Vrml, or There and Back Again

Tony ParisiSeptember 2015

VRMLor,

There and Back Again:A brief, completely

personal history of VR and why I think that matters

now

1. Genesis

“…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…. Attendees agreed on the need for these tools to have a common language for specifying 3D scene description and WWW hyperlinks -- an analog of HTML for virtual reality. ”

-- original VRML specification, http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/3d/VRML.specThe Year was 1994.

Shape { geometry Box {}}

(It’s that simple.)

1997

(We got pretty far.60Mhz “Pentium”…14.4Kb modems…Think about it.)

2. Exodus

X3DVRML + XML

<Shape> <Box/></Shape>

It’s now 2004.(And it’s still that simple.)

2007

Now we’re talking. 3D chips, broadband, and a virtual world in a browser! (Some plug-in

assembly required.)

3. Numbers

Your browser does 3D

3B seats.Q.E.D.

WebGL is on all desktop and mobile browsers

2009…2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io5snCcQ0ss

http://ogreen.special-t.com/en/

http://cityofdrones.io/

http://riskeverything.nike.com/

branding

games

ads

art andarchitecture

4. Revelation

The Promised Land

WebVR API– Head-Tracking

and Fullscreen VR Support Now in Nightly Browser Builds!!!

– No Big App Downloads and Installs!!!

http://mozvr.github.io/webvr-spec/webvr.html

Quake 3 WebVR demo, developed by Brandon Jones of Googlehttp://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/

Your browser also does VR2015

The Web eats everything in its path.

#ihaveadream

In the future, creating VR will be as easy as making web pages, sharing VR will be as simple as sending a link, and experiencing VR happens at the touch of a button.

No apps stores; no tolls; no barriers.

I like this future. Much better than an app store.

Tony ParisiSeptember 2015

VRMLor,

There and Back Again:A brief, completely

personal history of VR and why I think that matters

now