[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)