Re: Implementing quasi-interaction

Andy Norris ([email protected])
Tue, 04 Apr 1995 18:02:06 -0400


At 02:28 PM 4/4/95, Brian Behlendorf wrote:

>I think what you're really wondering is
>if there's any equivalent to the forms capability in VRML, and the answer
>is no (not yet). The problem of interactivity in 3-d spaces is not a
>small one, there are many possibilities but no clear solution, though we
>will attempt to forge one for VRML as soon as 1.0 is finished up. We
>could hamstring ourselves by trying to define some small subset that has
>limited functionality, but we need to be as generalized as possible.

Sorry I wasn't very clear.

I absolutely agree that a VRML with limited interaction wouldn't be very
helpful. What I was wondering about was workarounds that didn't involve
changing the spec.

If I use a CGI script to create a VRML world, I can theoretically embed all
necessary details of the world in variables in each URL. This can call a
script which can interpret these variables, and use them to create a HTML
page, a form, or another VRML world. What I was wondering is if anyone can
think of a more efficient means of passing this information along, as this
could be quite a lot of variables, and if there are many links in the model,
this could increase file size a fair bit.