1. Introduction

VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced 'vermal') is a standardized format to exchange 3D data over the Web.
VRML scenes may not only contain geometric data, but also links to other VRML files, HTML documents, audio files, movies, ...

To display an VRML world, you need a special VRML Browser (for example WebSpace, WorldView, ...), which can be either a standalone Browser, or a 'Helper Application', like Webspace, unable to perform any network communication by itself.

VRML was conceived in the spring of 1994 at the first annual World Wide Web Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The first draft Version was finished on November 2nd, 1994, the final Version of VRML 1.0 was released on may 26th, 1995.

How does VRML work?

The first version of VRML (VRML 1.0) allows for the creation of virtual worlds with limited interactive behavior. These worlds can contain objects that have hyperlinks to other worlds, HTML documents, or other valid MIME types.
When the user selects an object with a hyperlink, the appropriate MIME viewer is launched. VRML viewers are thus the perfect companion applications to standard WWW Browsers for navigating and visualizing the Web.

VRML objects are called Nodes.
Nodes are arranged in hierarchical structures called scene graphs.
Scene graphs are not only just a collection of nodes, but they also define an ordering for those nodes.
In the scene graph, nodes that occur earlier, can affect nodes following these ones.(for example, the Material node influences the Sphere node following it).
Every VRML file contains a single scene graph.

A node has the following characteristics:

• The kind of object it is (cube, sphere, transformation, ...)
• The parameters that distinguish this node from other nodes of the same type.This parameters are called fields. A node can have zero or more fields.
• A name to identify this node. This gives the possibility to eisily reuse nodes, by simply refering to them. Nodes do not have to be named. If they are named, however, they can have only one single name. Names do not have to be unique.
• Child nodes. Object hierarchy is implemented by allowing some types of nodes to contain other nodes. These nodes are called group nodes. Group nodes can have zero or more children.

This page was created by Helmut Doleisch and Edgar Weippl on November 26, 1996.