3D Interfaces on the Web - Useful or Novelty?
3D interfaces have been around since the Web began - and more than one dot com fell by the wayside partly because of an over-reaching 3D interface (cough, boo.com). Indeed as we noted in December, virtual shopping malls are still alive and kicking. But is 3D of any use on the Web, or is it just another cool novelty feature?
3D does have some real world use and there are 3D software companies emerging that are proving very profitable. As Glen (comment #4) pointed out in our December post, 3D has its place in enabling in-depth views of products. In fact a New Zealand company is making waves doing just that. Right Hemisphere sells Product Graphics Management software, that allows people to view products in either 2D or 3D. This has many uses, from marketing to education to product documentation. Also Right Hemisphere technology is used in Adobe Acrobat, for 3D technical documents.
Example of Right Hemisphere 3D usage
3D is undoubtedly proving useful and popular with Second Life and other virtual worlds. Also Robb (comment #8) in our December post pointed to the MOJI Intelligent Messenger - which features 3D artificial life forms, within an Instant Messenger that combines AI and computational linguistics. With game playing or social communications, 3D could prove to be a winning feature - because if done right it enhances the user experience. 3D photos and photo effects also seems to be a nice value add.
The jury is still out on virtual
shopping malls though, although they may actually work inside an existing 3D world such
as Second Life. As
Emergence Media noted in response to our December post, 3B has built a virtual mall in Second Life -
featuring affiliate stores by the likes of Amazon.com, eBay, Old Navy, Delia’s and
Barnes & Nobles. 3B was a company that caught my eye
at the Web 2.0 Summit last November. At that time it was promoting its use as a social
networking tool, which is kind of what Second Life is anyway.
What about other practical uses of 3D, such as 3D Digg (which just makes me dizzy) or in search, as noted today by Google Blogoscoped. Web statistics software VisitorVille 3D is another one. While all of these are undoubtedly cool, it's questionable whether they add much in the way of practical value. Having said that, Microsoft is exploring 3D interfaces as its next generation of search. In November, I had a chat with Microsoft executives Steve Berkowitz and Christopher Payne about their new 3D version of Virtual Earth. As I noted then, Microsoft is positioning Virtual Earth as "the beginning of the 3D Web" - a quote from Steve Lawler (General Manager, Virtual Earth Business Unit) during the launch of Virtual Earth.
Conclusion
So all in all, right now 3D interfaces seem best suited to virtual worlds like Second Life - and things that complement that (like 3B's shopping inside SL). But 3D undoubtedly has its uses in product management, as Right Hemisphere is proving. Also I think 3D has its place as a value add for communications and photos. Where 3D is not quite ready for prime time is with general browsing things like search, shopping on the Web, and services like Digg. I have a feeling the time will come when those things are commonplace, but could be a few more years yet. What do you think?
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Thanks so much for the mention to my blog posting. I think that even in the few years ahead application of 3D shopping enviorment is limited to areas where it is expected (like in Second Life). Unless of course, the interface (the page-based/rich-media-application browser) changes drastically.
Like I've mentioned, virtual shopping mall seems "to be clunky, long and tedious - very much like the worst aspects of brick-and-mortar shopping." In my opinion, Amazon takes enough browsing effort as it is, virtual shopping would even more tedious.
But then again, there has been some studies that show that female online shoppers tend to be browsers, where as man prefer advance search functions. This means there is a possible audience for virtual malls outside of 3D-environments like Second Life.
Posted by: Daniel R | January 22, 2007 11:34 PM
Update:
Shel Holtz seems to have the complete opposite opinion of mine on Second Life:
"But to me, it’s a whole lot more intuitive to navigate down a street, into a building, and into a room to buy a product than it is to click through left-hand navigation panels. Plenty of writers of speculative fiction (e.g., William Gibson, Neal Stephenson) have predicted this development."
Posted by: Daniel R | January 22, 2007 11:39 PM
Do Agree, 3D Web is going to grow big, espesially with all the big co's coming out with new platforms WFPe, Flex etc...
Checkout our 3D Anatomy software on web at www.anatomy.tv where you can view the while or any part of the Human Body in 3D structures.
Deepesh
Posted by: Deepesh Shah | January 23, 2007 1:30 AM
Or you could just browse existing web sites in 3d space - http://ubrowser.com for example.
Posted by: Iwan Jones | January 23, 2007 1:16 PM
As "mass customization" and "build to order" increase their share of the market place, and more and more manufacturers learn how to allow customers to create their own products, 3d will become more and more critical. Rejuvenation (my employer) found this need a couple of years ago and we developed a way to use 3d data to show the results of customization on complex objects:
http://www.rejuvenation.com/catalog/bto
Coming up, the ability to import into Acrobat or Sketchup for better viewing/manipulation.
Posted by: Art Wells | January 23, 2007 1:28 PM
With the increase of bandwidths and power of graphics cards for PCs, there is no doubt that the a number of bottle necks were removed for the success of 3D WEB. SecondLife and Google Earth are such known successes. I agree with the author's opinion that 3D is of great value to the Product Dvelopment Companiess and I also include Education community. Imagine, students understanding the science with interactive 3D or a design review in a product development company with interactive 3D. Our company is helping lot of product development companies and Universities with such 3D technology ans we love every moment of it. See the below links to know more:
http://www.vcollab.com/ceoperspective.html
http://www.vcollab.com/Presenter/PresenterDemoServer.asp .. 3D Demos
Posted by: prasad | January 23, 2007 8:31 PM
3D Topicscape ( http://www.topicscape.com ) uses the mindmapping approach for organizing information, ideas, files and To Do lists. It makes full use of 3D to allow users to see much more of a complex landscape of information than is possible in strict hierarchical folders or 2D mindmaps.
Posted by: Argey | January 23, 2007 9:56 PM
I couldn't agree more - the Web is going 3D. I've spent much of the last 12 years involved in technology and product developments intended to bring about this transformation.
I have never seen the stars aligning quite so well as the are now. The key is that there seems to be genuine consumer interest in 3D in apps ranging from Second Life and IMVU to Google Earth. Combine this with the infrastructure being mature enough (PC power, broadband, standards etc) and we're looking good.
That being said - I predict a lot of gaffes along the way in terms of applications and UI design, especially if people fall prey to the conceipt of 3D beign an artificial representation of RL (real world). The "virtual mall" is a case in point. In my opinion I think online shopping in 3D will *not* be done by browsing around malls (tedious!); rather designers should take a page out of the in-game advertising book and find ways to bring shopping "to the fingertips" of the user as part of a 3D social network and/or game experience, i.e. something they do as a natural outcome of their online activity, not as the main event.
Posted by: Tony Parisi | January 24, 2007 1:21 PM
Just a quick correction 3B is a stand alone virtual world - and has no connection to Second Life at all.
The stores pictured above are in 3B, NOT in Second Life.
I have a lot of respect for this blog and Richard so we don't take offence ;-)
3B's usp is the ability to incorporate large quantities of existing 2D web content. Which means with minimal effort that users can build their own personal spaces for example including all their friends pages in a personal village for free.
Posted by: Nicky Morris | January 25, 2007 7:05 AM