3D Websites - Will they Happen?
Posted by: James Lewitzke in Crazy Ideas, Miscellaneous Internet, Random Question, TechnologyWe always hear about how Virtual Reality is the next step in the Videogame World, or how we all may one day experience holographic movies. But what about interacting with those three-dimensional environments to give and retrieve information?
I know I’m surely not a coding expert (at this present time). This would probably require a whole new web browser system, heck, maybe even a whole new markup language to function properly.
I could see the first phase of this project involving just adding new HTML attributes (such as “depth”), and HTML elements which could contain different “sides” of the 3D projection (like the north side “title tag” or maybe they would ad an X,Y,Z “grid position”).
One other important revolutionary function I feel would be adding a brand new “Navigation System” to the website (which could end up replacing hyperlinks, well at least internally). You’d navigate by the ways of keyboard arrows (along with four more keys to navigate vertically, and much like the ways you control character in a first-person shooter videogame. But you’d still use your mouse to click whichever links, page elements, etc. are visible.
Potential Advantages I can see:
- Much more space to store, view and access information
- It Gives users a whole new perspective (current 2D sites seem a bit plain and boring now, don’t they?)
- Number of options are greatly increased, more freedom to choose what and how you want to design your site
- It would be on the “Cutting-Edge” of technology
- More business opportunities are created (like new advertising venues and fresh ways to communicate with one another)
Disadvantages of this Design concept:
- Very difficult to code and design (from a web developer’s standpoint, but hey, everyone can learn, right?)
- Choosing just how to implement this sort of idea will result in many conflicting ideas (Consistency is important)
- Probably tons of wasted space (if we’re designing in a cube format), most probably won’t need everything a 3D Website has to offer
- Navigation may seem difficult and unnatural for the first few months (or years) of use, new browser applications and improvements would have to be created for them to run properly
I realize this idea is kind of “out there”, but I still think they’d be a cool thing to see.
It’s already begun, in a very limited way.
http://www.spacetime.com/
Standards would be a weird ball game. If the mark up is to be strict, like HTML, then the W3C would probably take a decade or longer to produce a working standard. However, if it becomes an interpreted markup with user defined controls, then life would be easier.
I think certain designers would be at a major advantage, for example 3d artists
Like you said, the rest can always learn.
If it’s going to be a 3d website, then why not have it as a 3d projection? VR would be so cool with that.
Thanks for the link,
But by the looks of it, it seems like there will only be 2D Pages in a 3D environment, just for organizational purposes.
Concerning VR, I was thinking that they may start out as just 3D projections on your computer, but then the technology may gradually evolve into something like a hologram.
It would be fun if we could “slap” a few websites.
Porn websites would also be an interesting thing to see.
Hi James,
It’s Very Simple to develop a 3D website,
Use 3D images, integrate it with flash and than start coding in it.
The whole website will be in flash, but will looks so attractive.
Regards,
James.
Yes, that explains how to create 3D images using flash, but it doesn’t describe taking entire websites to the whole next level, and how many new technological advances would be required to make it to that next step.
Not to mention how SE crawlers will index our sites, how people will view and interact with them, etc.