Introduction
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The Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) is a language for describing multiparticipant interactive simulations -- virtual worlds networked via the global Internet and
hyperlinked with the World Wide Web. All aspects of virtual world display, interaction
and internetworking can be specified using VRML. It is the intention of its designers that
VRML become the standard language for interactive simulation within the World Wide
Web.
The first version of VRML allows for the creation of virtual worlds with limited
interactive behavior. These worlds can contain objects which have hyperlinks to other
worlds, HTML documents or other valid MIME types. When the user selects an object
with a hyperlink, the appropriate MIME viewer is launched. When the user selects a link
to a VRML document from within a correctly configured WWW browser, a VRML
viewer is launched. Thus VRML viewers are the perfect companion applications to
standard WWW browsers for navigating and visualizing the Web. Future versions of
VRML will allow for richer behaviors, including animations, motion physics and realtime multi-user interaction.
This document specifies the features and syntax of Version 1.0 of VRML.
VRML Mission Statement
The history of the development of the Internet has had three distinct phases; first, the
development of the TCP/IP infrastructure which allowed documents and data to be stored
in a proximally independent way; that is, Internet provided a layer of abstraction between
data sets and the hosts which manipulated them. While this abstraction was useful, it was
also confusing; without any clear sense of "what went where", access to Internet was
restricted to the class of sysops/net surfers who could maintain internal cognitive maps of
the data space.
Next, Tim Berners-Lee’s work at CERN, where he developed the hypermedia system
known as World Wide Web, added another layer of abstraction to the existing structure.
This abstraction provided an "addressing" scheme, a unique identifier (the Universal
Resource Locator), which could tell anyone "where to go and how to get there" for any
piece of data within the Web. While useful, it lacked dimensionality; there’s no there
there within the web, and the only type of navigation permissible (other than surfing) is
by direct reference. In other words, I can only tell you how to get to the VRML Forum
home page by saying, "http://www.wired.com/", which is not human-centered data. In