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| VRML: Viewing Space in Three Dementia | by Mark J. Jones |
 VRML co-inventor Mark Pesce |
VRML, the Virtual Realty Modeling Language created by Mark Pesce and Tony Parisi, is a technology whose proponents vastly overestimate its potential, while those outside the VRML community vastly underestimate it. |
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I sit somewhere comfortably in the middle. Having worked in VRML as an conceptual editor and producer, the possibilities of creating 3D interactive spaces on the web is both enticing and challenging from a conceptual to a discourse point of view. Of all web technologies, VRML presents perhaps the greatest chance at creating new innovative spaces for mass distribution, because the flat interface dominating the ubiquitous web suddenly turns into a space of three dimensions.
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Yet, for the most part, people just aren't using VRML even though browsers and development tools have been available free for some time, and now the overriding question in the minds of many artists and VRML developers is, "Why haven't people caught on yet?"
Now that The International Standards Organization has approved a VRML standard, there is no better time for the VRML community to start asking itself just who the audience for this technology is. There is no guarantee that the industry will maintain its enthusaism if its market continues to be as ambiguous as it has been up to now. Even SGI is beginning to back off, as they pull back on its VRML efforts as part of their cuts announced in October of last year. |
| Why would a technology of so much potential still be so ignored by much of the web community? |
