Slashdot Mirror

This page: http://www.jimworthey.com/jimtalk2004nov.html is the graphics that I used for a talk last year. As you read through, you'll see 3D pictures and animated graphics. When you see a 3D graph with a border, that links to a VRML pic that you can zoom and rotate. For free VRML viewer see http://www.parallelgraphics.com/ for example.

Got this from the strana site -

Theres a really well done VRML simulation of how it was all done. Its really just a series of still environment snapshots from various stages of the salvage operation but someone took ALOT of time on it. Good job -

http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/kursk/index.h tml?eng

I usually dismiss VRML as crappy and slow but Im really impressed with this one.

ParallelGraphics has put together some slick VRML scenes depicting the salvage operation. There's a link from their home page. It needs their VRML browser, but if you're running Windows it's worth a look.

Have you all - gone - completely - insane?
VRML rules the Universe, and I will explain why.

There are comments that VRML is slower than specialised game engines. Well, duh. It's a general solution, they are specific solutions. There are many things that you can do in VRML that are not possible in game engines. For example, arbitrarily large worlds. Every object being active and scriptable. In the Quake engine, it's not possible to make a door rotate on its hinge. Quake only allows for sliding doors. In VRML, of course, any object can do anything. In Quake, the largest space you can make is the size of a dance hall. In VRML, you can make a space as big as the solar system, and zoom in to a grain of sand. If you've ever tried to use a game engine, you'll know; they're great within their constraints. But those constraints are severe.

VRML is the only general, extensible solution for VR. And it happens to be an open standard, controlled by a consortium with Open Source as a core part of its platform. It's come a long way since 1997. It's integrated into MPEG4 - go to The MPEG4 spec page and do a search for "VRML". It's been extended with NURBS, geospatial capabilities, and more. It's fully scriptable with Java, ECMAScript, and whatever else you want to plug into the open source.

There are comments here that what we need is and XML language for Web3D. OK, fine, you got it. VRML has an XML encoding; it's called X3D. The old encoding still works too.

It's out there now, being used in real applications to actually do stuff with VR beyond running around in a maze shooting blocky 256-colour monsters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If you want to know what's actually going on now, the best source for general Web3D info is Sandy Ressler's about.com site.

If you want cool tools for VRML, go to the new kings of Web3D - ParallelGraphics. They have authoring tools for Windows, and a browser for Mac and Windows. Unfortunately they are WinTel-centric, so no Linux, and no Mac authoring. Shout at them until they come around. Nicely, of course.

If you want a visual VRML authoring tool for Windows, go to Spazz3D, the most useful tool to ever have such a stupid name.

But this is Slashdot, so here's the dirt: for the Free Software/Open Source angle, go to OpenVRML. They have a browser for all major platforms, and if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself.

Didn't see this one in the other comments. Parallel Graphics are tracking Mir in 3D at http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/mir/. Uses Cortona VRML browser though, so it's only available to those with access to a Windowsboxen aswell.

Does look funky though!

Waz

Another place to watch Mir falling in realtime is this VRML model. The company itself makes Cortona VRML plugin for Windows-based browsers; can't say if this can be vieweed by any of Linux viewers, but one surely can give it a try.

Perhaps Jaron Lanier is right - computers will never be stable enough to be truly useful. Or perhaps people should stop complaining about the bugs and fix them...

Just my 2 cents.

-- Mark Pesce

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with VRML - you can do some pretty incredible stuff with it, but the syntax is archane, and scripting support varies widly between browsers.

A little known feature of VRML97 is the inclusion of the EAI (External Authoring Interface), which lets you tie in Java objects (or C++, in some browsers), and use the objects to dynamically affect the environment. Some projects actually only have a really simple stub .wrl file, and then build the rest of the stuff from a database on the back end, bypassing the syntax difficulties.

Unfortunatly, the main reason that EAI hasn't revolutionized VRML and made it widely used is that not all browsers support it, and levels of compliance varies between the ones that do. Sound familiar (HTML, Java Applets, etc...)?

The next revision of VRML shows a lot of promise -it's an XML-based language called X3D (Yeah, I know, another damn X* acronym). Hopefully, by eliminating the need for specialized parsers, the browser writers will be able to concentrate more on spec compliance, rendering speed/quality, and cross-platform availability.

Right now, the best VRML97 browsers are Cosmo Player and ParallelGraphic's Cortona, but neither have Linux versions available (old versions of Cosmo are available for SGI). The spec for VRML97 and X3D are availble, and are surpisingly readable.


Scott Severtson
Applications Developer