Slashdot Mirror
A New Chance For 3D On The Web?
SiliconRedox writes: "The New York Times has an article on the efforts of the Web3D Consortium to update and reinstate VRML as a viable language for Web-based 3D. As with other standards it faces a tough challenge: it isn't HTML. Not many people are keen on rewriting an entire site in a shakey language."
I find VRML can do only one thing well - act as a common fileformat between applications.
;)
It's not general enough to be a major format, and it's not fast/cool/whatever enough to be a niche format.
0.02,
Mike.
ps) Of course it's slower than Java - everything is
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Some efforts are underway to provide OpenGL objects and verticies via XML. Check out XGL or BGL. for example. Given the industry push to XML, wouldn't one of these standards (Well, once they get a little more fleshed out) be a more logical choice?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Go get a copy of fsv.
Find the line in the rendering system that says something like this:
persp_height = (currentfile.filesize/(maxfilesize/2048000)* max_height;
and add something like this after it:
if (!strcmp(currentfile.filetype, 'h') persp_height=persp_height + (maxheight/2);
if (!strcmp(currentfile.filetype, 'o') persp_height=persp_height/3;
if (!strcmp(currentfile.filename, 'core') persp_height=4;
No problem!
.sig: Now legally binding!
If you really want to see 3D used as part of the web, try metastream. The latest version of the technology is seriously close to photographic quality, and it doesn't want to take over your whole screen. It's not useful for designing an entire site as a 3D world, but it can add enough 3D to your site to differentiate it from others.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
This could prove your point, actually, as SGI also may have considered and rejected such designs.
In practice one saw a black window (space) full of many colored lozanges each with a node's name. One could then 'fly' around them, zooming in (& into) them to locate information. Apparently the idea was one could index information in such a way that like material was located nearby in 3D space. Frankly it wasn't worth the effort though it had potential.
Like so many other kewl Apple projects this got dumped when the company realized it was bleeding money it couldn't afford out every pore & started killing projects without short-term potential. As I recall the developer left & went to a start-up that quickly sank from sight.
I've seached a few times for the plug-in but it's lost to the winds of time.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Personally, I don't think it is so much as a world definition format (such as VRML) that is needed to get us there, but instead a new physical interface for displaying the content.
Intermediate steps of displaying the 3D on a 2D screen work well for many apps, such as games. However, most games suffer from mainly dealing with movement on a plane. These games allow for a full 6DOF movement, but such movement tends toward being tricky for most people (which is why we don't have a ton of Descent clones). Only good gamers excel in these areas, and learn the control necessary to navigate in the environments effectively. This won't cut it with the normal "joe".
We (people) can easily navigate in a real 3D space. Most of us played on the jungle jim when we were kids, some of us did flips on trampolines, others did cartwheels. We could probably still do these things today (with a little practice), and not get too disoriented. Why? Because we arn't keeping our head still, and we can sense (with our eyes mainly) the world around us, without this "frame" around it (like on a monitor).
For the average person to be able to effectively explore and work in a 3D enviroment, that person needs to be "in" the environment - the term known as "immersion". With current "mainstream" systems (like games and such), there is no immersion. Increasing the monitor size helps, but becomes prohibitive (in cost) for most people after a point (about 21" for most). Even then, it is still a monitor. So, what are the options?
Shutter glasses can add depth, but still only to the boundries of the largest affordable size monitor you buy. A projection system with shutter glasses can be really nice, esp. when coupled with a zero-force chair. However, the cost becomes quite high for the projector (because of the refresh rate needed for the shutter glasses) - let's not even talk about the chair.
You could conceivably build your own chair, and position it close to the screen, so that the projected image encompasses your whole FOV. This is even better (in fact, this is essentially what simulators do - they may do it with a single projection, or a multi-monitor approach, with each monitor representing a window in the "vehicle" - multi-head X could do this quite nicely). However, unless you are pretending you are in a vehicle (like in Descent), problems arise when you want to turn your head, and look around.
