X3Test: A Headless Browser-Based Framework for Automated Performance Benchmarking of X3D/X3DOM Scenes

Abstract

We present X3Test, an automated testing and performance benchmarking framework designed to address the absence of dedicated tools for X3D scenes on the web. X3Test employs Node.js and Puppeteer to load X3D/X3DOM scenes in a headless browser, simulate user interactions, and collect runtime performance metrics like frame rate (FPS), render timings, and scene graph size. This is achieved by leveraging X3DOM’s runtime API, which allows data extraction without requiring modifications to the existing content. The framework offers both a command-line interface (CLI) and a programmatic API, enabling developers to specify scene URLs, trigger events such as animations or camera changes, and customize test parameters like duration. We evaluated X3Test across diverse scenarios, from simple static scenes and animated content to the complex "3D Roanoke" city model, demonstrating its capability to effectively capture performance variations linked to scene complexity and dynamic elements. X3Test provides a robust solution for systematic Web3D performance analysis, with future plans including RenderDoc support and the collection of more advanced metrics.