Oolite Bulletins

What are peoples thoughts on VRML files? Does anyone have any experience with them?

I was thinking it would be cool to have a try before you buy download facility on 3D elements.

Seems to be pretty poorly supported nowadays. I remember being quite excited when the first couple of VRML demo sites sprang up.

In general I like the idea of being able to preview 3D without large downloads/install. Could be pretty nifty to embed 3D objects into the Wiki.

If you're going to start something off, might be better to go with X3D though?

Micha wrote:

Seems to be pretty poorly supported nowadays. I remember being quite excited when the first couple of VRML demo sites sprang up.

In general I like the idea of being able to preview 3D without large downloads/install. Could be pretty nifty to embed 3D objects into the Wiki.

If you're going to start something off, might be better to go with X3D though?

Well, you know; I'll have a play with it. maybe find a nice dat to whatever format it takes and see if we can't find make something happen.

I see a sleek black hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy like wiki for all things oolite in our immediate future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mWQFGF7w8&NR=1

seriously I would love to replicate this style on a wiki.

VRML was one of the first languages I ever learnt. The node system can take a bit of getting used to at first, but it becomes easier.

I haven't got it set up on Ubuntu as of yet - 'tis probably something I should do!

I'm thinking of creating a ship, but I'm finding manipulating stuff in Wings a bit tricky! I'm tempted to try and make it in VRML, and then convert the .wrl file to a .dat file, either directly or via .obj

Of course, this could well be end up being overly ambitious, inefficient, and not work at all. I shall have to see...

At some point I might like to learn x3d, as that seems to have superseded VRML files...

Should be moved to Outworld, methinks.

If anyone is thinking about doing VRML coding, I'd suggest this editor: http://vrml.cip.ica.uni-stuttgart.de/dune/down.html

It's been under continual development and has an impressive feature list. We used White Dune on some "augmented reality" projects a few years back and it works great.

It includes X3D and X3DV support and runs on MS, LINUX and MAC platforms.

You may also be interested in Xj3D too: http://www.web3d.org/x3d/xj3d/ an embeddable Java-based VRML toolkit and browser.

One last tidbit. There is an interesting game engine: http://vrmlengine.sourceforge.net/index.php that uses VRML and X3D file formats for modeling. Kambi is still being developed as of October 2010...

Cheers.

Interesting links - thanks for the heads-up!

Interesting discussion so on a website footing which system would you think is the most supported and therefore the best?