These problems can be overcome with an HMD - to do to full immersion. However, until you spend large amounts of $$$, HMD's tend to be low-res, small FOV affairs (though playing Quake in the low-cost VFX-1 is quite fun). This is the tradeoff for full immersion.
Navigation then becomes another issue. Gloves have been tried, but they tend to be a pain (until you move up to say, a VPL Dataglove with a Polhemous tracking system). A cheaper method might involve some sort of 3D "puck" navigation device you could hold in one hand, with a few buttons on it to select options and such with.
Feedback still has to be dealt with (cheap motion platforms are available), and the final bugaboo (at least in a full immersion setup) - simulator sickness (affects a lot of people).
I think immersion is the key to getting a lot of people using 3D environments. It just needs to be cheaper to be accessible to more people (actually, it can be fairly cheap now - but most people won't take the time to implement it - still takes a bit of elbow grease).
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I wholeheartedly agree with that. Just take a look at my signature below:
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
VRML is Virtual Reality Modelling Language. It fitted in with other web-based technologies when last I used it. It's not a replacement for anything. What it is good for is the description of a 3D virtual world, with various APIs to interface into that. It was fairly regular and fairly complete in the version I used, and additions may or may not improve things, but please don't get confused as to what it is. As to ppl re-writing their sites, they already do that with flash. As to computers not being capable, they are (see Quake). As to flexibility, it is (hey, I wrote a simple 3D 1pp multi-user environment using it in '97/8). It's not as great at defining detailed 3D worlds as the pov-ray file format, it's not as wazzy as quake, but it is very handy at it's intended, general purpose market. Hopefully we'll see better and better browsers coming along.
Actually, I'd be keen on interacting with a 3D website, provided the 3D effect was done with stereoptic glasses (the ones with a blue lens for one eye and a red lens for the other) and the effect achieved within regular HTML via JPGs/PNGs. This would allow against either a white or a black background, for different elements to appear to be somewhat dimensional, and for emphasis related to depth to be added. Admittedly this would mostly be for the novelty value of the experience, but I've seen a lot of comic books done this way, and photographs can be rendered this way as well (not the newer photos with the refractive surface element, no glasses needed, but if the image is taken with the proper camera this is reall cool, and this may even be possible with the old stereoscopes which work on the same principle as those ViewMaster clicky goggle things).
I do not have a signature
Did anyone ever ask WHY?
Why the heck would I want to be a fish in an ocean? For GAMES it's one thing. But for a data interface?
VRML sounds like a neat thing. The movies make virtual interfaces look cool. I'll admit it. But I want to be able to read a document, not frag it. Not argue with it. Not have to run a virtual mile to go read it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Your legs can navigate a 3-D space, then, can they? Great. Modify your placement on the Z axis by plus three meters. In other words, move three meters directly above where you are, without moving forward, backward, left or right. Oh, and note that no other part of your body can move either, so hope there's no ceiling above you.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I suspect that if 3D on the web catches on at all, it will be driven by a system like Java3D, relying on VRML mainly as an interchange format for objects. Another approach that's kind of neat is what Yindo.com does: they take a small scripting language (Lua) and hook it up to OpenGL to get a very small 3D plugin; too bad it's proprietary.
Of course, in some sense 3D on the Internet is here already. Just look at Quake and all those other games.
Perhaps I can lend some perspective:
;)
About a year and a half, not quite two years ago a friend of mine had been experimenting with the 3D Consortium's "Cosmoworlds" VRML creation package. As a mechanical engineer, he had ample experience with Autocad, and 3DStudio Max, and found the transition to creating 3d objects and landscapes within the VRML authoring software to be rather simple.
We (along with two other partners) formed a company to test the waters. Our staff included a web content designer (myself), a professional photographer/pre-press layout designer, a salesperson and our VR designer.
Our process, and mission statement was simple: Construct high quality building exterior/interior walkthroughs that could run in a standard Windows web browser; The target being real estate developers, construction companies, colleges wanting virtual tours, and any other application that fit. The actual construction process is simple:
1. Shoot room interiors with high quality digital or 35mm camera
2. Construct room and/or models in Autocad, 3DSMax, Canoma, or Cosmoworlds and import to VRML
3. Optimize texture pallette and quality for size; Trim VRML for same
4. Apply textures to VRML
5. Add scripting for camera flight through scene to create animated flight path; Add scripting for any moving objects in scene.
