Developing and maintaining a web 3D viewer for the CH community: an evaluation of the 3DHOP framework

3DHOP (3D Heritage On-line Presenter) has been released 4 years ago, as an open-source framework for the creation of interactive visualization of 3D content on the web, aimed at the CH field. Transforming a research tool into a software "product" usable by the heterogeneous CH community is not a simple task and requires a significant amount of resources plus a specific design. This work presents the evolution of the 3DHOP system, and the complex relationship with its community of users, made of content creators, CH experts and general public. We will discuss the new features introduced, as well as the design and implementation strategy employed to maintain the software and make it usable by developers. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the platform by illustrating some of the applications built with 3DHOP either internally or by external users, as well as by presenting the results of a survey aimed at gathering the opinions and suggestions of the user community.