From: cph@dmu.ac.uk (Chris Hand)
Subject: Re: VRML: Why VRML can't go anywhere
Date: October 6, 1997


In a lengthy harangue which was obviously borne of
frustration, Greg Newby (gbnewby@ils.unc.edu) wrote:
: Have you tried getting your VRML world to work across platforms
: lately?  If you want a VRML 2.0 compliant viewer, good luck with
: finding one that will agree with another viewer about what constitutes
: standards-compliant VRML code, if your world has any level of
: complexity.  Or, if your world uses some of the more "obscure"
: language features.  Things like quotes and PROTO fields (sarcasm).

I know how you feel, Greg.  Students here have produced some *great*
stuff that I will put on the web soon, but it kind of defeats the
objects of "open standards" if the web pages have to include
disclaimers stating that the worlds will only work on Win95 with
Netscape 3.0x and CosmoPlayer 1.x (if you can find one that hasn't
expired), *and* you mung about with the CLASSPATH and reboot
before accessing the stuff.

FWIW, the guys at SGI say the long-overdue CosmoPlayer 2.0 for
windows will be out in the next few weeks, where: 1 < few < 5
(I asked).

We've been in this limbo for far too long.  Cynics (not me, of
course) might start to suggest that it has all been engineered to 
sell more SGI hardware...


Chris

--
Chris Hand, De Montfort University, UK   http://www.cms.dmu.ac.uk/~cph/
cph@dmu.ac.uk