[HN Gopher] VRML ___________________________________________________________________ VRML Author : vmoore Score : 102 points Date : 2022-04-15 14:15 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | schmichael wrote: | Back in 2014 I discovered Go can produce dot files of your | dependency trees... | | ...and graphviz can produce VRML... | | Lots of other garbage tweets in the mix, sorry: | https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Aschmichael)%20until%3A2... | IAmGraydon wrote: | I remember the hype around VRML when it first became a thing. It | really was the same kind of hype surrounding the metaverse today. | Turns out that doing most things in virtual 3D space is less | efficient than just presenting them in flat 2D. The false belief | is that more dimensions = better. Now this belief has | materialized again as Zuck's new baby, and I'm confident it will | find the same end. | spidaman wrote: | Does the presence of this post indicate that VRML is going to be | relevant for ...anything... ever again? | | I have an old t-shirt around somewhere from a VRML event in the | mid-90's (back when I was tinkering on making dumb little scenes | a cracked AutoCAD)... yay, it's relevant again :) | | Personally, I've felt for a long time that as video cards and | GPUs have made rendering a buzzillion polygons per second | tenable, operating system developers should rethink their | attachment to the two dimensional desktop metaphor that's been | the interface for over three decades now. Whenever I suggest | this, people tend to knee-jerk on how silly the Jurassic Park | scene is with the SGI filesystem navigator (ya, the "It's unix! I | know this" scene). Yep, that was the extent of our imagination | working within the constraints thirty years ago but I do believe | we can and should do better. But I have little confidence in the | capacity of Meta or Microsoft to drive that kind of innovation, | the creativity and incentives within those organizations will | thwart any breakthroughs. | nfrankel wrote: | Funny to see this here. More than twenty years ago, I did my | Master thesis in Architecture using VRML to display a building I | had designed and the surrounding district. | | I especially loved the Level-Of-Detail object that allows to | design different objects depending on the distance of the object | with the view point. | | I still have the files somewhere, but last time I checked, I | found no software to read them. | PaulHoule wrote: | So much fun back in the day. | vmoore wrote: | Even more fun: https://threejs.org/ | PaulHoule wrote: | I wrote my own 3D library in JS before that library came out. | | I am so looking forward to doing projects with WebGL. | rasz wrote: | It wasnt fun, it was borderline scam, Web3 of its time. | snorkel wrote: | Metaverse is what VRML tech was aspiring to back then, but | standard dial-up internet, early web browsers, and PCs could | not deliver immersive realtime 3D. It was obviously decades | ahead of its time. I recall needing to install web browser | plugin (I tried a few), then the VRML scene file takes a | while to download (dial-up) and then draws an ugly 3D scene | in the browser. Then the mouse navigation was horrible. No | collision detection of course so you could easily fly through | the floor, end up upside down, walk through objects, etc. No | sound. No chat. No multi-user. At least it had level of | detail optimization so processing wasn't on distant details. | Then you'd click on a link in the scene and it would either | load a different 3D scene, or jump you back out to a plain | old 2D web page in the web browser. And of course you'd be | looking at this on a plain old 17-inch CRT screen (no VR | headset). I see my Oculus collecting dust and I feel VR tech | has improved by a lot, but still, meh. | PaulHoule wrote: | I used VRML for my thesis work where I was visualizing an | energy surface in a 6 dimensional space and understanding | the bifurcations where it would get holes, start to wrap | around the space, break into separate pieces, etc. | | I had all sorts of complaints around what VRML couldn't do | at that time, particularly how you'd inevitably get your | back turned to what you were supposed to look at, have a | hard time turning around, and the people developing the | world don't care. | | Looking back with insight from 'the metaverse' I see the | problem as a lack of storytelling or the facilities for | storytelling. | | The idea that you're going to bum around in some virtual | world and indulge your narcissism in parallel to how you | indulge your narcissism in the real world still appeals to | those who want to subject us to 'experiences' even if it | doesn't for end users. | | I started studying theme park design a few months back | because I was interested in seducing people (which you | could win at 100% of the time if you had 100% control of | the environment.) The metaverse fad came up and it gave me | a good mental model of what's missing in the metaverse.... | Storytelling! | | Many people in 2022 are inclined to accept you can have | fiction without storytelling because we're so used to | fiction that is driven by characters and setting (say _Star | Wars_ or _My Little Pony Friendship is Magic_ ). Somebody | even pointed out to be that those Victorian novels I | couldn't stand in high school were part of this trend. | | Some point people will realize that 'the line is going up' | (NFTs) isn't a good enough story but until VR designers | adopt storytelling ideas from theme parks people will be | snoozing. