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Apparently, Microsoft has not yet made WebGL work in Internet Explorer by default. Plus, Opera have it only in their latest builds.

So, what is the most compatible way of getting an interactive 3D scene inside a browser? The scene is not going to be very dynamic, therefore a 2D Canvas renderer that could work in 3D Space would work.

Newest Flash is a solution also, but I haven't worked with ActionScript that much, and have no idea whether the Flash 3D support is as good as WebGL's one.

Maybe, I should simply forget about compatibility and build the app. for Chrome/Firefox/Opera?

P.S. The project is something like an interactive advertisment selling.

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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You already mentioned Flash, and Flash is a very good/viable option.
You also have Java available to you, Java applets can also be a very good source of 3D scenes/graphics.

Microsoft's Silverlight also has a some limited 3D capabilities, if you're only looking for a scene, it's a nice choice, if you want to start getting more advanced, the difficulty curve goes up quickly.

As mentioned in comments under my answer, you do have XNA/Direct3D support in Silverlight 5; though, you might have to jump some hoops to get it to run on an older machine/certain graphics cards. (It's only enabled by default in Service Pack 1 of Windows 7, and in the new Windows 8 builds).

Lastly, if it's just an object or two, or something really simple, there's numerous jQuery (and other AJAX/JavaScript) frameworks out there that can help you. Again, the difficultly curve as you try to do more and more increases rapidly.

Here's a Silverlight 3D Framework that wraps most of the more complicated Silverlight calls:

Another...interesting pure JavaScript way:

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Silverlight 5 has more advanced 3D capabilities built in. –  ChrisF Dec 19 '11 at 14:46
@ChrisF updated, though, unless running in full-trust, out of the box, those 3D capabilities are disabled on anything other than Windows 7 SP1, and Windows 8; and simply not available yet to Mac/Linux users –  Brian Deragon Dec 19 '11 at 14:58
Yeah - I wasn't sure of the restrictions. –  ChrisF Dec 19 '11 at 15:00
Hmm... Any good articles about 3D with Flash? (+ for the newest HW accelerated features) P.S. The scene consists of only one object, but pretty complex one. –  jolt Dec 19 '11 at 15:01
Lookup Stage3D its Flashplayer 11's version of 3D graphics, very impressive. –  Brian Deragon Dec 19 '11 at 15:34
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I've used Away3D - a Flash based opensource library, starting from scratch, and found it a viable option. The language it's good (an earlier JavaScript with extensions), and the client browser coverage it's very good.

Adobe claims 98%, I don't know if it's true. From what Google Analytics reports, our customers (if you want to see where I applied the technology, see here, choose any of the links in the list) all have at least Flash 10.

Indeed, the best thing about Flash 10, is that it doesn't require accelerated graphics, but the rendering it's rather efficient. In contrast, WebGL has stronger request.

I developed the SW using the opensource flash toolkit under linux, but the latest version (target Flash 11, and accelerated graphics) seems has dropped the sole really useful debug support: no more trace! It's a pity, and maybe a sign that the technology needs to change towards more WebGL oriented techniques.

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Unity3D does the trick, and its a full blown 3D gaming development engine. Downside however as a web player it still doesn't work on mobile devices, but if you have developed a presentation in Unity, provided you have the full version with the IOS or Android development license you can create your 3D presentations as an app.

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Unity won't cut it due to application target audience being below casual. An extra plugin won't be accepted when money transactions are made. –  jolt Dec 21 '11 at 21:54
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