would model a computer you could type stuff into and click on things on the screen.

  • Second Life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:53PM (#59229284)

    Because Second Life was a good example of why the answer is "no"

  • Way back in the primordial ooze of the '90s, Apple's Advanced Technologies Group came up with a 3D model for browsing called HotSauce [urbigenous.net], which used their MetaContent Framework tech (which eventually sort of became RDF) to allow you to virtually "fly through" a website following links and nodes to drill deeper.

    Of course, 20 years later and most of the web is shallowly contained within social media sites, but it was a nice idea at the time. If you ever saw the anime Serial Experiments Lain (1998), it contained

    • I remember that and it was kinda cool.

      It was actually less useful than it seemed like it would be at first glance, but it was still an interesting way to explore an archive of stuff.

      My company at the time thought customers would go for it, but most of them found it a little confusing and (sometimes) frustrating. It never took off internally either.

  • Because ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @10:09PM (#59229324)

    ... we all have 2D girlfriends. And they'd get jealous.

  • 3D means that you can't see all presented information at once, having to resort to time consuming manipulation to access different parts. It's far better to ditch artificial limitations of euclidean geometry and be able to take instant wormholes to what you need next without having to be bothered by spatially in-between content that you are not immediately interested in.

    3D and VR is great for games because the whole point is to challenge you with constraints. 2D is great for work because the last thing you

  • Good luck meeting WCAG 2.0 accessibility requirements in a completely graphical environment, which means it's a non-starter for any government or large corporate site.

    in addition to that: this seems to be a solution looking for a problem. Unless what you're doing NEEDS 3D, why bother going to the hassle to add it? It just makes it more expensive to develop and maintain, while ticking off a not insignificant percentage of your users.

    You might as well ask yourself why we didn't switch to making every website

  • Immersive 3D à la Johnny Mnemonic [youtu.be] is not yet possible and our internet is not structured like that [youtu.be]. So while you can render in 3D, interacting in 3D is still lagging behind the technology and conceptually, it doesn't map well. Information can be N-dimensional when represented as 2D links. In 3D, it is now arbitrarily fixed in a spatial relationship with no added advantage [youtu.be]. In addition, there will be much confusion on why certain things are in the third dimension and how to map the added dimensions. S

  • One is immersive, VR environments where you can look in any direction and there is audio/video media that allows you to interact in a full scene. The other is 3-D modeling that shows an object that the user can manipulate or print. I am not surprised that the former is rare: it is wildly expensive, requires special hardware, and streaming is outrageous for bandwidth. The latter actually is surprising to me. These types of schematics were added to the Wikimedia Commons in 2018, so I've seen them much more th

  • Giving your 3D accelerator card to the ad people is asking for deep trouble, specially giving the fact many drivers can be exploited at a shader level to take control of your kernel memory.

  • ...and knowing what you're doing. Anything interactive requires that.

    Building webapps for people who can barely plan two steps ahead of an actual prototype they're seeing and using is hard enough. Building a useful and usable 3D app with my PMs would be impossible - they'd be completely in over their head. They can barely - if at all - grasp what our webhost and instagram have in common and where they differ or what a web CDN is and how it works. And I'm talking about Web-PMs (!!).

    Todays web has well establ

  • Instead of asking stupid questions, why not do an experiment ...

    Make something that people will use and make it 3D by default with an option to turn off the 3D and be 2D.
    then
    Make something that people will use and make it 2D by default with an option to turn on 3D.

    Then count up how many times the default is changed. I bet you that there will be a 1,000,000:1 ratio of people using 2D vs 3D and the money you wasted on 3D will have been totally and completely wasted.

    Of course, you can do the FIrefox or NetFli

  • I think the answer is simple. 2D meets the needs just fine for most information on the internet.

  • 3-D interfaces and applications are needless for 99.9% of what 99.9% of people do on the internet.

    Sure, there are applications for interactive 3-D stuff, but checking your email, browsing Youtube, or posting on Facebook ain't it.

    The vast majority of the stuff most people do on a PC won't benefit from "3-D interactivity".

