There had been some hints floating around that the WPF team would be making an announcement this afternoon...and it would be BIG. Well, I think they delivered! Over at the WPF3D Team Blog, they just announced that in version 1 of WPF, we will have the capability to interact with 2D content on 3D geometry elements.
Now this might not seem like a huge deal to someone who does not do a lot of 3D work. But rest assured, the capabilities this will give 3D developers is awesome. Think about it in an extremely simplified way: imagine a cube floating in a 3D space. Now imagine that you were able to create some elements on each face of that cube. Now it is cool to be able to see those elements rotate around on that cube and it is even more cool to be able to manipulate those elements through code as they rotate around on that cube. But think about the possibilities of the user being able to interact with the elements on the faces of the cube! Any other 3D guys reading this will probably agree with me that this might be a bad example, but I think the description gets the creative juices flowing for anyone not used to doing 3D work.
Bottom line, this is a really (big really) nice feature to get with version 1. It is kinda like an early Christmas present from the WPF 3D team. I feel bad ... I didn't get them anything!