In the realm of 3D GIS, the FBX format inspires both admiration and frustration. Developed by Autodesk as a proprietary 3D file format, FBX has been an industry standard for decades. Yet as technology advances, FBX's limitations become increasingly apparent—demanding a critical reassessment of this legacy format.

The debate intensified when ThreeJS officially tweeted four unambiguous words:

FBX needs to die

What prompted such a stark condemnation from ThreeJS? Let's examine the reasons.

The Industry Standard's Strengths

Initially developed by Kaydara (later acquired by Autodesk), FBX specializes in exchanging 3D models, animations, and materials across software. Its key advantages include:

  • Cross-platform compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with Maya, 3DS Max, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Blender.
  • Comprehensive data retention: Preserves skeletal animations, camera parameters, and lighting data while supporting topology separation—storing vertex coordinates, normals, and UV mapping as decoupled elements.
  • Binary efficiency: Enables rapid read/write operations for large-scale scenes.
  • Ecosystem dominance: Autodesk's strategic bundling since its 2005 acquisition made FBX ubiquitous in traditional 3D workflows.

Why FBX Is Failing Modern Needs

Despite its strengths, FBX suffers from critical flaws:

  1. Proprietary constraints: Closed specifications force developers to rely on reverse engineering, complicating web and mobile implementation.
  2. Outdated material system: Stuck with 1990s-era Blinn-Phong lighting instead of modern Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) standards.
  3. Technical bloat: Legacy CAD kernel support (NURBS surfaces) creates unnecessary file size inflation and precision inconsistencies.
  4. Lack of future-proofing: Microsoft's 2025 deprecation announcement highlights its unsuitability for real-time rendering and Web3D.

The Rising Alternative: glTF/GLB

glTF (GL Transmission Format), with its binary variant GLB, is emerging as the modern standard, particularly for web and mobile:

  • Open standard: Developed by Khronos Group as ISO-certified format.
  • PBR-native rendering: Supports subsurface scattering, metallicity, and MaterialX integration.
  • Efficient packaging: Bundles models, textures, and animations into a single lightweight file.
  • Universal compatibility: Native support in Blender, 3ds Max, Unity, Unreal, and web frameworks like Three.js.

Conclusion

Technology evolves through natural selection—Flash gave way to HTML5, proprietary GIS yields to open-source alternatives, and now FBX declines as glTF rises. While some GIS professionals express anxiety about rapid change, our responsibility is clear: embrace innovation.

Rather than mourning FBX, let's welcome the glTF era—where openness and efficiency define 3D's future.