Virtual Reality Online Part One: Introducing VRML Worlds News & Views Software Review

by Mike Hendry Senior Technical Writer Interdigital Communications Originally published in News & Views September, 1997 issue. Copyright 1997 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Instead of opening up new worlds to take advantage of the new medium, most computer programs electronically emulate the papers we’ve been shuffling for centuries. Until very recently, desktop computers barely had the power to produce pictures of those pieces of paper. Now, computers are starting to compute in three dimensions. Instead of computing how to color pixels to create a flat image, they compute how light would interact with objects, and how we would then see those objects. Then they color pixels to create a flat image of those objects. Oh well, one step at a time. The first to break upon the scene was 3-D animation. Computers worked all night to calculate and store the 3-D world. You would then play it back as a movie. Now, computers can render the 3-D world in real time, so that you can manipulate it and interact with it. One group of people had a vision of taking this third dimension to the Internet on the World Wide Web and created the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Part one of this column introduces VRML and how to browse VRML worlds. Part two, in November’s issue, will review some VRML creation tools that you can use to experiment with to create your own worlds. Like HTML, VRML files are ASCII text files. HTML describes a page, and the browser uses that description to lay out the page. VRML describes objects, and how they combine to form a "world." The VRML browser renders the objects in real time as you move around the world. Rendering is the process of calculating a two-dimensional image from a three-dimensional scene. VRML also supports animation, user interaction, and links to other VRML worlds or HTML pages. Uses of VRML The founders of VRML feel that since people are used to visualizing data and interacting with the world in three dimensions, two-dimensional pages are limiting and require us to set up unnatural paradigms. A more natural experience would let us wander around our information resources and view data in 3-D. Some uses so far are: Interactive spaces: The information is all around us, we walk around and choose what we want. Virtual recreations of existing spaces: We tour museums and cities in virtual space. 3-D visual representations of data: We explore chemical structures or human anatomy from any angle we choose, or examine engineering models of system components. Virtual reality manuals: We watch a system put itself together. In many ways it is up to us to see where this technology may excel over others in providing access to the information our customers need. Entering the Virtual Library Browsing VRML VRML is still quite new, and software companies are still catching up. Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 both include built-in VRML browsers. No browser yet has a truly usable interface, although they are getting better. Navigating a world with the current browsers is like taking a tour of a new city on a roller coaster. Fortunately, VRML allows authors to include predefined viewpoints. When visiting a world, the best way to start is to move between the preset viewpoints. It is up to the author to make sure they increase usability of the site. After getting to know the world, you can then explore it on your own. You can’t mess up anything, and you can always return to one of the preset viewpoints, so have fun! I’ve set up a web page to support this column, to provide samples and more in-depth coverage of the topics presented here. I’ve included links to, and reviews of, some popular browsers, sample worlds, and more. Be sure to visit http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mhendry.

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Posted September 20, 1997 (rst)