What is VRML? 

You may have heard something about it from somewhere or just happened upon my site. Basically, you're curious, and since this is the internet, you're probably impatient. So I won't get into a long discussion about the subject: there are other sites that have more details about the origins of VRML, some from the creators themselves. This document is designed to simply introduce you to VRML, outline what it can do, describe how to view the various worlds and hopefully encourage you to support and/or create your own worlds.

VRML (ver-mal) stands for Virtual Reality Modeling Language. It is a text based, platform-independent scene description language. This means that you can create a 3-Dimensional object using a simple text editor, and it should be viewable on any system regardless of the operating system. It was designed to be accessible to anyone who desired to use it and would be viewed over the internet. If you ever wanted to make a 3-D object and put it on you web page, VRML would allow you to do it.

It was first conceived in 1994 and through an internet mailing list, led by Mark Pesce, Tony Parisi, Brian Behlendorf, and Gavin Bell, was brought forward and presented as VRML 1.0 in May of 1995. Silicon Graphics allowed them to use its Open Inventor file format which described 3-D scene graphs; this contributed greatly to the speed of development. The first version allowed only the user to move about and so only static worlds were created. By 1996, VRML 2.0 was released. It allowed the objects as well as the viewer to move - which was a tremendous improvement. This is the current version available and is sometimes referred to as VRML 97.

While hypertext documents are called Web pages, VRML scenes are called 'worlds'. Creating worlds require a person with artistic as well as programming skills. You don't need to be a great artist, but you should have a good eye for color and form. You don't need to be a C++ programmer, but you should have basic scripting skills. You also need lots of patience. There are not many design/developer programs to help you with your world - you have to do most of it by yourself if you want a really good world. Different people have their own ideas of what VRML should be, but I see it as an artist's medium. A world should be respected as a work of art; it is the artist/creator's vision. A visitor to the world should appreciate the hard work and imagination it took to create it.

To view a world, you need a VRML browser plug-in. You can download one for a PC or a MAC from:

The original plug-in preferred by most VRML designers is Cosmo Player from Silicon Graphics. Unfortunately, the company isn't supporting it's own product so Cosmo Player hasn't evolved: and there are a few bugs in it that need fixing. But the plug-in is available for free and can handle most VRML 2.0 worlds. Click here for Cosmo Player . 

For Linux users, there is the FreeWRL plug-in. And for developers, there is the open-source plug-in OpenVRML .

Once you download a plug-in, the install wizard will guide you from there. After it's set up, restart your browser and you will be able to view VRML worlds.