Will 3D graphics in the browser cause trouble when running other 3D apps?

There's a couple of projects in operation to provide 3D graphics in the browser, such as WebGL and
Google's O3D.

Assuming that 3D graphics in the browser succeeds and becomes popular, it seems possible that web pages will have annoying constantly running 3D ads on them, just like they have annoying Flash video ads and animated ads and so on. What technology provides to get your attention, ad-makers will use to excess, I suspect.

Would this cause a new level of problem with running a browser with a bunch of tabs open while using 3D software like SL or zillions of other 3D software?

The first problem will be with your PC's ability to render all those 3D graphics quickly enough. Running a single instance of the SL viewer is a full-time job for most PCs. Running two viewers on even a top-end PC results in miserable frame rates.

If it does turn out that 3D ads are all over like flash stuff is now, then I could see it becoming an issue for people whos system doesn't have a ton of graphical or processing power. I tend to think, though, that ads won't quite make it in 3D as they do in flash because the resources needed to generate them are far different between 3D rendered and a frame switching animation. Unless it was a completely efficient rendering process, misuses of that could effectively cut out viewers from the low to low-middle end user groups, which is not very good advertising at all seeing as how many people that group comprises. It's a cool technology though, and if used right I think could open up a ton of cool things, including some really good web games (finally lol).

I can run 2 copies of SL as separate processes (at least till my 2GB of memory fills up), so I dont see why having SL + some other 3D app would be a problem, assuming your graphics setup can handle it.

My setup: Geforce 7950GT 512MB, Core2 Duo 6600 (2.4Ghz), 2GB DDR2 Ram (800MHz)
SL settings on both copies were "Modified Ultra" (Ultra with particles and draw distance set low)

As the hardware and bandwidth gets faster, programmers and graphics artists seem to be drawn to using up every last bit of power needlessly just because they can. If 3D browser graphics are the next new thing, you can bet it will be everywhere.

I was just realizing today that webpages like Yahoo! don't seem to load any faster for me anymore compared to when I had dial-up. The new Yahoo! pages are so busy that for the first time in I guess at least a decade for me I'm no longer using it as the default home page.

I use "show a blank page" for a home page, it loads really fast

(but I have my bookmarks open in the sidebar so I can go wherever I needed to go pretty quickly)