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | This is good insight. Storytelling over function. | kmeisthax wrote: | "storytelling ideas from theme parks" | | Videogames call this "environmental storytelling" and | it's a really solid way of constructing a narrative in | such spaces. The reason why the current or prior | generations of "metaverse" technologies don't do this is | because they're not trying to _be_ a narrative work. They | 're trying to be "HTTP for 3D worlds" - in other words, | hoping someone else will come in and build the narrative | _on top of_ their platform so they can charge the | creators a fee to publish their own work. | PaulHoule wrote: | VRML never had facilites to define meaningful | interactions comparable to what a real video game engine | like the Unreal Engine can do and I think the current | "metaverse" platforms also lack that. | | A run-of-the-mill game like _Sword Art Online: Fatal | Bullet_ has meaningful interactions with NPC characters | that are NPC characters in the game. _Mario and Luigi: | Dream Team_ has NPC crowds that shower you with | admiration. | | Capital One (Progressive Insurance, AT&T, ...) | establishes an emotional connection with me through | actors who plays characters on television commercials, | operating themed stores, etc. | | They aren't going to move to the metaverse until they can | give an experience at that level. | | Single player video games succeed at this. | | Fiction ( _Sword Art Online_ , _Ready Player One_ , _The | Matrix_ , _Disneyland_ ) tells us clearly what the | metaverse is: you share the space with players and NPCs. | | The will has to be there but the technology isn't ready | yet. | macrolime wrote: | Trying to be "HTTP for 3D world", yet they're not really | protocols, but more something like geocities or MySpace. | | If I was going to use the metaverse, I'd want to have a | button "New world" that would essentially create a whole | new world similar to decentraland, where I could choose | the size of this world. | | None of the metaverse platforms allow you to create your | own world, your own 3d website. Instead they try to cram | you into their world, which is made to be pretty small on | purpose to keep "land" prices high. | mscdex wrote: | I wouldn't judge all VRML-enabled software the same, as | they were not all terrible. For example, back in the mid- | to-late 90s (and for several years in the 00's) there was a | free (client) product called OnLive! Traveler (later | DigitalSpace Traveler) that utilized VRML 1.0 with a few | additional, custom VRML node types. | | It was multi-user, it had a wide variety of customizable | avatars that could express emotion and featured lip | synching to the user's mic audio, it had 3D spatial user | and environmental audio, and it all worked really well over | dialup (even with 28.8kbps) even on first generation | Pentium PCs. Movement was done with "FPS"-style keys | (cursors, ALT for strafing, etc.). MTV would host regular | live events in-world and there were a number of other large | companies that were involved as well. | sbayeta wrote: | > It has been superseded by X3D. | mellosouls wrote: | Related - and to add to the comments claiming the superceding | standard - OpenXR: | | https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXR | henriquez wrote: | Frank Zappa had a VRML website of his recording studio called The | Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. My computer in the mid-90s was | barely capable of rendering it but I remember being in awe of how | cool it was. | spidaman wrote: | This gets an upvote merely for citing Frank Zappa in any way | dang wrote: | Surprisingly little previous discussion: | | _VRML was a standard in 1995 but now everyone 's excited about | The Metaverse_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29237519 - | Nov 2021 (4 comments) | | _Ask HN: Is VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) Relevant to | Metaverse?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29111474 - Nov | 2021 (2 comments) | | _VRML - Virtual Reality Markup Language_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29046541 - Oct 2021 (3 | comments) | | _VRML (1997)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374558 - | Aug 2021 (1 comment) | | _A free Java VRML Viewer_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24805346 - Oct 2020 (1 | comment) | madrox wrote: | One of those is my submission. I posted it in response to all | the buzz over figuring out VR markup. | | It seems to me no one wants to actually use existing stuff. | People are just having fun reinventing it. | gedy wrote: | Not 3d, but a big percentage of my career has been in | platform groups and leadership, and it still surprises me | that most people who are drawn to this type of work seemingly | only do so to make a platform or standard from scratch, not | actually to align around existing shared solutions. | mathgladiator wrote: | During my limited time at FRL (i.e. Meta), I tried to be a | proponent of X3D (successor of VRML), and