To ICANN,The Web3D Consortium wholeheartedly supports the .geo top-level domain
name
proposal from SRI International. We believe that this facility
will introduce
a completely new type of service to the Web, one that
has vast potential to increase
the market share of 3D on the Web.
The Web3D Consortium is a non-profit organization
with a mandate to
develop and promote open standards to enable 3D Web and broadcast
applications.
The Consortium successfully gained approval for VRML 97
as International Standard
ISO/IEC 14772 in December 1997 and is
currently driving the X3D project to create
the next evolution of the
VRML standard. The Consortium is comprised of over 100
leading
corporations and educational institutions and over 50 individual
Professional
Members contributing their expertise to Consortium
activities.
The Consortium
believes that the .geo proposal offers a novel and
efficient use of the DNS for
indexing and searching all data on the
Web based upon a physical geospatial coordinate.
Something that is not
possible today on the Web. With this capability, along with
the
convergence of consumer-level 3D graphics cards and open graphics
standards
such as VRML and X3D, we see the creation of new markets and
services across diverse
fields such as tourism, education, online
gaming, real-estate, location-based
wireless services, and geographic
information systems. These will ultimately benefit
the end-user by
providing more direct and timely access to the relevant information
that
they desire.
We strongly urge ICANN to select the .geo gTLD and enable these new
services
on the Web today.
Neil Trevett
President
Web3D Consortium
http://www.web3d.org/