Uses of Shockwave Technology

Adding 3-D to Shockwave enables access to all sorts of new Web content. One of the most obvious applications is Web-based 3-D gaming. First-person adventure games and other games with fully realized 3-D worlds have dominated the PC and game-console market for almost a decade. The new Shockwave capabilities allow this sort of game to be played over the Web.

Web-based 3-D gaming is getting a lot of attention, but it is only one market for the new technology. 3-D capability is perhaps better suited for advancing e-commerce. Web merchants can give their customers a much clearer idea of products in their catalog if the customers can see the product as a 3-D image. With 3-D models, online shopping is a little more like in-store shopping -- customers can rotate the item around, checking it out from every angle.


A 3-D model used to demonstrate a product on an e-commerce site

Customers can also modify 3-D models for their own particular needs. One of the most useful applications for this is clothes shopping. If an online shopper enters his or her measurements, the 3-D software can generate a model of that person's body, which can be "dressed" with 3-D models of particular clothes. This is a virtual version of the real-world dressing room.

This level of user interactivity is also a great addition to educational sites like HowStuffWorks. A 3-D model of an engine that you can turn around and interact with can offer a much clearer illustration of the mechanisms at work than a 2-D model -- it's more like actually handling and examining the engine yourself.


This 3-D model of a paintball gun makes it extremely easy to understand how paintball and BB guns work. Click on the image above to see the model.

For example, if you want to understand how a paintball gun works, a 3-D model can be incredibly useful. You can see exactly how the mechanism fits together and fires. Click here to see a 3-D model. If you want to learn more about paintball guns after seeing the model, see How Paintball Works.


As a demonstration of the new Shockwave 3-D technology, NxView has created this 3-D model of a four-speed manual transmission.

In all of these applications, the most significant benefit of 3-D is greater user involvement. You can decide what you want to look at instead of just viewing a pre-set movie. The difference is comparable to the difference between watching television and playing a video game.