Global Village Technology Forum: VRML

Marco A. Calamari

This can be considered as the third main step in trying to humanize the global communication. The first one, the development of the TCP/IP infrastructure provided a layer of abstraction between data sets and the hosts which manipulated them, and the access to Internet was restricted to the class of sysops/net surfers.

The second step, the hypermedia system known as World Wide Web, provided an "addressing" scheme, a unique identifier (the Universal Resource Locator), which could tell anyone "where to go and how to get there". While useful, it lacked dimensionality; the only type of navigation permissible (other than surfing) is by direct reference. In other words, the user needs to make an effort to remember it at all. This forum is about the latest effort to "perceptualize" the Internet. VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) is an attempt to place humans at the center of the Internet, ordering its universe to our whims.

In order to do that, the most important single element is a standard that defines the particularities of perception. VRML, designed to be a universal description language for multi-participant simulations, is a language that allows your Web browser to access detailed 3D environments and navigate through them as you use to do (now, for instance) in 2D way.

Do you remember the virtual reality environment in which the company database was rendered in the cinematographic version of 'Disclosures' by Michael Crichton? People accessed documents by virtually walking along corridors and finding the proper drawers where files were available for browsing.

Other users concurrently accessing the database were represented on the monitor as 3D characters moving around and no interference among all of them occurred... space to be filled... visions

• Some of those vision can be found at the Wired web (http://vrml.wired.com/concepts/visions.html).
• If you are a beginner, you can find a short introduction to the VRML language and application areas in the VRML for newbie page.
• If you already have some knowledge of VRML you can visit the most comprehensive archive about it in the VRML Repository page (http://www.sdsc.edu/vrml).
• A complete list of several examples built using VRML is in the VRML Repository Example page (http://www.sdsc.edu/SDSC/Partners/vrml/examples.html).
• Look at a description of the possible applications of VRML technology at the SGI in the WebFORCE VRML page (http://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace/WebSpaceApps.html).
• You can explore an example of "Molecular modeling",. Chemical Examples (http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/VRML/), and walk around normally invisible things .
• Or you can visit an example of "Historical reconstruction of ancient cities"; the Italian project FL.O.WE.R.S. (Florence on the Web - reconstructed and simulated) (http://www.dada.it/marcoc/1pag.htm) is a prototype for an architectural database of ancient and modern Florence, containing information as text, images and VRML spaces. The FL.O.WE.R.S. database is conceived to allow the user to access the information using both VRML or HTML browser (with some obvious limitations).

• To finish, look at the first Italian attempt to build a virtual town in cyberspace, as a commercial (but not expensive) initiative; La Citta' del Sole (http://www.sextant.it/city/city.html). The opening is planned sometime in November, but now there are anyway interesting information

Marco Calamari (marcoc@dada.it) works in Elea FP on new technologies applied to vocational training.