Papervision3D 2.0 Is 3D Web revolution here ? Or not so fast ?

One one side you have euphoria of what’s POSSIBLE and on the other side what is REALISTICALLY usable. An all important parameter is the width of the gap between these two sides. After some time spent playing with PV3D I reallised just how deep this gap is.

I found out, that unless you cheat ( a lot ) , there’s no way, you can do a 3D that’s even close to a todays CGI  standard. Among other problems, there’s a very low limit to number of fully shaded (goraud/phong) triangles you can have in a 3D scene before you send you CPU usage soaring.

Notice that even quite big names pv3d based sites (Absolut, Canon, Sony) although using very very, simple geometry aren’t quite smooth on even most powerful PCs. Even on a quad core intel machines you can notice a reaction lag, that distorts the smooth interactivity experience. On a below average machines this kind of sites can quickly become unusable. Read the rest of this entry »