The resultant output is a photorealistic completely 3D flythrough, user controllable with mouse or keyboard through the scene you have created. The image quality, and viewer experience is substantially better than the "scrolling panoramic java applet" style "VR" that many national realtors are using today.
VRML scenes can have clickable links in them opening in any target window. You can stream audio content through them, in Real or other formats. You could drive an eCommerce site with VRML ("View the interior of your Ford Explorer, and click the seats to add Leather upgrade; etc.)
So what are the problems with VR?
1. The 3D Consortium wants a $15,000 membership fee. This is completely unrealistic for startups. Talent is where you find it, and sometimes that's in four man companies. There are other authoring packages than CosmoWorlds, but you have no feedback channel unless you are a member. The companies that ARE on their board are mentally constipated giants that seemingly haven't furthered VRML's cause in three years.
2. While the finshed animation sizes are small (200-500k for a two or three room walkthrough of near-television quality), the CosmoWorlds PLUGIN required to view it is 2 MEGS. Cross-platform support is non existant. It performs slowly on machines under 300 MHz. On 56k modems, the shaded walls for the scene pop up instantly, but the textures pop up as they stream in.
3. As with any new technology, clients have a built-in level of "FUD" just thinking about it. I could flop my laptop in front of ten company VP's and college presidents, and wow them with the quality and ease of use of the animations being built, but they just didn't "get it." Tell a University president that you'll charter a helicopter, and build a stunning birds' eye flythrough of their campus, including buildings, and all landscaping for $10k, and you hear "oh wow, we though it would cost five TIMES that much! This is great!" Then the waffling starts; and you lose the job. A three foot tall stack of printed brochures will cost that much; Apparently since the technology we proposed couldn't be touched it is tough to justify.
Granted, we DID have a few forward-thinking companies use the technology. We constructed some presentations for the world's largest maker of ATM machines and security products. The potential for the technology as a training aid, sales tool, kiosk display, or presentation medium is amazing. The only real obstacle is the public's subconcious belief that new technologies must be expensive, unwieldy, too complicated, or hardware-intensive to be viable for them.
If you belong to a forward thinking corporation, and would like more information, please email me and I will put you in touch with people who are already BUILDING amazing content with VRML; not just discussing it.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
It is insane to expect client-side vector space calculations (which you need for good 3d) EVERY time the page is viewed. VRML sucked because it expected this.
The format needs to be a binary one.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Take a standard map. Draw a line down the left side, and a line across the bottom. Where they intersect, in the bottom-left corner, is (x,y 0,0). Now, draw the third dimension, a line intersecting (x,y 0,0) and having a right angle to both x and y. This is (z). Above the map is z+, and below the map is z-. For an amusing thought exercise, draw the fourth dimension on there. Bear in mind that to follow the pattern a) it must be at a right angle to all the other lines and b) there must be one dimension more than what's being described, in order to give it context.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
As always:
http://partners.ny tim es.com/2000/10/05/technology/05SPAC.html
Revelation Zero: The beginning of the end.
FTP isn't IRC
IRC isn't Email
Email isn't ICQ
ICQ isn't Web
Web isn't VRML
it's in my head
Another dimension devoid of useful content.
And we'll get advertising coming at us from all angles.
But of course it will also affect pr0n!
i can see it's a good idea and will probably look very nice, but really, i think it will be very impractical.
like in jurassic park when the girl says "wow, it's a unix system, i know this" and then spends ages navigating round the 3D world looking for the right building. all that could be done a lot quicker with the style we use now.
---
---
Never send a man where you can send a bullet.
The place where I work used to develop and support a VRML editor/viewer, and we found that the market really just dried up - this was about a year to year and a half ago. Just no real demand for it. Basically, the VRML stuff was slow as shit - kinda like java, but slower (no offense to java heads :)).
