VRML became really good a couple of years after this with SGI's CosmoWorlds. I built some incredible things with it, with my actual sister as if we had gone back to childhood with the LEGO bricks out. In fact my sister's well paid career is entirely due to how impressive the VRML that fitted on a floppy disk was. Funny to think that you also applied for jobs by post back then.
Admittedly the texture rendering was not up to modern gaming standards but everything worked and existed on a beautiful imaginative plane - much like how a little bit of imagination is needed with LEGO.
But then we realised nobody else was on the trail. Our models were far in advance of anything published online. Only the SGI demos were cooler than what we had come up with. Then there weren't many of those beyond the demo disk that came with new SGI machines (and needed the power of an SGI machine).
The tools - Cosmoworlds - were fantastic and not hard. I particularly liked the audio aspect, being able to have different music play in a scene and for the stereo to move around as you explored a scene. If I was a musician then I would have wanted my album played that way.
But no musician thought to put their traxxx in a 3D virtual world, online for the world to hear. They had distribution in those days so the required VRML viewer could have been distributed on CD to solve the problem of that ten minute download over dial up.
3D then became the cottage industry that it remained, only done in games companies or by specialists doing things like oil exploration, CAD or other things like TV adverts. Despite the wonders of CosmoWorlds it never became this accessible thing that people wanted to play with in a Lego like way.
After my sister and myself pushed VRML so far my sister ended up working in a world where the interactive exhibits she was to be building for one of the world's greatest museums would only ever be flat and two dimensional. The portfolio of awesome interactivity that got her the job never made it past the bureaucracy, committees and bullshit of the regular world. It was a glimpse of a future that was never going to happen, a high note of creativity to never be reached again. We downsize our dreams, from 3+ dimensions to 2.
The problem wasn't us or SGI's CosmoWorlds. It was everyone else. We are not that adventurous as a species. On a given day the finest mountain tops with the most awesome views only have a small amount of people there, not seven billion people. Even though getting there needs no more effort than putting one foot in front of the other for half the day.
Admittedly the texture rendering was not up to modern gaming standards but everything worked and existed on a beautiful imaginative plane - much like how a little bit of imagination is needed with LEGO.
But then we realised nobody else was on the trail. Our models were far in advance of anything published online. Only the SGI demos were cooler than what we had come up with. Then there weren't many of those beyond the demo disk that came with new SGI machines (and needed the power of an SGI machine).
The tools - Cosmoworlds - were fantastic and not hard. I particularly liked the audio aspect, being able to have different music play in a scene and for the stereo to move around as you explored a scene. If I was a musician then I would have wanted my album played that way.
But no musician thought to put their traxxx in a 3D virtual world, online for the world to hear. They had distribution in those days so the required VRML viewer could have been distributed on CD to solve the problem of that ten minute download over dial up.
3D then became the cottage industry that it remained, only done in games companies or by specialists doing things like oil exploration, CAD or other things like TV adverts. Despite the wonders of CosmoWorlds it never became this accessible thing that people wanted to play with in a Lego like way.
After my sister and myself pushed VRML so far my sister ended up working in a world where the interactive exhibits she was to be building for one of the world's greatest museums would only ever be flat and two dimensional. The portfolio of awesome interactivity that got her the job never made it past the bureaucracy, committees and bullshit of the regular world. It was a glimpse of a future that was never going to happen, a high note of creativity to never be reached again. We downsize our dreams, from 3+ dimensions to 2.
The problem wasn't us or SGI's CosmoWorlds. It was everyone else. We are not that adventurous as a species. On a given day the finest mountain tops with the most awesome views only have a small amount of people there, not seven billion people. Even though getting there needs no more effort than putting one foot in front of the other for half the day.