VRML was everywhere in 1995. At least, everywhere in the media. Any time a TV show had to mention the Internet they would show some 3D avatars moving around a virtual world. Made for much more interesting footage than the grey Mosaic browser background.
Even as a teenager in 1995, I was baffled by VRML. The web barely had interactivity, barely had commerce, barely had halfway-decent page layout! And yet VRML was supposed to be the "next big thing"??
It felt like how it would have if there'd been a massive industry push for smell-o-vision hardware and browser support for an odor-describing markup language. Like, how did that get settled on by so many as the next thing to tackle?!
Yes! I ran a very high end CAD tool on SGI computers at that time and it could output whe assemblies to VRML!
And that capability preceded other tools and file formats by a decade easy! And offered as many features, and a few we still don't see today given things like Siemens JT, or PTC and whatever they use now.
We would display them three ways:
Netscape was the easy way, and one got a cool view manipulation GUI that way. This performed pretty well on higher end 90's hardware. Could display most of the front of a car with full dimensions and other annotations at reasonable frame rates.
Or, use the dedicated Java viewer the program output in addition to the raw file, which is what the browser used.
Or, buy a viewer tool, and we had one. Cosmo something....
On SGI, using the Java viewer, one could view the VRML in actual 3D with shutter glasses and pull up predefined views useful to shop people.
Really cool. Very few used the real 3D capability.
And that remains true today!
I have another high end CAD tool on my laptop, and it can display 3D on my 60 inch plasma at home. Does it 60hz per eye, which is crazy for both being more than a decade old!
There are at most a handful of companies able to employ similar capability today. Space X is one who does use it however. Go Space X!
I do, and will model complex surfaces in 3D. Pure joy to use.
But, it has to be that most users either do not care, or 3D bothers them, or something...
Also, same goes for viewing files. A small number used VRML back in the day. Today, a smaller, though also a larger than back in the day number use those tools today.
The rest are on paper or static PDF.
FWIW: Open WRL will display the 90's era CAD VMRL data. Kudos to them!
Yes, it was. I remember writing code to output a network diagram in VRML and it was possible to manipulate the diagram in the web browser (I think Netscape Navigator).
It felt like how it would have if there'd been a massive industry push for smell-o-vision hardware and browser support for an odor-describing markup language. Like, how did that get settled on by so many as the next thing to tackle?!
And that capability preceded other tools and file formats by a decade easy! And offered as many features, and a few we still don't see today given things like Siemens JT, or PTC and whatever they use now.
We would display them three ways:
Netscape was the easy way, and one got a cool view manipulation GUI that way. This performed pretty well on higher end 90's hardware. Could display most of the front of a car with full dimensions and other annotations at reasonable frame rates.
Or, use the dedicated Java viewer the program output in addition to the raw file, which is what the browser used.
Or, buy a viewer tool, and we had one. Cosmo something....
On SGI, using the Java viewer, one could view the VRML in actual 3D with shutter glasses and pull up predefined views useful to shop people.
Really cool. Very few used the real 3D capability.
And that remains true today!
I have another high end CAD tool on my laptop, and it can display 3D on my 60 inch plasma at home. Does it 60hz per eye, which is crazy for both being more than a decade old!
There are at most a handful of companies able to employ similar capability today. Space X is one who does use it however. Go Space X!
I do, and will model complex surfaces in 3D. Pure joy to use.
But, it has to be that most users either do not care, or 3D bothers them, or something...
Also, same goes for viewing files. A small number used VRML back in the day. Today, a smaller, though also a larger than back in the day number use those tools today.
The rest are on paper or static PDF.
FWIW: Open WRL will display the 90's era CAD VMRL data. Kudos to them!