What is VRML?

VRML is a world modeling language for 3D virtual reality. Get to know VRML, a bit of its history, the materials needed to create virtual worlds and some examples.

VRML stands for Virtual Reality Modeling Language. It is a modeling language for virtual worlds in three dimensions, which can be created by means of code in plain text files. Just as HTML is used to define the content of web pages, VRML is used to create three-dimensional worlds that we access using our browser, just as if we were visiting any web page, with the exception that our visits are not limited to viewing a simple text and photographs, but it allows us to see all kinds of objects and constructions in 3D through which we can walk or interact.

VRML as a new way of consuming content on the Internet

This way of visiting Internet sites is much more advanced and has great advantages. To begin with, navigation is developed in a much more intuitive way, since the way of acting in the virtual world is similar to that of real life. We can move in all directions, not just left and right, but also forward, backward, up, and down. We can deal with objects as in life itself, touch them, drag them, etc., in general as you would interact with objects in the real world. The scenarios are also much more realistic, let’s think of an example such as a virtual library. In it we could walk through each of the rooms, take certain books and read them.

In the long run, access to the Internet must become an experience that is much closer to what we do in life and visits to places portrayed on the Internet will be much more real. However, VRML currently has many limitations regarding its potential, which will gradually be covered with the advent of more powerful machines and advanced peripherals for virtual reality such as gloves or helmets.

Despite all of the above, over the years the truth is that VRML has not had as much penetration in its use as a tool to consume Internet content, so today (2019) all these ideas have stuck. a little waiting for better times. Where it has been possible to use VRML is more in the industry, as a standard language for exporting 3D models.

A bit of VRML history

VRML emerged in the spring of 1994, during a meeting called by Tim Berners-Lee and Dave Ragget to try to bring virtual reality developments closer to the Internet. At this meeting, the attendees came to the conclusion that a common language had to be developed for the description of 3D worlds.

In this way, at the First WWW World Conference in Geneva, the development of a new language was approved that would allow the creation of three-dimensional worlds that could be accessed through the World Wide Web.

Over time, the language was developed within several requirements: that it be adaptable to the network, that it did not require a high-speed line (high bandwidth), that it be multiplatform, etc.

Materials needed to develop and visualize VRML worlds

The materials needed to get started with VRML are few, and we may already have, without knowing it, all the ingredients to get started developing and editing virtual worlds. These are:

• A simple text editor. It must be a plain text editor, so it would work with the elementary Notepad. We can also use specialized editors such as the VRML PAD (today it is a defunct editor).
• A VRML viewer to view the results, which is installed in the browser like any other plug-in. Possibly your browser is already prepared to see the worlds in VRML, if not, you have to install it. A well-known viewer is the Cosmo Player, although unfortunately the company that developed it has abandoned it. Another more current VRML world viewer is Cortona Viewer.

VRML Example

The file containing the VRML code is a text file. This must be saved with a .wrl extension to be recognized by the browser as a source file of a virtual world.

For its later visualization it will simply have to be opened with the browser. If our viewer is correctly installed, it will be in charge of showing the world and we will be able to interact with it.

We can to see a world in VRML, if we have the viewer installed. If this is not the case, we will not be able to see the virtual world until we have installed it.

interesting links

Conclusion of the introduction to VRML

It has been more than two decades since VRML was created and the truth is that its evolution has not been as promising as expected. At least in the world of the Internet and the web in particular, the gap that we might have assumed when we learned about the language and began to experiment with it has not been made. Although to tell the truth, everything related to virtual reality has been a bit slow and it was not until recently that peripherals for consuming virtual worlds, software, etc. began to be marketed.

However, virtual reality technology is certainly something that our near future will go through. By then it will be necessary to have a standard language that allows establishing the specifications that browsers, or the corresponding software, have to interpret. In the same way that the web has taken advantage of HTML, CSS, Javascript, when virtual reality arrives, VRML will be needed.

It remains to be seen if, when the time comes, VRML meets the needs of the industry, or if perhaps it has become obsolete and needs to be replaced by another language. Of course, it will have to be a standard to be able to maintain the philosophy of the Internet and VRML already is, so, with its defects or needs (which will be seen when the time comes) it already has a way to go with respect to other programming languages. modeling that can compete with it.