COLLADA v. X3D?

Hi all

can you compare/contrast the technical goals/design/advantages of COLLADA to X3D http://web3d.org/?

thanks
– mew

We do not have this handy, and doing a fair comparison will take some time.
I am not sure we (The COLLADA team) are the best to answer this question, as we may be seen as biased.

But, without waiting for a detailed comparison, I can give you some elements:

We asked game developers and modeler companies about X3D, and we could not find one project using X3D as file format. If you are a game developer reading this and using X3D, please speak up now!

COLLADA goal is to be co-designed by the main players so they all embrace it and support it directly. In other words, import/export for COLLADA is provided and supported directly by the tool vendors.

COLLADA is designed as a interchange format, while X3D is designed as a content deployment format, targeting web type applications. This may create great divergences between the formats.

I’m a geospatial VR software developer with a geospace-based game project underway, does that count?

We’re using X3D as the basis for a content deployment format. This relies on the fact that X3D is extensible, since the current spec doesn’t have a lot of the nodes we need; game-style navigation, game physics, etc. However it does already have a lot of other things we need. A complete geospatial framework, for one.

As an X3D content developer, I’m very pleased about Collada. Since they’re both XML, translating between them will be very straightforward. With the spec being freely available and plenty of industry support, it looks set to gain wide adoption. This is a stark contrast with the fuzzy, not-yet-specified and non-interoperable U3D proposal, for example (which I believe to be dooooooomed, doomed I tell you!).

We’d of course love to deploy to Sony devices. The PSP in particular is an ideal platform for location-based 3D gaming. So Collada is good, and X3D is good, and I don’t honestly see the conflict.

but with 3dLabs developping a realtime collada viewer with GLSL
capabilities, the scope of content deployment is getting the same;

and I sure hope collada will be such a format, although
maybe not specifically targeted at the web.

should I stop dreaming right now?
Sébastien Kuntz

Unreal and Quake to X3D examples here:
http://web3dchat.com/development.html

more on the Unreal converter here:
www.unrealroc.com

more on the Quake 3 converter here:
http://home.snafu.de/hg/vrml/q3bsp/q3bsp.html

There’s a very detailed comparison here:
http://realism.com/Web3D/Collada/Nodes.html