VRML — First it was HTML, then came java in a big way bringing along with it Active-X, Jscript, VBScript and a host of other multimedia add-ons for the web. But if the net gurus are to be believed and what they predict of the Internet is correct, then VRML is here to stay for good! VRML stands for 'Virtual Reality Modeling Language'. The entire essence of VRML is human centered technology. For instance, you might hear about your friend having a homepage at tripod or at geocities which will have an address something like https://members.tripod.com/~yashbajpai . This kind of addressing scheme is not native to human understanding. You have put an extra effort to remember it. This is where VRML comes in. Imagine instead of the above URL (ie. Uniform Resource Locator), you are told that your friend's homepage is just three blocks ahead of the 'central plaza' having a huge 'oak tree' near it as a landmark, then probably you would remember it better. Of course, 'central plaza' and the 'oak tree' are all VRML objects! In the fascinating world of VRML, surfers could take a stroll in the cyber street, shop in virtual shops, meet virtual people and have a private cyber world of their own! Although we are far from close to these things now, nothing of what has been said is a distant dream anymore…. The history of VRML is not old. VRML was conceived in the spring of 1994 at the first annual World Wide Web Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Tim Berners-Lee and Dave Raggett organized a Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) session to discuss Virtual Reality interfaces to the World Wide Web. Several BOF attendees described projects already underway to build three-dimensional graphical visualization tools that interpolate with the Web. Early on the designers decided that VRML would not be an extension to HTML. HTML is designed for text, not graphics. Also, VRML requires even more finely tuned network optimizations than HTML; it is expected that a typical VRML scene will be composed of many more "inline" objects and served up by many more servers than a typical HTML document. Moreover, HTML is an accepted standard, with existing implementations that depend on it. To impede the HTML design process with VRML issues and constrain the VRML design process with HTML compatibility concerns would be to do both languages a disservice. As a network language, VRML will succeed or fail independent of HTML. For all you web masters out there, if you think VRML is going to be as simple as HTML or JavaScript even, then you are sadly mistaken. The very nature of 3D graphics requires that attention should be paid even to the minutest of detail of a three dimensional world. That is not to say that this technology is impossible to comprehend. With a little bit of patience and 'unlearning' you too could own an entire world! So what if it is a virtual one. — Yash
