Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery at UIUC
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SigVR

By Ray Kaplan

Instead of doing our 3D IDE for EOH, SigVR has decided to do a demonstration of VRML, the Virtual Reality Modeling Language. This demonstration will consist of a single player game and some examples of VRML worlds. VRML is one of the easiest ways to go 3D graphics, and it is designed to be used over the web.

VRML was originally developed in 1995. Version 1.0 was just a static scene graph. With VRML 2.0 other things such as animation was added. In 1997, a minor revision of VRML 2.0, VRML97 was made. With VRML97 it is possible to create virtual worlds where objects can be animated and interactive.

VRML is a scene graph made up several different types of nodes. There are nodes for geometry, such as boxes, spheres, and elevation grids for terrains. There are also appearance nodes for defining colors and the use of gif and jpeg images on the objects. Even MPEG-1 movies can be embedded in a VRML world. There are also nodes for interaction such as sensor nodes to allow for interactivity with a VRML world with the use of a mouse. There are also nodes for animation. Scripting is also available through script nodes using either Java or JavaScript. More information on VRML is available at www.web3d.org.

Currently, the main company dealing with VRML is Platinum Technology. Their browser CosmoPlayer (available at www.cosmosoftware.com) is available both as a Netscape plugin and an ActiveX control for Internet Explorer. Their authoring tool is CosmoWorlds. While this software is for Windows95/98/NT, VRML software for Linux is also available. The LookAt browser for Linux uses LibVRML97 (available at www.vermontel.net/~cmorley/vrml.html) which is an opensource library for VRML. In addition to being used in the LookAt browser, LibVRML97 can be used within other applications.

SigVR does projects like our VRML demonstration for EOH. We are dedicated to all aspects of virtual reality, not just VRML. If you are interested in being a part of SigVR, email sigvr@uiuc.edu or visit here for the current meeting time and location.