It is kind of cool and all that, but bulky. Also, there was a shaking out of the viewer market a while back when sgi basically dumped Cosmo. Seems to me the merits of the language and its application to the web just don't show enough positives for reinstatement. Just my two cents, you understand.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
>technology are Web sites like an animated
>nightclub with flashing lights and dancers.
It's like i'm there man!
(well, maybe if I switch to a 14.4k modem and pretend there's some fucked-up strobe light thing going on.)
I played with VRML 1.0 and it was kludgey and awful (I built a church to kill knaves and saints). Ahhh.. but you say VRML has changed, I say I've read the specs and it still appears definately low-fi in terms of the abilities of an OpenGL app or MS-Direct3D (sure they may have been made to deal with different things but they're heading in the same direction - I don't need to tell you the web's slowly bluring location of files and software now do I?). AFAIK there's no bump-mapping, no 3D textures, scripting is klunky and inelegant.
VRML, it was still-born.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I remember when VRML actually had some steam - it was when I first entered the web industry (about five years ago now I guess). My biggest memory of it was that it was *really* slow on the SGI machines I used at work.
I guess there is some chance that it could take off now, seeing as there is a lot more computing power on people's desktops, but the main problem it will always have is that 3D is not a simple format for the average person to be able to deal with and author in successfully. HTML has had such a good run because of the simple fact that people can easily deal with the reduced spatial requirements that 2D has, and the development of visual cues is well-known. That pretty much anyone can learn the basics of HTML in a day or two (and I use GeoCities as my proof of that) is testament to the simplicity of the format. Adding another dimension to the mix increases the complexity by an order of magnitude.
3D enviroments, including on the web, won't catch on until they are simple enough for anyone to setup (with a lil work). The first person that stops using geometry modeling and switches to a physics model that can be programmed w/ half a dozen options and selecting default rooms and avatars (which could be modified) from a library and then gives it all a ICQ-like interface will probably find themself very rich. VR-online has been clunky ever since they started trying to switch from text to graphic interfaces. If the world seems paper thin or the controls are hard to use people won't like it even if it wasn't a huge download for them. When 3D websites work as well as Quake then you'll have more people trying it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
VRML is a dumbed down OpenInventor with committee add-ons.
Open Inventor is Open Source (buzz, ding) which breaths new life into it. No more big SGI boxes for me. It's installed on a Linux box I have access to, seems fairly fast with a TNT2 class accelerator, I know people who are having fun with it, I'm about to once more. You can hack the ASCII file format like VRML and/or you can code it in C++, unlike VRML, mix and match ASCII/binary/C/C++, lots of funky User Interface widgets off-the-shelf (unlike VRML)...
I agree. but those days of really broadband networks may be a little closer. Nortel has a new optical switch which is 100X faster than the fastest currently available. Jason Lanier (sp?) spoke at the unvieling of the "fridge" and said it could be a big help in web enabled 3d and real-time virtually reality.
But that big switch is probably 4-5 years away from common usage.
BTW, I know about it because my brother-in-law hold a wack of patents on it.
I think we need more than just marketing to drive the need for web based 3d - how about some really usefull applications of a 3d UI?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Like when you just want to get a video driver or software patch of one of the "commical sites" *cough*3dfx.com*cough* you have to wait an 5 minutes all the NEAT GRAPHICS to load, 5 minutes for the shockwave flash, then another 5 minutes listening to your hard drive grind while it loads the java script, and if you are lucky your web browser doesn't crash, then it takes another 5 minutes to find the link the the software drive though the gobs of marketing PR BS.
I just want to download the software drive, do you really need images, javascript and shockwave flash to do this?
Sure you try to go to there ftp site, but the dir and ls command don't work.
FUN FUN
The only thing that could make these better is if you pour on a 12 minute download of a virtual world and a 20 minute render time, can you do that please?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
X3D is simply a mapping of the VRML language into XML. While this does buy you a good deal of cool XML features, like using XSL to completely remodel what/how your modeling, it doesn't address any of the core technical problems remaining to acheive large scale distributed 3d, and it in the name of backwards compatability it doesn't fix any of the remaining problems in the original standard that make VRML browsers "non-trivial" and hard to scale.
