Earlier this week, at the Microsoft Windows 10 Event, we shared our vision (read more about it from Terry Myerson and Megan Saunders) around 3D for everyone in New York. As part of achieving that vision we are delighted to share that Microsoft is joining the 3D Formats working group at Khronos to collaborate on its GL Transmission Format (glTF).
At Microsoft, we are committed to an open and interoperable 3D content development ecosystem. As 3D content becomes more pervasive, there is a need for a common, open and interoperable language to describe, edit, and share 3D assets between different applications. glTF fills this need as an expressive and capable open standard.
We look forward to collaborating with the community and our industry partners to help glTF deliver on its objectives and achieve broad support across many devices and applications. To further the openness goal, we will continue our open source contributions including further development of glTF support in the open source frameworks such as BabylonJS.
As the working group starts thinking about the next version, we are especially interested in joining discussions about some of the subjects that have seen the biggest community momentum in the public forums. Physically Based Rendering (PBR) material proposal is one of those topics. PBR materials are a flexible way for 3D content creators to specify the rendering characteristics of their surfaces. Industry-standard implementations can ensure that any PBR content will look consistent irrespective of the scene lighting and environment. Additionally, because PBR material definition is a high-level abstraction that is not tied to any specific platform, 3D assets with PBR materials can be rendered consistently across platforms.
This kind of cross-platform, cross-application power is what will ultimately make glTF truly ubiquitous and Microsoft is proud to be part of this journey.
Forest W. Gouin – Windows Experiences Group
Jean Paoli – Windows Developer Platform