Introduction to VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language)

3D

In everyday lives, people are used to manipulate objects in three spatial dimensions so three 3D on the Web seem obvious. In their opinions, 3D interface and interactivity design will provide them with the most comfortable and natural interaction environment.

The 3D may be useful if the following basic objectives are met:

Visualization of Complex Data

• Besides three-dimension data, 3D can also be used to create visualization of more complex data or relationships such as 3D tree diagram.

Creating a Sense of Place

• 3D is appropriate to create a sense of being in allocation as well.

Modeling Real Physical Interaction

• For Web 3D, simulations of real physical places and interactions are also a good candidates.
• Modeling a real building or creating an interactive virtual physicals experiment is good examples of the possibilities of this kind of interactive 3D environments.

Virtual Spaces

Generally, users will communicate with the following virtual spaces:

Simulation Spaces

• 3D environments that are created with the goal of making users feel like they are in a physical space. These spaces should make users feel like they are “there.” The following picture is a good example.

Communication Spaces

• 3D environments for communication.
• Transfer data from sender to receiver, not to provide a sense of place or facilitate the analysis of data.

Information Spaces

• 3D projections of sets of data with the purpose of representing ideas instead of places.
• People are experimenting with the new ways of representing data all the time, and information spaces that seem like simulation spaces might be desirable for some applications.
• Create an information spaces to help people understand data and ideas, not to give them a feeling of “being there.”

Online Games

Nowadays, games from any genre can become online games to play over Internet after the modification. Yahoo Games is the good instance. Normally, the publisher will build a user community to maximize the number of players and the amount of time. Within this community, a player can create an identity that is very different from his real-world persona. No matter how low his status might be in the real world, he can achieve fame the recognition within this virtual world. The features of online games are:

Allow for dropouts

• Players come and go suddenly in online games. Their connection can be broken.For example, the games cannot grind to a halt for 20 players if one of them suddenly disappears.

Keep the gamers’ screens synchronized

• Adopted when the amount of time it takes information to be transmitted over the wires especially in multiplayer games.
• Everyone sees the same time, especially when some have faster Internet connections than others.
  

Create a gathering area outside the game space

• People can exchange conversation, strategies, and items of value within the game.
• Enable chat capability during the game.

Develop world rules that help build community

• It can prevent a minority of idiots from spoiling the game for the majority of the users.

VRML

Virtual Reality Markup Language or VRML is a platform and browser independent language like HTML that enable 3D virtual worlds and supports many types of media, including sound, graphic, text, animation, video and interactivity. It immerses audience from in an entirely different world. They can move around in and interact with. Besides the online games, it is also used in a variety of application areas such as engineering and visualization, multimedia presentations, entertainment and education titles, web pages and shared virtual worlds. VRML is used on Internet, Intranet and local clients systems. The features of VRML are:

Supports many types of media

• For example, sound, graphics, text animation, video, and interactivity.

Scene changes in real-time

• By moving forward to approach the objects, the objects in the world become larger.

Require a fair amount of programming

• Providing 3-D, interactivity, animation and a lot of interesting effects.

Need a browser with VRML capabilities

• Many different browsers are available like Live3D and Intervista’s WorldView. With these browsers, users can navigate the world at his own pleasure, examining the world from whatever angle he wants.
• Look different depending on what browser is being used.

From the aspect of lighting and color

• Just as HTML pages look different when running on two different browsers.

Comparing with HTML, VRML has the extra dimension. The added dimension makes users can go inside, behind, around the scene. It can bring the advantages but also present some disadvantages.

Advantages of VRML

Users have more freedom to control

• All those 3D effects can be done in real-time. It presents infinite ways to view the animation, all at the viewer’s discretion.
• Users can view the scene from any angle (if they can effectively navigate), so they are not stuck viewing the same image every time.

The ability of third dimension to obscure items and hide items behind other items

• It can do something tricky on HTML pages. This enables user plays some interesting hide-and-seek games.

Achieve the realism

• Moving a user through an architectural structure gives them a much better feeling of spatial relationships for the building than pictures do.

The remote visualization of data

• This might take the form of a VR world that mimics the environment a remote-controlled vehicle is operating in, or it might even act as mock-ups of design.

Disadvantages of VRML

Moving mouse in 3D can be difficult

• Trying to manipulate a 3D model in 2D will make the input devices like the mouse become two-dimensional

Difficult to determine the depth on monitor

• 2D monitor is not the best output device to help the viewer to move around the world and understand the relative positions of objects.

The connection speed is slow and bandwidth-heavy

• Bandwidth severely limits the complexity of animation that can realistically present on the Web.

The details of VRML worlds are purposely kept simple

• Because of the huge calculation for processor is involved to calculate how the scene looks as user move. The more complex the scene, the more it taxes the processor.

Conclusion

Since the simulation has enormous potential in industrial and entertainment fields, simulation and 3D will dominate the entertainment and science forefronts well into the next Century. The future of Simulation and 3D are promising.

References

1. Laura Lemay’ Web Workshop, 3D Graphics and VRML 2.0 by Laura Lemay, Justin Couch, Kelly Murdock, Sams Net.
2. Animation on the Web by Sean Wagstate, Peachpit Press.
3. Game Design: The Art & Business of creating games by Bob Bates, Prima Tech’s Game Development.