Khronos Finalizes The GL Transmission Format 1.0

The Khronos Group has announced this morning that they've finalized the 1.0 specification for glTF, the GL Transmission Format.

The glTF specification standardizes the transmission and loading of 3D content, with compression for 3D models and scenes. The glTF assets can then be loaded by WebGL and other graphics APIs.

Compared to other 3D model formats, glTF is better optimized for downloading and loading efficiency. Coming out of Khronos, the specification is, of course, royalty-free. Neil Trevett, the Khronos President, says that "glTF will be as significant for 3D applications as JPEG and MP3 were for pictures and music."

In today's press release of the glTF 1.0 final specification, they explain the format further for those who haven't previously looked at this spec. "glTF defines a vendor- and runtime-neutral format that can be loaded and rendered with minimal processing. The format combines an easily parsable JSON scene and material description, which references binary geometry, textures and animations. glTF can be loaded efficiently into WebGL applications with minimal additional parsing and processing to create full hierarchical runtime scenes with nodes, meshes, cameras and animations."