February 19, 1996
Issue: 889
Section: News
By Brian Santo
Manhasset, N.Y. - Major systems and software players are pushing the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) 3-D file format from obscurity to prominence as the promised enabler of truly interactive 3-D Internet applications.
Apple Computer Inc., IBM Japan, Microsoft Corp., Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), Sun Microsystems Inc. and a consortium of German research labs have separately responded to a request for proposals for the 2.0 version of VRML. And last week, Netscape Communications Corp. bought Paper Software Inc., a small company that contributed to the SGI-spearheaded submission.
These corporate heavyweights have the wherewithal to duke it out in the open market, yet they are steering a conciliatory course in agreeing to place the decision-making process for the potentially vital standard in the hands of a ragtag band of 3-D enthusiasts, organized as the VRML Architecture Group (VAG)
Though VRML is relatively unknown, the companies believe the revised standard could enable the interactive 3-D applications that will spark greater consumer demand for Web access-and for the faster, more powerful computing equipment required to run the interactive 3-D applications.
Generally speaking, VRML is to 3-D on the Web what HTML is to 2-D. VRML 1.0 allows programmers to describe 3-D objects in terms of such simple characteristics as size, color and shading. What VRML 2.0 will do is allow programmers to imbue those objects with "behaviors." "Touch" a VRML 2.0 object, and it will react: A cube of jello will jiggle, a chipmunk will scurry. Scripting will permit more complex behaviors.
VAG is encouraging participants in the revision process to critique the various proposals through March 8. The group expects to have a completed draft by March 22 and a final draft in the summer.
Standards body
Though VAG will shepherd the creation of VRML 2.0, it will turn the process over to a still-undetermined formal standards body within a few months.
The common expectation is that the final spec will be an amalgam of the various proposals.
Nonetheless, Microsoft's proposal, called ActiveVRML, was presented as a fait accompli. The company has sought little input from the VRML community, whose core centers on a listserv maintained by VAG.
"ActiveVRML is looking very solid," acknowledged Mark Pesce, a VAG member and codeveloper of VRML 1.0. "But it's facing a bit of an uphill battle, because Microsoft hasn't gone very far to engender any goodwill in the VRML community."
Yet Microsoft is at least participating in the process, instead of taking ActiveVRML straight to the market. "That's definitely an encouraging sign," said Mitra, chief technology officer of Worldmaker Inc. and architect of one of the four approaches combined into the SGI-led proposal called Moving Worlds.
SGI has been networking promiscuously to gain support for Moving Worlds. It saw those efforts pay off early last week, when it gained an influential ally in Netscape, along with announced support of 56 other companies.
There has been some griping that the Moving Worlds team is undercutting the standards process by amassing wide corporate support. But Mitra's response is that the team has solicited advice from the beginning, and that it is bent on achieving consensus.
Moving Worlds takes off directly from VRML 1.0. That's no surprise, since VRML 1.0 was based on SGI's Open Inventor format, parts of which SGI donated for the purpose.
In drafting Moving Worlds, SGI, Sony, WorldMaker and the San Diego Supercomputer Center combined separate VRML 2.0 proposals and then solicited the suggestions of others-most prominently, Intel Corp., OnLive, Black Sun, Visual Software, new Netscape acquisition Paper Software (often referred to simply as Paper Inc.), Chaco Communications Inc. and Intervista Software Inc.
The Moving Worlds group proposes expanding VRML 1.0 with enhanced static worlds, interaction, animation and prototyping.
Intel Architecture Labs' contribution to the proposal is RSX (for Realistic Sound Experience), a set of high-level libraries optimized to support 3-D audio in VRML worlds.
Apple's angle
Apple's proposal, Out of This World, is purposefully incomplete; the company is essentially offering its 3D Metafile Format (3DMF) to be incorporated into the the final VRML 2.0 spec.
"We're coming at VRML from a different angle," said Mike Kelley, manager of Apple's Dynamic Media Group. "VRML is focused on the paradigm of a single individual walking through a large virtual world. We think Moving Worlds and ActiveVRML are consistent with that. But we'd like to see it run interactive."
Multiuser games are among the applications Kelley and his group have in mind. He said Apple is in contact with a number of game companies.
Whereas most of the proposals assume users already have a specific VRML browser that allows them to access 3-D virtual worlds, Kelley noted, Apple assumes the browser would be downloaded along with the world being visited, perhaps via such mechanisms as Sun's Java.
Apple's file format, is based on binary code rather than ASCII, which Apple contends helps make them far smaller than both the VRML 1.0 or Moving Worlds formats (Sun's file format is also binary). Apple also claims that the 3DMF binary format can be parsed more easily, and with far less CPU load. That would be an issue for desktop authoring, DVD-based content and future high-speed networks.
Microsoft, for its part, touts several ActiveVRML features as distinctive. One is that time is implicit.
Sun hopes to leverage its development of Java with its proposal, HoloWeb, though the other proposals all assume the use of Java or a competing scripting language.
HoloWeb is a binary file format and run-time application-programming interface (API) for real-time animated 3-D worlds. Claimed distinctions from other proposals are significant use of Java as an integrated real-time 3-D animation scripting language; the use of 3-D-geometry compression as a universal 3-D-geometry format, for tenfold typical reductions in file size; and use of 768-bit 3-D-universe coordinates to support very large virtual universes.
The German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) is acting as point man for 10 German research organizations. GMD's Wolfgang Broll described the joint submission, Dynamic Worlds, in an e-mail:
"Our proposal is based on a very flexible event model. This supports the communication of objects within VRML (in order to realize behavior), the communication between VRML scenes and external applications or servers, and the distribution of VRML worlds (shared virtual environments). . . . Additionally, our proposal can realize most behaviors without the need for scripts (although we support external scripts, e.g., Java)."
IBM Japan has not yet made its proposal available. Interestingly, IBM has said it would support Moving Worlds.
Paper agreement
In a related development last week, Netscape Communications Corp. purchased Paper Software, an expert in distributed 3-D graphics and maker of the WebFX VRML browser, in a stock transaction. Paper Software's Live3D technology lets VRML graphics be easily integrated into the Netscape software platform.
More may be learned about the proposals at the VRML Architecture Group's Web site (http://vag.vrml.org/). VAG's listserv can also be joined through its Web site.