In order to acheive truly large scale distribtued 3d, it will take a different approach. X3D/VRML may be able to play a role as an import pathway for relatively static content or inefficiently scripted content, but little more.
[SHAMELESS_PLUG] For some time now I've been working to put the stuff I've been working on (that's raised tens of millions at startups like OnLive[Traveler]) into a public domain source base at www.vscape.com - It needs only a few more competent coders. I know there are other people who want to make this happen, we just need to work together. The technology now exists, the implementation and design decisions are challenging and fun. [/SHAMELESS_PLUG]
there would actually have to be some demand for VRML sites... oh, it's cute for a little plugin kind of thing here and there (virtual kitchen or what not), but it's not the Web, and it won't be the Web... (hmmm, souunds like one of those 'TV will never catch on, it's just a fad' kind of rants). The point is, if nobody wants to use it, it doesn't matter...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
- For years I have been vocal (and largely unrecognized) in my views that VRML was being handled wrongly.. aiming at technical specs rather than what users wanted and what environments to craft that would make it easy for ordinary folks to make 3D spaces. All those 3D modeling tools, however wonderful, will never appeal to a large content community or be able to be used by the ordinary netizen. In addition, and sharing your frustration, the fact that multi user was never treated as a priority was a big problem for VRML and potentially its fatal mistake. Building 3D is fundamentally a social activity (in the real world) and VRML desperately needed a multi user virtual commons where people could come in and kick the tires of new objects or properties, carrying out their development at the level of a real usable visual space. The VRML mailing list approach was a disaster and brought the level of discussion down from the experience of 3D to "text only" code talk and politics. The few multi user vrml spaces made were either not open to the community for development or were efforts too small to drive the development of VRML.
This reminds me so much of Snow Crash.Of course, the reasons could have been basic things like it was slow and clunky. But the above opinions seem valid too.
--
I have been waiting for ages for OpenGL accelerated hardware to arrive to the majority of consumer desktops....as this will fuel the vrml revolution. You only have to look at flash usage (on the better sites) to see how people are interested in creating entirely unique UI environments, even windowing environments! VRML is a simple language that allows the creation of complex scenes, but until the TNT level of OpenGL performance arrived, the scenes were rendered at a terrible level (slow, slow, slow). Once people have the performance to throw around a few thousand textuured polys at quake speeds, vrml starts to allow the redefinition of web interfaces to a new paradigm (billboards still allow the use of staticly orientated 2d surfaces).
Secondly I think the SGI releases for Linux should assist in the generation of the content that will show the average user just why the 3d model is far superior for certain content (car showrooms online for example).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
GNU isn't Unix Microsoft VM for Java isn't Sun Java Linus Torvalds isn't God Creative isn't Aureal IRC isn't ICQ UT netcode isn't efficient AFCArchvile isn't insane
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
- It was high on gee-whiz value, but there weren't a whole lot of practical applications (speaking only for myself) besides games, which it wasn't especially well-suited to.
- It is possible to come up with a 3D object specification language that's easy to use. VRML wasn't it.
- There were no good free modelers, IMHO.
- Every VRML viewer I tried had incredibly awkward navigation. If Doom had been that painful to use, we'd all still be playing side-scrollers.
The biggest of the foregoing problems, IMHO, was #2. HTML took off because anyone with a browser and a text editor could easily build web pages. I understand the need for complexity in some applications, but there should have been a simplified basic syntax that would have made it easy to build VRML spaces for beginners. When the existing syntax is harder to use than POV-Ray -- which is pretty simple for the capabilities it provides -- forget it.--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'm a game programmer. Every day, I see the enormous efforts being heaped into making shared 3-D game worlds a reality. It is incredibly difficult; it is not a trivial task. State/event distribution and user interface are terribly hard problems.
Rendering is the easy part.
I find it a little... funny that the VRML is saying, "What? We can't do this in our web browsers yet?" when the game world is working full time to produce meager results.
