My thoughts about Google O3D

Yesterday Google announced the availability of O3D. O3D is, to quote Google, "O3D is an open-source JavaScript API for creating interactive 3D graphics applications that run in a browser window".

There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts at creating 3D mark-ups, API's with browser plugins with support for 3D scene graphs, data models like VRML, X3D etc. Some of the elements that these previous technologies were missing was the fact that they lacked an easy to use, free and open 3D content creation tool. Google sketch-up solves that problem to some extent. It needs to go a long way though on the rendering and modeling front, for it to be widely adopted. The other and more crucial element, I believe, is that all these earlier technologies were missing was their inability to create and sustain Life around these technologies. By Life I mean they were unable to sustain a living community around these technologies. If Google makes this mistake with O3D, O3D will fade away into oblivion just like its predecessors. If O3D has to succeed it has to create and sustain a community a la Facebook, Or Youtube. Historically Google has not been very successful at this. To not repeat this mistake again with O3D, Google must create a web 2.0 (3.0?) site and nurture a community around it (I haven't thought about google leveraging Youtube OR Picasa for this purpose though) .

This site should allow people to create and upload 3D content. Allow them to share 3D content online. Allow people to search for 3D content on this site. Allow them to discuss about 3D content. Allow them to share 3D apps built around O3D. Allow them to buy and sell 3D content and Apps. Allow people to personalize this site and create a particular context around their 3D content and apps, may be for a particular store selling furniture (as one of the O3D examples illustrates), OR may be for a local environmental group showing environmental changes happening in and around their place OR may be for a store selling 3D-simulation/Data Visualization apps!

If Google can do this with O3D, O3D has a bright future and will go a long way in becoming the de-facto 3D platform. Else its doomed to meet the same fate as its predecessors.