For a more accurate description, please see Wiki:VirtualRealityModelingLanguage
We should really just delete this page and rewrite it properly. CategoryToDo.
VRML. An old (but still extant) standard markup language (SGML derived, so full of tags) early in the history of the web to describe 3D environments (VirtualReality) with pure ASCII. Pushed by SiliconGraphics. The de facto reference implementation was something called the CosmoBrowser.
It pops up now and then, so to speak.
- comp.lang.vrml FAQ: http://home.hiwaay.net/~crispen/vrmlworks/faq/index.html
- Web 3D Consortium (owners of the VRML standard): http://www.web3d.org
- Cosmo Software: http://www.cosmosoftware.com
I recently read an article wherein the author remarked that VRML was a solution in search of a problem. He went on to say that the game engines that evolved from [ Wolfenstein --> Doom --> Quake ], which began as a solution to a specific problem have actually resulted in a better general approach, with 3D environments being rendered so smoothly and quickly that the application of such a engine to the domain of general 3D mapping could yield the kind of visually interactive utility that VRML never will.
So, anybody have the docs for a Quake markup language?