I'd say: Leave it in the oven for another decade, and I think we will all be pleased with what we find.
That program actually exists. Or rather, existed (past tense). A couple years after J.P. came out, I downloaded the source from SGI's anon-ftp site and tried to build it. It's an SGI-specific program (duh), but the SGI-specifc code relied on stuff that had changed over the years. It didn't even compile.
Hollywood picked a fairly old program when they grabbed that one. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
> Didn't we outgrow the term "VR" 2 years ago?
;)
I get this type of question quite a lot (being a VR researcher). It often comes with it's "practicality" counterpart: "what can you do with VR that you can't do with conventional 3D rendering?"
My answer is always the same: If the genie of the magc lamp would give you a UI-wish, what interface would you go for:
a) exactly what we have now?
b) The Holodeck?
choose b. That's what we're working towards
As for compilation on the client: despite the fact that everyone seems to flame Java on slashdot all the time, I find Java's compilation *on the client* to be a good thing. I dont see why this should be any different...
0.02,
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Aside from the poor quality, I think what has been the problem, is that it got replaced by better tuned technologies like FLASH & co, beause they are not specifically targetted at interactive 3d content only, but rather at interactive 2d content with additional 3d animations. Moreover, they`re easy to program, while there are not many good vrml editors around..
People want content in that model.. 3d all on it`s own is not enough, and never will be of the quality a FLASH animation can provide, or a more specificly targetted program like CAD/CAM puts out..
Imo, that`s what vrml came short of.. interactive 2d content, within a richer 3d world.
a0a
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Simple answer: Both Microsoft and Apple have user interface research groups, both of which have at one time considered a 3D interface. Both have rejected them. They're too hard to do serious work in for the average person, and they use up too much CPU time. It'd be only for show. Note that SGI's 3D File System Navigator bombed. Nobody liked it.
That said, why the heck would I want to navigate a web site in 3D? Doesn't it face exactly the same problems? Isn't that kind of.... stoopid?
And besides, for displaying images of products, wouldn't a voxel technology have more success?
VRML has been around since 3D visualization was a clunky, slow reality on the web. While some of the VRML sites actually had some use (such as catalogues of 3D models) there was little utility in trying to navigate a 3D site using VRML, and little need either.
Since the birth of VRML, the whole 3D graphics on the home PC has changed enormously - first person shooters, advanced driving simulations and many other games have redefined what we expect from 3D visualization. So now we are in a position to make use of this 3D technology on the web.
But what does 3D actually gain us on the web? For discussion rooms, text is still superior, unless everyone has actual voice links and virtual blackboards on which to discuss ideas. Web sites merely relaying news are probably still best served as they exist today, as words and pictures, with the occasional movie file or music clip. So where precisely should 3D be deployed to actually be useful? Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash painted a vivid 3D world where users had their own corner of the multiverse, could travel and explore virtual environments and relate directly with Avatars, thus presenting a more 'immediate' environment with visual cues that relate directly to real world environments. Maybe this 'virtual meeting place' will become the new chat room over the next couple of years. We'll present a more 'natural' face on the web, but as with so many interactions on the web, we may not be what we appear in VR. There are no restrictions on how we choose to manifest ourselves in such a virtual world, be it skin colour, sex, size, augmentation or other.
So maybe the current multiplayer games universe will be gently replaced by a 3D side of the web which is similar to the Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing games we see now, as people get the technology going. But I think for the bulk of the web, in providing information and discussion potential, will not go down the 3D road.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
IMHO- VRML didn't catch on because it was released too soon. When i started looking into it, i was on a modem and the vrml site took forever to load. Now that cable and dls are making higher speed internet available to the masses this might actually have a chance of coming back. Another possibility is use of hardware 3d accelerators. Since most current computers today have some form of 3d this could also make VRML much nicer to look at. Another issue with VRML is there really was no standard browser (you can go on pretty much ANY platform and run netscape).
all in all, i'd really like to see VRML take off. It can only add to the internet's coolness factor.