P3DF format overview

What this page defines

This page explains the current reference architecture. It is not a ratified standard, a complete normative specification, or a claim of tested conformance. The language-neutral public specification and conformance corpus are upcoming release deliverables.

P3DF is intended as a portable operational spatial-twin package. A file exported or shared at a particular moment is a point-in-time reference, including whatever history the author elected to embed.

Read the same overview as plain Markdown or inspect the machine-readable project status.

A deterministic container

manifest.json                     Required
scene.json                        Required
geometry/*.glb                    Optional
navmesh/{profile}/*.parquet        Optional
navmesh/{profile}/meta.json        Optional navigation metadata
telemetry/{node_id}/*.parquet      Optional
thumbnails/*.png                  Optional

The reference specification defines a ZIP container with stored entries, fixed entry timestamps and sorted paths, placing the manifest first. The manifest covers each other entry with its path, byte length, SHA-256 checksum, media type and role.

These checksum and serialization rules support corruption detection and reproducible packaging. They do not establish who authored a package. Signing and encryption are reserved future work.

Scene hierarchy and semantics

Site → Building → Level → Space → Asset → Component

UUID identifiers give scene nodes stable identities within the package. Parent-child relationships establish containment, while additional semantic relationships describe how entities connect. JSON carries the scene, with a JSON-LD context for vocabulary names.

The draft recommends building and appliance vocabularies such as Brick and SAREF. Readers should preserve domain semantics rather than replace them with labels meaningful only to a single application.

Coordinate and geometry conventions

Navigation and recorded telemetry

Navigation is represented per level, with profiles for clearance constraints and links for connections across levels. Doors and other access conditions can affect the route that a planner considers. The initial model assumes flat levels; uneven terrain is outside its scope.

Telemetry binds time-series channels to assets. The reference specification uses Parquet for embedded history and Arrow tables for window queries. Timestamps are UTC, and channels carry units and declared data types.

Camera feeds, live synchronization and cloud database services belong to the platform roadmap. They should not be inferred from support for embedded historical telemetry.

What needs to be validated

• Required entries, supported format version and valid manifest.
• Entry checksums and resolvable references.
• Unique node identifiers and a valid scene hierarchy.
• Finite poses and valid unit quaternions.
• Valid spatial polygons and navigation topology.
• Telemetry schemas, UTC timestamps and chronological ordering.

The release plan includes valid and deliberately invalid examples with expected outcomes. Until those assets are public and an implementation has passed them, “P3DF-compatible” should be treated as an unverified implementation claim.