the push back I got | was tremendous. | | You're right that people want to reinvent it. | em-bee wrote: | how did that pushback look like? to old? failed technology? | | i saw a lot of excitement around VRML at the university in | the late 90s. | | the problem was that average computers just didn't have the | capacity for 3d rendering back then. at the university we | had high end SGI workstations, and of course these were | used for impressive demonstrations of what VRML could do. | but i guess because noone outside had computers capable | enough it didn't catch on. | | the current generation is not aware of what we did back | then and may not realize that lack of performance was the | primary problem we were facing. | mathgladiator wrote: | There's a bunch I can't really say, but I think a bunch | of forms from bad incentives which don't align to any | long term goals. | | My opinion is that the key idea of the metaverse | definitely requires a standard like HTML which people can | just hack on with text files. X3D is the closest in my | opinion of achieving that, and I argued we should make | X3D a first class citizen to overcome performance | challenges of the browser/device. | | Even today, pick whatever web framework, and it just | boils down to HTML. There really should be a common 3D | substrate that is that easy. | singularity2001 wrote: | >> people want to reinvent it. | | Maybe with good reason: If it didn't take off last time | maybe there are hidden stumbling block in the | specification. Trying fresh might unconsciously bring the | right ingredients this time. There is the faint possibility | that specification and implementations were correct, just | too far ahead of its time and infrastructure; it's usually | worth taking this risk though. And of cause reinventing | means owning and deeply understanding. | outside1234 wrote: | And they can't admit that the specification was fine - | don't that would force them to effectively admit that | there is a very small audience for this. | andybak wrote: | A little overwrought... | | "3d in a browser" sounds like a fairly broad use case. | Three.js is fairly popular I hear. | mathgladiator wrote: | Part of the problem was that I couldn't even get people | to dig into the specification. | | I came away with the distinct impression that people | really don't want to admit that XML is good enough. | croes wrote: | Maybe because the hardware wasn't ready. | | Starting fresh could easily be the reason it's failing | again because much time is wasted in reinventing the | wheel. | | The problem is still the use case not the tooling. | bb88 wrote: | One problem is that no format would solve the "who's in | the room with you problem". You still need some kind of | backend for that. | | You could see a future though where you go into one | portal and you're in Minecraft, and you go into another | and you're playing tennis with your buddy in Europe. | Games would just be new portals -- the key here is that | it's hosted by different companies, not Meta. | beaconstudios wrote: | Well, thanks for fighting for standards adoption, even if | it didn't work out. It's always good to have | interoperability represented on the inside. | IshKebab wrote: | VRML is a relic from the 90s. Complaining that nobody wants | to use it now for modern VR is like complaining that Netflix | doesn't use MPEG1. Netflix is just having fun reinventing | video compression! | DonHopkins wrote: | And the reason VRML even exists is that somebody just | wanted to have fun reinventing 3D graphics in the 90's, so | it doesn't deserve to be used just for the sake of not | reinventing the wheel. It's an old shitty wheel that was a | reinvention of another invention(*), done just to be fun to | implement, but not fun to use. | | (*) It's funny because it's true that VRML is literally a | reinvention of Inventor, and Open Inventor is a reinvention | of VRML. | | http://www.verycomputer.com/288_b61771df97de6635_1.htm | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML#Standardization | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Inventor | Aspos wrote: | I vividly remember watching Mir space station deorbiting in VRML | in real-time in 2001. | | It seemed normal back then, but looking back it is unbelievable | how smooth the whole experience was given the state of the | internet in 2001. | | Edit: Wow, the site still exists! | http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/mir2/ | ajconway wrote: | Looks wonderful in 2022: | | "Each scene is 100KB in size. It may take up to a minute for | the scene to load, so please be patient." | nvader wrote: | FTA, under "Criticism": | | > Every time VRML practitioners approach the problem of how to | represent space on the screen, they have no focused reason to | make any particular trade-off of detail versus rendering speed, | or making objects versus making spaces, because VRML isn't for | anything except itself. Many times, having a particular, near- | term need to solve brings a project's virtues into sharp focus, | and gives it enough clarity to live on its own. | | > | | > Clay Shirky | tootie wrote: | Replace "VRML" with everything being done on the web3 space. | DonHopkins wrote: | I once asked Mark Pesche: What about time? What about | scripting? "We'll add those later." But