"The company is announcing the new feature this morning, working with partners including MakerBot Industries, 3D Systems, Afinia, AutoDesk, Netfabb and others."

So, are those nice folks on a standards body? Or are they each going to be putting forth a model where they supply drivers that somehow convert .obj or .stl models into whatever makes their printers happy?

The current solution works so well precisely because it isn't all locked up in goofy proprietary formats and comm methods.

I don't want you to think I'm an anti-Microsoft zealot here; I'm just making the completely reasonable observation that this could be a repeat of all the nonsense that we've had to deal with from 2D printers.

A better announcement would've been "Microsoft pushes for open standard for 3D printer communications, supplies open-source reference driver and API". Then again, that's still not as simple and useful a solution as old G-code.