Working Group Reports on Access and Discoverability

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, and a community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. With this in mind, our working group set out to identify the current forms of 3D production, and consider their requirements for long-term access. In doing so, we have identified four primary categories of 3D materials. The first is reality-based forms of 3D production that are generated from physical data that has been measured by technical instruments. This category includes photogrammetric models, scanned volumetric models, scanned surface models, and digital terrain models. The next category is procedural/algorithmic models that are created computationally based on rules or shape grammars. Our third category of 3D forms contains born-digital, sources-based model types, which encompass manual models (i.e., built with 3D modeling software), virtual worlds, and immersive virtual environments. Our fourth and final category of 3D materials are games, which can take the form of many of the previous model types, but also require very specific interactions related to game-play (e.g. goal objectives, activities, stages). Cross-cutting these four categories is the distinction between 3D objects and 3D scenes, each with their own unique access and long-term preservation requirements and challenges.