VRML

(Last added item: 14 December 1998.)

Here are some VRML tidbits. To view them, you must have a VRML browser. I used to recommend Cosmo® Player, but can no longer do so unreservedly because its new owner, Computer Associates, is being flaky and uncommunicative about that browser, and presumably is no longer doing development work on it. There are other browsers available (mostly for Windows only at the moment, I'm afraid), but I haven't used them so can't recommend them personally.

All items below were created by Jed Hartman (with revisions by others as noted) and are freely distributable.

• A set of prototypes for a robust and general guided tour; still needs to be cleaned up some, but it works. Intended as a replacement for example 7.4 in the VRML 2.0 Handbook, which is in legal limbo. (SGI, Addison-Wesley, and Computer Associates seem to have no idea who owns it at this point, and CA has taken down the Handbook Web site. In the mean time, you can see the book examples at this temporary site. The city of Tenochtitlan is not available there, unfortunately.)
• A PROTO of a VRML 3D manipulator, thoroughly revised and fixed by Vladimir Bulatov. This widget roughly mimics part of the behavior of the DynaBox^(TM) manipulator in Cosmo Worlds.
• A VRML rendition of a carved block.
• A VRML bouncing ball, hand-coded in 1996, which I believe to have been the world's first VRML bouncing ball (and was later a partial inspiration for Sam Chen's far superior "Boink.")
• A 3D version of the familiar film-leader countdown; under two hours from concept to completion, using Cosmo Worlds.
• A small tribute to Magritte.
• A juggling demo; click the left-hand yellow button to start, then alternate sides, clicking the button with the color of the club resting above it. Not a robust I/O model (because this was done with no scripts!), but could be useful in learning the rhythm of juggling. If you get into weird states, just reload.
• A straw-person prototype of a Metadata node, including a test. (Bring up the console, click the sphere; if "New title" appears in the console, everything's working fine.) Created mostly in Cosmo Worlds.
• A cute banner with a rotating spotlight highlighting some text, created entirely in Cosmo Worlds.

DynaBox is probably a trademark and Cosmo is probably a registered trademark of Computer Associates.