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A New Chance For 3D On The Web?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-right-of-vrml-vermin? dept.

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."

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. I dunno by mackga · · Score: 4

    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.

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    "shop smart:shop s-mart" ash

  2. A Postmortem on VRML by interiot · · Score: 4
    From A Postmortem on VRML:
    • 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.
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