Wait a minute…I hear you say…Silverlight doesn’t support 3D!
Well, no, not directly. But there are ways to get around this, and Robby Ingebretsen highlights a few:
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a little time trying to get my finger on the pulse of 3D in Silverlight. As of today (version 2, beta 2) there’s no “official” support. That’s a bummer. Flash has Papervision and now Astro. WPF has, well, WPF. You might think that Silverlight is eating some dust right now.
Okay, so you’d be a little right in thinking that but, come on, it’s only one and a half versions old. Let’s cut Silverlight some slack and hope that we get some official support soon (but not before Triggers).
But you’re also a little bit wrong. Not only is there some really impressive work being done by our very own Silverlight community to get “real” 3D (i.e. geometries, lighting, cameras, etc.) working but there is plenty of potential for some sweet “fake” 3D (read “tricks”) that Silverlight is more than equipped to pull off.
In addition to the excellent tour of 3D options for Silverlight, you should check out his home page for a neat example of the parallax technique for faking 3D. Really nice work. Also lots of cool demos and experiments on his site, so be sure to have a look around.
