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Comment by nessunodoro | Hacker News Reader

If you're into natural history, search the 3D models. The in-browser viewer works great.

https://www.si.edu/object/3d/490b6301-3869-455a-ba71-a89f5b6...

Holy crap. "Works great" doesn't do it justice. I'm on mobile and I was not expecting a buttery-smooth, photorealistic, flawlessly erogonomic multitouch experience with an abundance of advanced powertools like section analysis. That thing would be one of the most impressive apps I've ever seen, never mind Web Apps!

I want this as a Jupyter plugin, very badly.

(where do I find more examples? The viewer is a work of art but did I miss the hyperlink to "more cool stuff"?)

(edit: https://3d.si.edu/ )

https://www.si.edu/openaccess

Looking at the source, it seems like their viewer is based on OpenSeadragon: https://openseadragon.github.io/

Then they've added an astonishing amount of value. OpenSeadragon appears to be nothing more than a zooming 2D image viewer that consumes image pyramids? I'm not sure why you would even start with that, when your goal is to render hi-res 3D meshes in real time. Is there even an overlap in functionality?

Oh my. I'm in love. This is going to divert some of my attention for a side project... Hopefully for the better!

This is so packed full of useful features, and at first glance a very thoughtful implementation and healthy ecosystem.

Voyager, the 3D viewer uses Three.js for WebGL rendering and a custom entity/component architecture for both the scene tree and the general architecture of the application. The UI is built using custom Web Components with the help of LitElement and LitHtml. The viewer itself is a web component and super easy to embed.

The tool suite also provides an authoring environment for annotating and editing scenes. Documentation: https://smithsonian.github.io/dpo-voyager. Contributions are very welcome!

Full disclosure: I'm the developer of the Voyager 3D suite.

It’s even buttery smooth on an iPhone 6s.

The 3d model viewer is published at https://github.com/Smithsonian/dpo-voyager

Excellent find!

Now we have to combine this with Wikipedia, so the text of the article directly references the 3D model, with parts of the 3D model. Text is good, but exploring visuals helps understanding.

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