Ouch, this is very disappointing. O3D was technologically better approach than WebGL.<p>JavaScript is a perfect scripting/glue language, but unfortunately it still sucks at numerical computations.<p>Yes, even with all the massive progress that happened recently with V8/TraceMonkey/Carakan. Try working with large arrays and you will weep.<p>Well, good news is at least this will force JS engine developers to improve this so far neglected aspect.
Reposting from another submission of this:
This is a little annoying. Google had not said a word about O3D for months and they just announce now that they want to drop the plugin. I think a better idea would have been to use the plugin as a way to provide WebGL and o3d to older browsers until WebGL is widespread. Some of the O3D features are not even possible in WebGL.<p>EDIT: the google group thread explaining about this: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/o3d-discuss/browse_thread/thr.." rel="nofollow">http://groups.google.com/group/o3d-discuss/browse_thread/thr...</a>.<p>EDIT: Google reiterated that they prefer that Google Frame implements WebGL for IE instead of turning O3D into a complete HTML5 implementation to support api O3D/WebGL developers need.
Whee. Hopefully this will help accelerate WebGL-adoption even further and we can avoid getting locked in to yet another proprietry plugin, in the form of Unity.<p>I've a feeling that good tools and engines for WebGL-based are going to be needed though.
I really hope this takes off. I've been wanting to get into making some 3D games for a while, and being able to do it in the browser would be <i>awesome</i>