you need both from the | start. "VR" is not a 3D still life painting. | | One of the most common annoying question lots of people asked | Mark at the time was "How does VRML relate to XML?" to which | the annoying answer was "it doesn't". | | All that relentless XML badgering from XML drones eventually | drove Mark to the point of publishing a vitriolic anti-XML | diatribe in high dudgeon, based on the premise that Microsoft | was going in whole hog on XML, therefore XML was Evil, because | Microsoft is Evil, so you shouldn't use XML, because Microsoft | ruined XML, and you should use VRML, because VRML doesn't use | XML, which is the great thing about VRML. | | Might as well combine the anti-Microsoft fervor with the anti- | XML backlash of the times to promote VRML. | | XML certainly is evil, but not because of Microsoft supporting | it! | | This annoying misconception about VRML using XML may be why | they eventually retronymed VRML from "Virtual Reality Markup | Language" to "Virtual Reality Modeling Language" at one point. | (YAML went through the same "oops" realization). | | He also wrote another epic diatribe dramatically comparing | himself and the VRML inner cabal to the true elder gods of old | mythology, who after creating the universe and starting it | going, were finally going to step aside and let the new kingdom | of mankind and their lesser imaginary gods take over their own | fate and bla bla bla... | | I haven't been able to dig up any archives of whatever mailing | list I read that stuff on, but if anybody has some of the old | school vrml mailing list archives sitting around, I'd love to | have a link or a copy -- it was terrific entertainment! | sanqui wrote: | In particular, he compared it to Quake: | | >Quake does something well instead of many things poorly...The | VRML community has failed to come up with anything this | compelling -- not despite the community's best intentions, but | because of them. | | I can definitely see parallels between the situation today, | where depsite failed attempts at a rebrand of virtual worlds as | the "metaverse", the closest to a success in establishing | virtual worlds is kids playing in Minecraft and Fortnite. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | I remember seeing vrml sites in 96 or 97 and thinking I was so | far behind because I couldn't figure out how to do it. | xtracto wrote: | I did a project with VRML around 1999. It was an application for | "real time" monitoring of emergency ships, helicopters and other | vehicles when they were dispatched to oil platforms in distress | within the Gulf of Mexico. | | It was a nice toy but rely useless at that time,and a resource | hog for computers of that moment. Still a fun project. | jbgreer wrote: | I still have my autographed copy of Mark Pesce's 1995 book "VRML | - Browsing & Building VRML", subtitled "The definitive resource | for VRML technology." I am pretty sure I met Mark and got that | autograph at a SIGGRAPH meeting in Boston, MA that year. There | was so much excitement and energy at the time. | | [edit] I came back thinking, "We have got to take advantage of | this." For a little while, there was an effort. The bigger | players got involved, 'standards' started shifting, and the | realities of our business network sunk in. Sigh. | ajconway wrote: | Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberTown | | 20 years later we're finally somewhat there with VR Chat and | Horizon. | srvmshr wrote: | The way I learnt about VRML was FAS website. | | As a young teenager, I used to obsess over fighter planes. Then I | stumbled upon the weapons & equipment pages on Federation of | American Scientists (FAS) website. See [1] as an example. They | had WRL files (a VRML format) for most planes in their inventory. | | 15 years ago that was cool. | | (1) https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/airdef/mig-23.htm | davesque wrote: | I remember this being somewhat associated with the rise of Java | and the adoption of XML as a serialization format for the Java | platform. There was an accompanying trend in which XML became the | hammer with which to strike all the illusory nails, VR being one | of them. I was always impressed by the degree to which things in | the XML and web standards space were over engineered and | abstract. It makes me think of that quote in which a famous | mathematician (can't remember who, Hilbert maybe?) said that the | point of mathematics was to avoid saying anything about anything. | So too for a certain kind of engineering except we end up | avoiding _doing_ anything. | cuteboy19 wrote: | Flashpoint (the Flash archival project) has a library of VRML | content. | | https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/platforms/ | rpmuller wrote: | I was so excited about VRML in 1996. I thought it was going to | take over the world of molecular graphics -- all we would have to | do is write molecule-to-VRML translators, rather than writing | free-standing OpenGL applications. It's taken a surprisingly long | time to get to the point I thought we would be 25 years ago. | Three.js turns out to be what everyone was looking for back then. | bb88 wrote: | Yeah. The hardware requirements were brutal though. I had | access to SGI's back in college and they were choking on the 3d | aspects for whatever reason. | | I remember they had VRML to WWW hooks, and navigating that | would take you from one VRML world to another VRML on the web | kind of like a portal. It was a fascinating way to visualize | the web (kinda like an open Metaverse) and I'd like to see a | return to that so that one company doesn't rule the Metaverse. | bawolff wrote: | When i was young, one of the only "real" computer books my local | public library had was on vrml. I still remember it quite fondly. | oh_sigh wrote: | I became known as the tech wiz of my school in 1998(7th grade) | when I made a little 3d forest scene using VRML for a class | project instead of a diorama. It was fun, but even then I had to | question what the heck this could possibly be used for. | ggm wrote: | Virtual Notre Dame fly through as a Windows executable | astlouis44 wrote: | WebAssembly, WebGPU, and WebXR are the new VRML and will pave the | way for an open, platform-agnostic metaverse where sites becomes | worlds, hyperlinks becomes portals, profile pictures become | avatars, and profiles become personal homes or spaces others can | visit. | | Interestingly, Meta's CTO just let slip yesterday about a web | version of Horizon: | | https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/23025899/meta-horizon-wor... | tootie wrote: | Browser VR has been doable for years already. Three.js has been | the de factor standard API. I have worked at a bunch of places | that genuinely tried really hard with some actual practical, | commercial uses for interactive 3D experiences and none of them | stuck. | majormajor wrote: | In the future, you won't just have to watch an overly long | video or scroll three quarters of the way down a story to find | a recipe, you'll have to travel through portals to different | worlds! | | There seems like such an assumption that everybody is aching to | decorate new spaces and show off for its own purpose. How often | do you visit a space just to check out the space, versus to do | something in it? And that's especially true when pushed now by | companies thinking it's monetizable, where now you've lost the | benefit of _not_ being constrained by real estate and physical | material prices. So you 've got advantages over video calls for | keeping up with people far away, but what else? | notreallyserio wrote: | > In the future, you won't just have to watch an overly long | video or scroll three quarters of the way down a story to | find a recipe, you'll have to travel through portals to | different worlds! | | And then one day Google will create little info cards that | are snippets of the recipe VR sites. You'll still have to | swoop and fly your way there but it'll be a smaller space. | ilaksh wrote: | The Wikipedia example shows something kind of JSON-like but | originally VRML was like HTML (SGML). | | Something similar to that is A-Frame VR which is built on | WebVR. | | There used to be a way with at least one VR-enabled browser to | navigate without exiting VR (if the other site supported VR). | Not sure any still support it. I think this may be because it | goes against walled-gardens interests. | https://github.com/immersive-web/navigation#api-proposal | smrtinsert wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D seems to be the new vrml. | jdrc wrote: | i honestly want to know what people are smoking . We've had | these things for 30 years, with SL and minecraft and VRchat | etc. it's a small niche | dec0dedab0de wrote: | I think second life would be much bigger now if they didn't | milk the longtail for so long. They charged based on costs | from 15 years prior, and didn't add ways to easily customize | things because it would upset the people making money selling | 3d assets. | | Both of which are really symptoms of the same overall | problem, being unfriendly to new users. | jdrc wrote: | it's quite hard to use that s true, and outdated for | today's crowd. | | But even the "free version" of SL has minimal traffic: | https://opensimworld.com/ | Animats wrote: | This is the bigger list: | | http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List | | OsGrid alone has 4600 regions. | | https://www.osgrid.org/ | | It's a true federated system; you can run your own | server, you can have portals to other servers, and, for | grids which sell things, there are competing payment | rails. | | Open Simulator has a lot of spaces, but not that many | users. Like most federated systems, it's a niche. Works | OK, hard to use, few are interested. | | Second Life continues to plug along. Right now, 50,844 | users are in world. Which is more than any non-game | metaverse. (Not sure about Meta; they don't give out | numbers, but 20,000 has been mentioned.) MMO games are | far bigger; check Steamcharts. The top games are in the | millions. | | Don't believe any number about a virtual world you can't | check from the outside. Concurrent users right now is | usually the only honest number. There are systems which | claim huge numbers of users, but their definition of | "user" is "they, or some bot, put an email into the | signup form." | | The "metaverse" hype has produced a bit of growth, as | people find out that most of the hyped systems are either | nonexistent or very low rez. Usage is very low. | Decentraland is around 1000-2000 concurrent