VRML at Conferences and Seminars

VRML Update from Digital World (June 5-7) and the Interactive Media Festival (June 5-7)

By Dave Blackburn, Virtual Ventures (310) 545-0369

Los Angeles, CA - Numerous VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) related activities occurred during the June 5-7 Digital World Conference and Exposition. In conjunction, The Motorola sponsored Interactive Media Festival took place 2 blocks north of the Convention Center, at The Variety Arts Center. The Festival featured the ARC) Gallery, which included the top 27 installations of artistic, engaging interactive digital media, culled from over 200 entries from around the world.

As a side project from the 27 juried entries, a group headed by ARC Webmaster Mark "Pighed" Meadows collaborated to construct a VRML version of the true architectural space at the Variety Arts Center building and The ARC Gallery within. Although lack of time and tools prevented the completion of the entire building and gallery, the 3rd and 4th floors were near duplicate representations of the real place. About 10 stations were set-up within the gallery for attendees to sample this peculiar new WWW paradigm. For nearly everyone attending, it marked the first chance to explore VRML worlds first hand, using WEBSPACE from SGI as the VRML viewer.

On Tuesday June 6th, from 3:30 PM-5:00 PM, a special VRML session as part of the ARC Bytes mini conference was held near the outdoor bar and patio at The Hotel Figueroa, located across the street from the Variety Arts Center. The 11 member panel was moderated by Jeannine Parker, International President of IICS, and Joichi Ito, Japan's entrepreneurial cyber culturalist. The following panelists shared what was learned from the collaborative effort to complete these VRML worlds representing the Variety Arts Center and other VRML projects:

Mark Pesce opened by stating that the underlying core technology to VRML was adopted from SGI's Open Inventor Scene Description Language, and he emphasized that servers which can store and deliver HTML can just as easily do the same with VRML navigable spaces. The most significant information discussed was the methodology used to build the worlds, which was described by Adam Gould. Initially the geometry was modeled in FORM-Z, an Architectural modeling tool in widespread use, which outputs DXF File Format. Autodesk's 3D Studio was then used to do the lighting and coloring of the geometric database. The colored, shaded database was then imported to Open Inventor to add the camera views, then converted to VRML format where the links were programmed for other VRML worlds or HTML pages. Jim Race, noted a strange feeling of what he called Pre-Ja-Vu, upon entering the real Variety Arts center for the first time. After spending hours navigating the VRML spaces, he truly sensed that he had been in the building previously, although he had never actually stepped foot in the real space, until then. James Waldrop of Ubique Networks spoke of a quick 20 line program representing a clever and elegant compression scheme which devoured 75% of the world data. After using this scheme, and g-zipping the data, the 2.1 Megabyte, polygonal rich world representing the Variety Arts Center Auditorium, was reduced to a scrawny 80 Kilobyte file which looked the same and even had a quicker frame rate than the original.

After the ARC Bytes panel, Mark Pesce called a for a VRML Birds of a feather meeting attended by about a dozen VRMN to discuss the near term and long term projected futures of VRML. The main wish list created by attendees of development features of VRML version 1.X, which could be anything that doesn't involve interactivity, object behavior, or multi-participant worlds. These issues will be hopeful features addressed in concurrent development of VRML version 2.0, currently with a projected release date in spring of 1996. These 1.X wishes included: Audio specs; texture mapping specs; video streaming; world modification; generic behavior engines; hierarchical naming of objects; unique object identification; hot zone collision specs; generic objects; units of linear measurement; partitioning; hints and paths; browser based navigation API's; and viewpoint content names.

The final VRML panel, titled METAVERSE, was held on Wednesday, June 7th, as part of the Digital demo Days Mini Conference at The Biltmore Hotel. Michael Backes moderated a presentation from Mark Pesce on the current state and future projections for VRML. Pesce's remarks were followed by Maclen Marvit's astonishing presentation of Alphaworld from Worlds, Inc.(formerly Knowledge Adventure Worlds). Over 350 people packed the session to learn more about these pioneering virtual reality networking technologies. Mark stressed that the advancements to expect in the next 3 months would come in the 3 software development areas addressing scaling, streaming, and caching issues neglected in VRML version 1.0 .

Maclen Marvit's demonstration of Alphaworld showed an on-line, multi-participant, 3D polygonal virtual world. The content (i.e. virtual realty) can be generated in real-time by the participants from within the world. The most amazing part of the demo was that it was done on regular phone lines, with 14.4 modems, and 486 PC's. It appears to be the best demo yet of the first step in providing the public with the tools to create inhabitable robust 3D VR environments.

http://www.iworld.com/