I have done a suprising ammount of reading and usage of tools that envolve vrml. And have yet to see how it has actually been implemented. i know there are alot of proprietary browsers and chat “communities” that use vrml. But why hasn’t it advanced to the stage where i can simply load a vrml page in my browser. And then what would I look at if I made my browser vrml compatible? when i search for vrml, all I can find is the 3d- Web Repository, which is full of nothing but broken links and out-dated information. Shouldn’t there be a website that maintains the standard vrml? blender can export to .wrl, but what does that mean in the end. I know that blender has the plugin and the game engine, and that the plugin can link to web addresses. Is a vrml file suppose to also be capable of such interaction and the ability to link to other addresses? does the web plugin end up using vrml in the end? whay are there no contigously 3-d websites at this point in our technology ?
IIRC VRML is a text-based format, which means you could read an edit files with a text editor.
You can find VRML plugins for your web browser, you will need one to view VRML files.
AFAIK the Blender web plugin does not use VRML, it uses a custom 3d engine.
That’s about all I know about it, maybe someone else here knows more.
vrml is old, back from 97, atm there is a new web 3d standard in the making called X3D (yes its xml)
the specs were release only 4 or 5 months ago, so its not to stable, and im not sure if there are any plugins
VRML was a fancy idea, but it was a technology developed without any actual need for it. The vast majority of web sites do not require 3d content and are infact much better without it. Because of that, VRML never became wide spread and never really took off, because there was no real need for it on the net in general.
Keith. 8)
There are two good plugins, Cortona by Parallel Graphics and Blaxxun Contact.
There are also two open source libraries that have standalone viewers, FreeWRL and OpenVRML.
VRML is great for two things: as a very well defined (ISO) standard format, and you can make dynamic worlds by embedding scripts (JavaScript) right in with the geometry.
It has niches but is not widely used, especially compared to gaming oriented stuff (3D max) or film animation oriented stuff (Maya, LW).
VRML97 is also pretty far behind what modern hardware can do, but X3D and future extensions to X3D will be better.