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Blaxxun VRML Browser Source Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the give-it-to-the-world dept.

Cave Newt writes "The Web3D Consortium just released the source code to Blaxxun's CC3D VRML browser, which Blaxxun kindly donated in order to seed the development of a fully conformant, completely open and preferably multi-platform VRML browser. Pretty darned cool. "

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Open? Hardly... by reverse+solidus · · Score: 4

    It's yet another "Community Source" license. Lots of interesting little twists, though, including a ban on using the source code outside the USA, Eurpoean Union, Australia, and Japan. The rest of the world is SOL. There's an especially amusing addendum to the license that makes the Web3d consortium thought police for Blaxxun. Check out:
    EUA, Web3d/Blaxxun Agreement, Amusing addendum

  2. Good, but... by rmull · · Score: 4

    I have yet to see a single good use for VRML. This may be due to the fact that there aren't any good browsers for linux, but i've seldom run across anything other than a novelty site that even has VRML on it. Though I'm sure I'll be proved wrong...

    --
    See you, space cowboy...
  3. Yes, it was overhyped, but don't trash it already by Hanno · · Score: 5

    I'm surprised by so many "hey, wasn't VRML that thing that didn't work out?" comments here.

    Yes, VRML was overhyped to the maximum, so much that most everyone started hating it; but if you consider it, VRML _is_ a good idea done _right_.

    Just think of today's market in consumer computer graphics. Current low-cost graphics cards for standard PCs have the 3D processing power that was exclusively available to high end graphics workstations only a very short time ago. The vast majority of today's computers are equipped with 3D graphics cards. And the only product research made by graphics card manufacturers is in the 3D sector.

    And of course the games market, that is driving this technology. There is practically _no_ 2D game available today. When I first saw Doom-like first person shooters, I never expected to see games like we have today - I too thought that 3D was "just a trend".

    I'm pretty sure that there will be a need for 3D in internet applications and I am glad that VRML is here already as a working solution. It's not as important as its inventors claimed it would be, but it's certainly more than "just a trend" and surely more than a failure.

    --

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    You may like my a cappella music
  4. there're reasons VRML isn't taking off by incubus · · Score: 5

    I spent quite a bit of time looking at VRML.
    In a word, it sucks and here's why.
    The concept behind VRML is exactly that of HTML. It's a markup language. While this is sufficient for stuff you read and browse through, it's not sufficient for an interactive environment.
    VRML comes in world files which generally have a .wrl extension. Typically this 'world' is loaded into your VRML browser, and then rendered as appropriate.
    If you hit a particular link, it loads up another .wrl file from the server and sends ya over there.

    While this method is fine for web pages.. it's *not* fine for an interactive 3D environment. That's the problem... you need something more interactive than a highly-static format.

    There are *some* facilities for doing things dynamically with VRML, but from what I saw, they were mainly hacks with javascript etc that look like they weren't really planned during the original design.

    The sum of this analysis is that taking what works for web browsing and just 'doing it in 3D' is not the right philosophy.

    Here's a fair example, you can't do anything dynamic that would require changes to the wrl file loaded in the browser. To do that.. you have to reload the wrl file... which is unreasonable.
    Almost any sort of behavior the objects you create are going to have... has to be predefined in the .wrl file. (I said almost).

    VRML is unpopular for a reason.