I've always been fascinated by browser-based 3D engines as they provide a way to get content to an online audience without requiring anything other than a simple plugin to download. In the past, Macromedia/Adobe had a very nifty software package called 'Director'. It was similar to flash except that it was made to handle more complex tasks and had the added benefit of being able to use hardware acceleration for 3D content. It was Director that got me into 3D in the first place, it made so much more sense to me than creating windows executables which people were forced to download and play. Unfortunately, over time, Adobe have been slow to update the package after acquiring it from Macromedia and, frankly, have fallen short of other people's expectations. Director has been limited to directx 7 for so long that people are looking for real alternatives to their once much-beloved tool. Though Director now has a directx 9 rendering engine it has no support for dx9 shaders, rendering the costly upgrade almost pointless (pun).

This brings me to what could be the next big thing in browser based 3D content. It's called Unity 3D, the player sits in your window with the option to go full screen (along with incredible performance) and has been made scalable to suit the hardware of the person viewing the content. At this point I'll show you a small video of what it can do, courtesy of youtube. It speaks louder than any words and I think you'll agree, Director users, that Adobe would be hard pressed to create anything like it.

You can find the 3D version here.

Along with great documentation and a huge developer community (as well as support for complex shaders), the content you create with Unity 3D can be ported to the iPhone and the Nintendo Wii. The only real disadvantage to this incredible bit of kit is that the authoring environment is only available on Macs, not windows machines (but work is in progress). I bought a mini just to give it a whirl and it wasn't long before I came up with my own small world.

Needless to say, I'll be doing a few more things with this and I'll be sure to post the end results here. Next on my list of things to do is create an emergency room simulation for the University of Hertfordshire. These are exciting times, with apps making their way to our internet browsers (thanks to the likes of ajax and flex) we'll be seeing a lot of changes in the near future. Let's try to get in on the ground floor and keep with the times.

Read more about Unity 3D at the wiki or visit the official site.