  • The reason is because it is simply inefficient. We don't have 3D interfaces because we don't have 3D interactivity with input out display devices. What we have is a 2D display showing a 2D representation of a 3D environment if we were to create a "3D" web user interface. We would then be using a 2D interface, either swiping/pointing/tapping on a 2D touch screen, or moving a mouse and clicking in a 2D X,Y coordinate system and clicking. These are 2 dimensional interactive controls that we are limited to usin

  • I worked for one of the many "3D on the web" companies. Step one, of course, is to make the basics actually work reasonably effectively. Step two is to figure out what kind of content would be embraced by users.

    And there was the sticking point. We tried interactive fiction, maps, greeting cards, office-style output, music players and games. Of those, high-performance video for maps was valuable (we sold off all our patents on that), and games were enthusiastically embraced by users.

    Everything else was "nice

  • why the fuck should it use interactive 3D? seriously aren't we past all this gimmick bullshit. Why not ask why doesn't the web use brightly flashing banners anymore!
  • geek's wet dreams rarely make for usable product.

  • I think Google Maps' 3D view is awesome.
    It is doing it right: It is visualising a 3D dataset using 3D graphics.
    Similarly, databases of models for 3D printing are also using 3D graphics, to allow you to see the parts from all directions.
    When your dataset is two-dimension, then the best way to visualise it is most likely in 2D.

    I think also that one reason why we don't have more 3D is stylistic choice. There has been a counter-movement to skeomorphism in recent years, which has made flatter interfaces popular

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      Google maps is in 3D but the user interface mostly isn't. Interaction is limited to zooming in and out and changing angle. The main functionality is still 2D menus and options overlaying the view for a reason.
  • Microsoft can't even do decent 2D drivers for the Windows 10 desktop, allowing you to scroll web pages without getting gigantic diagonal tearing effects, so how the hell could they possibly manage non-sucking 3D in a web browser?

  • All those ancient and insecure plugins you mentioned are thankfully little dots in the rearview mirror.

    WebGL works fine in modern browsers on any reasonably up-to-date hardware.

    And you can't pass a real estate site without having it bonk you in the head.

    Here's one of probably hundreds of demo sites. All of the demos I tried work great on my ancient 2012 Mac Mini.

  • It's very unnatural and gives you more headache than added value. It's good as a funny experience from time to time, but not more than that. Or maybe this is only a limit of current technology, that's far from a literal "virtual reality" as you may see in sci-fi.

  • That was awful. 3D gui are crap.

  • 3D presentation of information requires a higher degree of cognitive effort to process than people en masse are willing to give, compared to alternatives.

    that is true regarding "our" (as in humankind) current understanding of both psychological and technological aspects of consumption of information. things may change in the future, that is, once either a Steve Jobs level talent discovers the way to do 3D so that everyone can easily embrace it, or (more likely) technology advances enough so that the cogniti

  • There aren't user friendly enough tools available for development. Any tit can learn html and css, or install wordpress. Making a vrml site would take a lot more skill. Also there's a bunch of graphics design wankers who have already decided how all websites should look... Giant fonts designed for Mr Magoo to read, that take up a whole page just for a tag line, never ending scrolling just to read a bit of text and look at some pictures, giant photos. If your page doesn't look like that then it must be shit
  • It's easier to to move the mouse and click on some text than it is to wander around a virtual space, look at something and then click an object representing an action.

    The clearest example I ever saw of this was Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare and it's sequel (GW & GW2 from now on).

    In GW the interface was just a 2D series of menus - click to here to start a game, click here to look at your sticker book etc. Clearly labelled and arranged buttons and navigation with text describing what the action did

  • All the OSses even gave up on 3D buttons years ago.

  • desktop (Score:2)

    by sad_ ( 7868 )

    why is your desktop still 2D?
    same thing, just watch jurassic park to know what a hell it would be just to browse your files that way.

  • And the absolutely astounding level of armchair gfx programming and content design on display. *kisses fingers*

  • Apparently the person asking this question watched this clip of Johnny Mnemonic one too many times while drunk.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Because it is a useless gimmick.

