Publishing and consuming 3D content on the Web. A survey

Three-dimensional content is becoming an important component of the World Wide Web environment. From the advent of WebGL to the present, a wide number of solutions have been developed (including libraries, middleware, and applications), encouraging the establishment of 3D data as online media of practical use. The fast development of 3D technologies and related web-based resources makes it difficult to identify and properly understand the current trends and open issues. Starting from these premises, this survey analyzes the state of the art of 3D web publishing, reviews the possibilities provided by the major current approaches, proposes a categorization of the features supported by existing solutions, and cross-maps these with the requirements of a few main application domains. The results of this analysis should help in defining the technical characteristics needed to build efficient and effective 3D data presentation, taking into account the application contexts.