[whatwg] Dealing with Stereoscopic displays

[Lachlan Hunt]

On 2010-04-27 00:59, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> I think it's interesting to think about what browsers could do with stereo
> output.
>
> We already have three features that could produce useful stereo output
> today:
> 1) WebGL
> 2) CSS 3D Transforms
> 3)<video>  (assuming there was some kind of 3D video format defined
> elsewhere)

Of those, I think 3D video is perhaps the most significant, followed by 
WebGL for, e.g. 3D games.  But I don't think these are issues that 
should be addressed by the WHATWG or HTMLWG at this stage, particularly 
for video.

3D video would depend on the availability of a suitable 3D video codec 
that can be implemented by browsers.  Something like h.264 MVC 
(Multiview Video Coding) as used by 3D Blu-ray would be nice, but we 
would need something that is royalty free.  I don't know of any other 3D 
video codec, especially not among the royalty free choices.

I think this issue should be revisited in the future if and when such a 
codec becomes available.  But given that the the actual video rendering 
is handled by the implementation, completely transparently from the DOM 
API, the current markup and DOM API should be sufficient for basic 
playback support.  3D Enhancements to the DOM API and markup can be 
considered later if necessary, such as figuring out how to deal with 
drawing an HTMLVideoElement playing a 3D video onto a 2D <canvas>.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/