The purpose of this paper is to describe current work in specification and development of Web-based 3D standards and tools. The paper presents a Web3D application for military education and training currently in progress for the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office and the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Web-based 3D content development tools continue to evolve. The Web3D Consortium (http://www.web3d.org) promotes the specification and development of tools for exploiting 3D graphics in the World Wide Web. Current work is focused on developing the next-generation specification for Web3D, referred to as Extensible 3D (X3D - http://www.web3d.org/x3d.html). X3D is a scene graph architecture and encoding that improves on the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) international standard (VRML 97, ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997). X3D uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to express the geometry and behavior capabilities of VRML. Primary target applications for X3D are electronic commerce product and technology demonstration, visual simulation, database visualization, advertising and web page animation, augmented news and documentaries, training, games, entertainment, and education. This paper discusses how X3D will address shortcomings of VRML 97, VRML 97 compatibility, interoperation with other relevant standards, tighter media integration, improved visual quality, component-based approach, file format issues, and time to market. The paper will also present the current progress of the X3D Working Group in developing the runtime core specification, component specifications, advanced graphics extensions (including GeoVRML for geographic representations and H-Anim for humanoid models), XML 3D tags definition, text file format, binary file format, conversion and transformation of existing VRML 97 content, conformance testing, demonstrations, and implementations.

The Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) and Marine Corps Combat Development Command (Training and Education Command) have tasked the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to perform research toward development of a scenario authoring and Web-based visualization capability. Prototyping activities are employing Web-based technologies for information content (XML) and 3D graphical content (X3D) to create an initial presentation of an amphibious operation. The envisioned full capability will represent critical aspects of the battlespace, such as terrain, force dispositions, maneuvers, fires, coordination measures, and timing. This paper discusses technical challenges in representing complex military operations in Web environments and describes work in progress to demonstrate application of Web-based technologies to create and explore complex, multi-dimensional operational scenarios. The paper describes application of the capabilities into other education and training domains.