users. They | got up to 2600 once. Cryptovoxels is smaller. So is | Sandbox. Sominium Space is in single digits. | jdrc wrote: | that list is horribly outdated - so many of the grids in | the list dont exist | | Most people these days run their own grid through the | dreamgrid installer. that actually increases | fragmentation | | and then the testing grid , osgrid, is down for multiple | days every few weeks, which alienates and frustrates new | users . overall activity is down, despite the pandemic. | and my experience is that it's very very hard to keep | users interested because it is lacking the critical mass | of people. It also suffers from very high levels of drama | | i find it very hard to believe that decentraland will | keep such high numbers for long, it has received enormous | coverage in the media eventhough it's bordeline a scam | (imho). opensimulator has not received any of this | | I dont think metaverses should be compared with mmo games | - they are different things and attract nonoverlapping | crowds. | chriswarbo wrote: | There was some pressure to get SecondLife open-sourced and | federated, but IIRC it didn't really get anywhere. | | On the other hand, projects like Croquet/Qwak/Cobalt have | been open-source for over a decade; are federated/P2P; | already have "hyperlink portals" like parent commented; | support existing standards like XMPP, VNC, etc.; have been | ported to Javascript; etc. And yet, they seem effectively | dead :( | jdrc wrote: | > to get SecondLife open-sourced and federated | | That's opensimulator | mintplant wrote: | The SL client ("viewer") has been open source for a very | long time, and there used to be a thriving ecosystem of | third-party forks. Nowadays Firestorm [0] is the one | everyone uses. | | The server software remains closed source. OpenSim [1], a | community-driven reimplementation with federation support, | has been around for a while but as you say hasn't really | gone anywhere since the original wave of metaverse hype | died down. | | [0] https://www.firestormviewer.org | | [1] http://opensimulator.org | a-dub wrote: | first saw this in the 90s on an sgi indy. | | here's fun blog piece about the launch of sgi's webforce content | creation suite which included tools for vrml. | | https://therealmccrea.com/tag/vrml/ | cropcirclbureau wrote: | An interesting entry that links to this: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopaganism | gene-h wrote: | VRML is still used today. Some 3d printers take in VRML as file | format, because unlike STL you can specify different colors and | materials.[0][1] It's the only open multimaterial format said | machines accept. | | [0]https://www.smg3d.co.uk/design_series/objet260_connex1 | [1]https://prostir3d.com/en/equipment/43-photopolymers/multi- | ph... | Yhdz wrote: | In 2000 I did an internship at a Dutch media company and created | a 3D VRML video site. The interesting thing for me at the time | was that the server composed the final VRML by combining a | template with database results, similar to PHP. I have no idea | how common this was, but I was pretty proud of it at the time:) | Unfortunately VRML plug-ins where not that great, even worse when | I needed them to be able to play real video, so it was never | deployed. | jandrese wrote: | Oh yeah, I remember the VRML plugins with their horrendous | navigation solutions. POTS Modems were also insufficient to | reasonably stream scenes of any complexity. It was a technology | about 10 years ahead of its time. | | I always considered the successor to be SecondLife. I guess the | Metaverse is trying to be the successor to SecondLife, but I | think they're trying to solve the wrong problems with it and | are not likely to be successful. | ilaksh wrote: | You could do the same thing today with A-Frame VR. | noahlt wrote: | In 1997 or so, the LEGO website had a Java applet that let you | explore a VRML world for their UFO theme, featuring a NASA space | center with a UFO in a hangar and a Saturn-style rocket on the | launchpad. | | As an adult I have never been able to find any information about | this :( | jepler wrote: | I worked for an industry-specific 3D cad company at the time. We | wanted to create some kind of web-enabled version of our software | circa 2003-2005 (totally guessing at the time frame but seems | right). It feels like every choice we made was wrong and the | product was never viable. VRML sort of worked with a plug-in but | there was insufficient control over navigation (let alone object | selection) so you couldn't really build an app "on top of" it. We | also had 2D drawings, displaying them as SVG via a plug-in wasn't | super good and no way could you do things like allow the user to | add a fresh annotation to the SVG interactively. UI? Well, | someone had the grand idea to write a mock version of Tk that | would output HTML instead of X Windows API calls. That worked | about as well as you'd think. Ouch. | | I don't know what someone operating at a more expert level would | have been able to do; I was entirely self-educated in everything | about browsers and had no peers to learn from. As it was, it was | an exercise in frustration that was mostly shown at one trade | show and then better forgotten. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-16 23:00 UTC)