This paper describes current work in the evolution of open standards for 3D graphics on the World Wide Web (Web3D) and provides examples of application of emerging Web3D authoring, visualization, and simulation tools for military education and experimentation. The paper presents an overview of the current state of Web3D standardization activities, including establishment of conformance tests and a reference implementation. The paper describes examples of the application of web-based 3D graphics for exploring complex military battlespaces supporting Limited Objective Experiments in Anti-Terrorism / Force Protection (AT/FP) and emerging joint command and control concepts for Web-based information management.

In February 2002, the Web3D Consortium (www.web3d.org) announced completion of the draft of the X3D (Extensible 3D) specification, the proposed next-generation standard for describing 3D content on the World Wide Web (http://www.web3d.org/x3d.html). X3D is a scene graph architecture and encoding that improves on the Virtual Reality Modeling Language international standard (VRML 97, ISO/IEC 147721:1997). X3D uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to express the geometry and behavior capabilities of VRML. The paper provides a brief overview of X3D and the current status of the standardization process and supporting efforts (e.g., development of an open source scene authoring and visualization tool and conformance test suite development), updating information presented in the I/ITSEC 2001 paper and conference briefing.

To demonstrate the capabilities of the emerging X3D standard, the Naval Postgraduate School is performing research toward development of scenario authoring and Web-based visualization capabilities. The paper describes the current status of research activities, including application of Web-based 3D graphics to a Navy Force Protection Limited Objective Experiment (LOE) and a Joint Futures Laboratory LOE investigating peer-to-peer Joint Interactive Planning concepts. The 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 concludes with discussion of future research directions for application of Web-based 3D graphics in military education, training, and experimentation.