VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language; Sometimes pronounced to rhyme with "thermal " and sometimes called by its letters) is one of the hottest , most promising computer technology around. It's been endorsed by 'Net behemoths Netscape, SGI, Digital, NEC, and Microsoft, and heralded as a catalyst to lead the Web's next stage of development.

Since its introduction in 1994, VRML's potential to search the boundaries and definitions of cyberspace has fascinated those who recognize its potential to restructure our relationship with the Web. Although VRML's critics chide it for trying to take a 2D view-screen experience into the third dimension, the Webbed interactivity that VRML 2.0 promises can't be paralleled by classic VR technology.

This article covers the elements of VRML that make it such a welcome addition to the Web. It also offers descriptions of its browsers and plugins, an overview of VRML history, and ideas about where VRML will lead the future of cyberspace.

The VRML Advantage

The Web's foundation is build around the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), usually a string of barely decipherable pseudo-words (particularly daunting for neophytes). With VRML, the Web is significantly more tangible; directions to a site can take on much more human terms: "Take a right past the lobby, and walk into the mirror bordered by pink flamingoes." VRML succeeds at bringing information navigation into sensual realm.

For example, when you walk into an Italian restaurant in a Moving Worlds scene, You'll see much of what you do IRL (in real life) - tables, chairs, mood lighting, people, bottles of wine, an espresso machine, etc. This scene is described in the VRML file in terms of polygons and 3D coordinates. When you download a file to your local machine, your VRML browser determines what the restaurant should look like from the perspective of your location, and renders the view multiple times per second, affecting constant change. 

The content of Moving Worlds scene isn't predetermined; what transpires can depend on your action. If you want a nice glass of Chianti in the restaurant, touching the wine bottle can launch a Java applet that lets you hear the wine splashing gently into your glass and see its rosy glow as it's being poured. The way these changes transpire differ from other 3D formats like QuickTime VR, in which a scene's content is predetermined and your movement only allows you to look at different parts of the file. However, VRML is the most compact Web-transferable multimedia file type.

How it works

VRML operates in accordance with the general Web client/server model. The browsers sends requests to a server, which-ideally-returns the requested document, complete with its MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) type. If the server is configured correctly, it will detect that VRML documents have an associated MIME type of "x-world/x-vrml." The browser parses this content type and, as long as it has access to VRML helper application or plug-in, displays the VRML scene. A VRML world's components don't have to be kept on a single server; it's okay to store parts of a scene at deferent servers and locations (in fact, for performance reasons, it's often more efficient to distribute them this way).

A VRML document describes geometric models, along with their properties and relationships within that document. VRML objects, called "nodes," are used to describe a document's properties, how 3D objects should be shaped, and how they should move or be grouped. Nodes are employed to represent texture, lighting, rotation, scale, positioning, geometry, and perspective data - all of which comprise a scene description. Nodes can include MIDI sound data, JPEG images, and (most importantly) links to other items on the Internet, including VRML documents. This ability to link to other VRML sites provides the opportunity for 3D Web travel.

If you're expecting video game or slick CD-ROM quality from VRML files, don't. Although VRML's potential is enormous, even its most rabid devotees admit that it's in its infancy, and that best is yet to come. Expect to encounter bugs; many of the files you'll find won't have been thoroughly tested with all the available VRML browsers (especially the few for Macintosh) and may cause the occasional crash. But hey, that's part of the excitement of living on the "bleeding edge!"

The vantage point of a VRML browser is similar to that of a camera's eye. Most VRML browsers feature joystick-type controls, handlebars, or directional buttons. It's also possible to navigate simply by dragging and clicking the mouse through the VRML scene. Clicking your mouse on a link loads the corresponding document, whether it is audio, video, or an HTML page. If you select a link that requires a helper application, the viewer will bring up the necessary program (provided the proper association exists, of course).

VRML still works best on high-end graphics machines, (which is probably one of the reason that it's a darling of the companies that make them). If you don't have a modem that's 28.8kbps or faster, or have at least 16MB of RAM, expect your VRML experience to be slow, jagged, and buggy. Though browsers and their plug-ins have increased in number and quality for most platforms, there's still only scant capability on the Macintosh.

VRML and the Web: A Stellar Partnership

The connectivity the Web brings to VRML is a big part of the 3D language's appeal. 

Conversely, the possibilities of interactivity and the radical new perspectives that VRML introduces will have a huge impact on the Web's future. The future successes of the Web and of VRML are intimately connected, and the question of how VRML will be used within the Web's structure is fascinating.

VRML and similar technologies that enter another dimension of perception (and therefore, another construct of reality) are both exiting and provocative. One of the hottest issues centring around VRML today is how these powers will be used in the future. Because it allows you to experience virtual reality in three dimensions, VRML is imbued with one of the most radical potentials of any current technology: the ability to sensually and emotionally transform yourself into another thing, person, or place, and to experience "reality" from that perspective. Using a VRML browser such as WorldView gives you the power to create your own avatar (an alternate graphical self that represents you in cyberspace), determine its characteristics, talk in its voice, and interact with others through its perspective. Transforming into another identity has never been easier, or more intriguing.

Undoubtedly, we are tapping into potential that our ancestors could have conceived only in terms of magic, or supernatural power. For more about VRML's importance in the Cyberspace make belief structure, visit: this site.

The journey

Although the bandwidth available today for most Internet connections and the power of the average desktop both fall a little short of what's needed to make virtual words commonplace, there's still a lot of value in pursuing the kind of worlds that VRML can support. Whether your role is that of a viewer and participant or as a builder of such worlds depends on your goals, your means, and your time.