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CNet on the Metaverse SummitMay 8th, 2006 |
A different article than the earlier one which was on SDForum, and it merits a callout box on the front page of news.com…
What’s really entertaining is that the two comments on the article so far are arguing about VRML. One poster says, in effect, that there needed to be more people with practical experience doing 3d worlds at the summit, because otherwise, the merits of VRML would have been clear.
I’ll be blunt: there are next to no important things being done in terms of online virtual worlds using VRML, and I don’t know any significant players in the field who use VRML. The people with practical experience avoid it like the plague. 
Give up already on VRML!
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[...] or Raph Koster’s comment of which you should read the attached comments as well: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/08/cnet-on-the-metavese-summit/ "I’ll be blunt: there are next to no important things being done in terms of online virtual [...]
Virtual Reality Markup Language.
See, you can tell how dead it is just by how completely stupid that sounds. It’s like Lawnmower Man shopping at Pets.com.
“Unless you’re paying me OODLES of money, I won’t go near a VRML/X3D project ever again. I can be bought on that, though, because I can certainly do stuff with it. But, it’s rather nice from an architect’s perspective.”
Likewise. VRML was a nice idea, but I’m never touching the hell that is the implementation again bar a lot of money. My project was realtime abstract visualisation of weather data from the weather station on campus, using VRML/Java/MySQL – VRML was only used because my ‘Academic Advisor’ loves VRML and still uses it in his classes, regardless of far better ways to do things.
The other use I saw of VRML while at University was as a cheap way to do manual fly-arounds of models in 3D Visualisation classes – export the model as VRML, open it in a browser and you get instant navigation tools.
VRML can be used, but should die in a fire.
I worked with VRML/X3D last quarter for a class. It was the main topic. Our project?
Sell a condo. =P
And you know what? Unless you’re paying me OODLES of money, I won’t go near a VRML/X3D project ever again. I can be bought on that, though, because I can certainly do stuff with it. But, it’s rather nice from an architect’s perspective.
I’ve been peeking in on one person’s effort to improve X3D for a couple of years now ( http://www.vscape.com ). No telling how many others are out there trying to make it work; frustrated by the VRML trainwreck and dissatisfied with the X3D specs. It’d be a nice development if a lone individual did what so many consortiums couldn’t.
I think we’ll get there eventually, but not until 3D is cheap to do. I think the big lure of 3D is that it gives you a sense of place you can’t get from webpages. Right now we get that in proprietary worlds, but eventually it makes perfect sense that people will want to hop from one world to the other, and that will require standardization. But again, until 3D becomes good and cheap enough, there won’t be a push for this as it’s just not time yet to make the ASCII standard equivalent for 3D.
I guffawed upon reading this. I can’t beleive people are still tooting the VRML horn. VRML was considered sub-par when 3D engine par was, well, sub-par!
X3D seems to have a lot more going for it but again, i cannot see a useful purpose for the technology.
Try Web3d.org for details.
I don’t know – normally technology develops in response to a demand. VRML seemed to happen just because someone decided it’d be cool.
/shrug
lord. amen to that. i thought vrml died back in 1998.
web based environments just aren’t conducive to 3d applications at all. why bother? maybe a snapshot as an rss payload or something, but that’s about it. the best tool for the job and all that.
m3mnoch.
of angels for that one) are fatal. You should read the attached comments as well. Note that Raph is a ‘serious’ thinker and was a chief designer of entertainment at Sony, a mover in the Ultima game and so on, so we have to take him very seriously: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/08/cnet-on-the-metavese-summit/ I’ll be blunt: there are next to no important things being done in terms of online virtual worlds using VRML, and I don’t know any significant players in the field who use VRML. The people with practical experience avoid it like the plague. Give up
i know i’ve been pointing atraph koster the last few posts, but, dammit. his head appears to be floating in the same space as mine — mmog + web. that being said, i have some pretty strong opinions (no way! me? strong opinions?) on this whole