I have been under a non-disclosure agreement with SGI and TGS for about two
months; this allowed me to help all of the parties making the announcements
cross-leverage their press and project exposure, and hopefully, made the
launch more successful. Although this looks very sudden, neither SGI nor
TGS (or Intervista, for that matter) want to co-opt the VRML specification
process in *any* way. I have been assured repeatedly by everyone involved
that *no one* wants to hijack this effort.
VRML has made national news, from BYTE to the Wall Street Journal to the San
Jose Mercury, to the San Diego Union, to the San Francisco Chronicle - front
page of the business section in many places. That's quite heartening - it
appears that VRML's time has come, and everyone wants it.
Here's a little history:
About the same time that Len Wanger announced that UCSD would host the VRML
Conference in December, Brian Behlendorf got mail from Robert Weideman, the
marketing director at Template Graphics Software in San Diego. Brian
forwarded this mail to me, and I made email contact, later followed by phone
contact. Robert had cajoled the folks at SGI into making a strategic
decision about supporting VRML (for which he is to be *applauded* - take a
bow, Robert!), and they'd struck a deal an "unnamed large internet browser
company" to support VRML in the context of that project.
It was great news. There was a lot of follow up, and I opened my list of
"VRML content providers", like the IMF, WAXWeb, WIRED, etc., so that we
could coordinate press for the roll-out.
Trouble is, VRML was hotter than any of them expected (this comes as a
surprise to us?), and Michelle Quinn of the SF Chronicle decided to ignore
the SGI "embargo" on reportage before 3 April, forcing SGI's hand. They
contacted the press (most of which was ready to move on Monday), and told
them they could go to press on Friday. Hence the flurry of news reports
late last week and early this week.
SGI's marketing muscle is incredible; with them behind VRML, it was easy to
bring other companies into the fold. This is a win/win, in a lot of ways -
SGI (as near as I can tell) is interested in using VRML to sell iron, which
they will, as VRML creates a demand for high-end modeling tools.
That oh-so-crowded browser market:
The lay of the land is as follows: SGI is making the WebSpace browser for
SGI machines *only*. That nice picture in the SF Chronicle piece was
photographed on some sort of Reality Engine.
Contact SGI ([email protected]) for more details.
Template Graphics Software, which provides OpenGL and OpenInventor toolkits
for non-SGI platforms, is producing browsers for the non-SGI platforms
(SunOS, Solaris, HP/UX, AUX, Macintosh, WinNT, Win3.1). I've seen their NT
port, and understand they have others underway.
Contact Robert Weideman ([email protected]) for more details.
Finally, Intervista Software has announced WorldView, a VRML browser for
Windows and Macintosh platforms.
Contact Tony Parisi ([email protected]) for more information.
A few questions:
Shall I post the relevant press releases to the list?
Can we have several lists, one for tech, one for philosophy, one for design,
etc?
Is it time to move to USENET? (I think it soon will be.)
If you have specific questions that you feel I can answer, please do not
hesitate to contact me personally ([email protected])
Finally:
I have been invited to address WWW '95 in Darmstadt on Developer's Day, 14
April 1995, to bring them up-to-speed on the progress we've been making on
VRML 1.0, and brief them on where we need to go with VRML 2.0. I hope to be
able to demonstrate SGI's WebSpace (on a Reality Engine, of course) as part
of the talk. My goal is to get the WWW community involved with VRML at an
immediate level. We'll evolve faster when we get the feedback of the whole
community of which we are an integral component. Tim Berners-Lee and Dave
Raggett made this happen, and we do owe them debts of gratitude.
Thanks for your patience; I hope this clears things up.
Mark Pesce
VRML List Moderator