  • So the most efficient means of visual information transmission is via a 2D display. Trying to transmit 3D information requires your eyes to send a 2D image to your brain, and your brain to extrapolate the 3rd dimension. But because the bottleneck is the 2D image your eyes see, a 3D image can never convey more information than a 2D image at any given instant in time. It's simpler just to arrange the information you wish to convey in 2D. (Exception would be virtual reality like 3D games, where forcing you
  • I imagine this would be a significant challenge to navigate for the visually-impaired who depend on screen readers and other assistive technologies. Most 2D websites are not designed with accessibility in mind already, never mind 3D websites.

  • The VR internet is a science fiction trope because we love new stuff, but the fact is that it can never be as efficient a way to transfer information of a mundane sort as reading pages.

    VR can replace vacation photos someday, but it will never replace web pages because when you just want some information, skimming text is a lot simpler than wandering around through a 3d construction that represents a concept. It can augment architectural drawings, but it's still going to faster to look at a prepared projecti

  • 3D content is the most expensive to generate and that expense isn't warranted for everything. 3D art is one of the reasons modern AAA games are so expensive. Sprites are much easier to make. This extends to most media outside games though. I think in terms of ease of production and cost the hierarchy goes something like this:

    Audio recording (speaking)
    Text document (website)
    2D images (photos)
    Video (recording from camera)
    Video (3D recording - requires special hardware)
    nteractive 2D multimedia (website/game)
    2

  • We don't have a good interactive 3D interface paradigm, let alone a good 3D interface model.

  • Fragmentation Is an Issue (Score:3)

    by SpaceToast ( 974230 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @11:13AM (#59230820) Homepage Journal

    Dusting off my old Slashdot login, as I might have something to offer for once. I have an ongoing project which is a 3D walkthrough of Earth history--a virtual museum in which each "step" you take represents a million years. It's been on the back-burner as I wait for clarity on which direction to go, tech-wise (and because of a film). Here are the bullet points:

    1. All modern browsers support WebGL 1
    2. It's good, but you'd have a hard time mistaking performance for a native app
    3. WebGL is very low-level (think 30 lines of code to get a triangle onscreen)
    4. As such, most developers use frameworks to abstract the drudgery, as with other 3d libraries
    5. The two big ones are Babylon.js and Three.js, but there are several
    6. WebGL 2 allows faster exchange of data with the GPU
    7. It gets you closer to native app performance, but still noticeably below it
    8. Firefox and Chrome support it, Safari/Webkit does not
    9. Webkit is skipping straight to WebGL's successor, WebGPU
    10. WebGPU promises pass-for-native performance
    11. WebGPU will be supported by all modern browsers, but remains experimental/off by default
    12. However, WebGPU's shader language seems to be a sticking point in standardization
    13. WHLSL is source-readable and compiled in-browser
    14. SPIR-V is semi-compiled, and not human-readable
    15. Basically, WHLSL is what the web was, SPIR-V is what the web's becoming
    16. If there's progress on breaking the loggerhead, it's not happening publicly
    17. Frameworks will abstract most of this, but if you're doing anything interesting you're writing shaders already
    18. WebGPU offers very tangible benefits, but all your shaders will need to be rewritten
    19. But into what? And when will WebGPU be ready for production?
    20. Meantime, we're stuck with either partial browser support or WebGL 1
    21. It's fine for me, as I'm only doing a spare-time art/education project
    22. But now imagine you need to make a living off this stack...
  • the tone of the OP summary suggests that like many people the author is taking as axiomatic that 3D is better than 2D.

    however the web is largely 2D documents: text, images, video.
    introducing a 3D paradigm on something which is fundamentally 2D has lots of reasons why it's a bad idea, and only a few why it's a good idea.

    i'm not even including fragmented standards and spotty support. let's assume that all Just Works.

    good:
    * conceivably richer navigation experiences,
    and by "richer" i don't mean "3D".

  • 3D is about immersing yourself in an illusory space. This works well for entertainment and certain specific kinds of education, but that's only a small part of what the Internet gets used for. Most of the time people are just looking to find and/or peruse information as quickly as they can. They aren't looking to be entertained, and so the illusion of moving them through space only slows them down for no real gain. You can circumvent this to a limited degree with teleportation, but this negates 3D's only re

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