Per this thread, Apple/WebKit’s SVG Transforms are NOT competing or in the same area of interest as O3D. Instead, SVG Transforms (which incorporates WebKit’s CSS 2D and 3D Transforms, CSS Transitions and CSS Animations) is meant to display and interact with flat pieces of web content (in this case, the traditionally-2D SVG) in 2.5D/3D space, while O3D and WebGL are meant to display fully 2.5D/3D *scene graphs* and *models* separately from any web content (even though both efforts are aiming for an in-browser user experience).

Interestingly, Maciej mentions that it would be possible to codify a means to join arbitrary (2D/3D) web content and arbitrary 3D models together, but that it may be "a bigger challenge than anything that anyone has done so far".

So if this same argument could also be applied to other related initiatives in both fields, from canvas(3D) to X3D, then I’m assuming that the next frontier for the 3D Web initiatives to cross is how to bridge the divide of perception between 3D and 2D in the same network-centric application. Certainly, the fact that most of us do not have 3D-ready navigation hardware (like the SpaceNavigator) is a core part of that dialogue over why the 3D Web initiatives are not scaling to better expectations of ease of use and accessibility (not to mention hardware acceleration of graphics).

So O3D or WebGL may have a future in the web browser (or at least a better one than VRML and X3D), but its not like we’re that much closer to bridging the gap between 3D web content and 3D scene content.