Your thoughts on 3D Web Design?

Webweaving
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So to start this thread off, while I was researching how to create grids to be more accessible using grids. I came across the terms of one dimensional web design and two dimensional design. I thought that was interesting and I got curious about what 3D would look like. After going through a lot of sites to understand a little bit about it I came across sites like these, showcasing examples

From what I’ve seen so far, I have some thoughts.

I will admit some of the things look impressive and are cool on paper, but I’m not a fan with how unintuitive the UI is for the sites I have visited, utilizing this type of web design. I understand that the idea of these sites are to be immersive and offer an experience, but they’re not very practical or easy to navigate through (I know I’m not known to practical, but I still do try to at least think about how people can go through all the info I put in some of my sites). It literally took me 5 mins to figure out you need to scroll down to see the information in one of the sites I visited.

At best, I can think of them as graphic design projects to be impressive and also make my computer fans go haywire every time I visit them. Oh yeah, did I mention how much my device basically heats up a little more than usual in order to run a singular site? I’m pretty lucky I have a laptop made to run games, but I would imagine for users with lower specs that it would be a nightmare to run.

I even went through a website carbon calculator just to see how much resources one of these sites were taken up, and it was the first time I ever saw an F rating. I checked the second link, and it was so full of content, taking so long to load that I basically gave up finding out what the rating is.

Personally, I’m not too jazzed about it. You would think I would be all over this, because I love all kinds of art and graphic design, but I really don’t think 3D web design is for me. It’s clearly not made for sustainability or accessibility in mind, the resources required to run it is too much.

I’m no expert so I can’t really give opinions beyond a surface level, so I’d like to know.

What are your thoughts about this?

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i think they’re very fun and interesting, and i’m a big fan of people making inconvenient and strange websites that are unintuitive to use! i’m currently working on making my website more impractical and annoying because that’s fun for me.

it’s a bad fit for commercial stuff i think - hard to sell people stuff with a website that doesn’t load and is hard to use, lol - but commercial & public-use web stuff and personal/art/small web stuff are very different to me and i evaluate them very differently. something that’s meant to be useful for a general audience ought to be efficient and maximally accessible, so i don’t love companies having really laggy flashy websites that’re hard to use.

some 3D websites i like are this and this and this and this!

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I agree they do look cool and I did also like how they looked, but yeah not great for commercial and public-use web, which I think some of the sites I visited were trying to appeal to (One such example is this. I get they were trying to market the company in a cool and innovative way, it’s just very annoying having to navigate).

That’s probably why I wasn’t very excited as much as I could have been, I was most likely judging them based on that merit. These sites you linked are really cool and are making me consider maybe changing my stance. Theyre clearly intended as art projects and not as a way to market or show off information about a cause or product, if it was then it would be a different story

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hahahaha this is actually one of the ones i thought was especially bad, it’s SO laggy! and honestly seems like a similar effect could’ve been done much more efficiently and without so much lag. if it was somebody’s personal site i’d be impressed, but for something that’s supposed to be a trucking business it’s way too much!!

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I tried it and the site is laggy (no video acceleration on my end). I think there are better programs to handle 3D graphics. I think the closest game/program to this concept is Second Life or Minecraft (or Minetest).

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These are SO cool! I want to make something like this for my website, specifically to showcase some surrealist literature.

To echo other folks’ comments, 3D is cool but not great for anything that needs to make money. I think it goes back to why metaverse technologies are struggling to gain a foothold in the mainstream: with our current tech, we can’t make 3D information more easily/efficiently accessible than 2D. I feel like it’s near impossible to make a quick, great, AND informative first impression with a 3D website.

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