WorldInfo - VRML News

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PROTO Announcements

Microsoft has licensed a portion of Liquid Reality, Dimension X's Java-based VRML 2.0 implementation. Microsoft had previously licensed Intervista's VRML 1.0 browser technology. Microsoft plans to incorporate VRML 2.0 support as a downloadable ActiveX™ Control for Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. Other companies are planning to provide VRML browsers for Internet Explorer, including Intervista and Chaco Communications.

Mark Pesce is moving to Los Angeles to start a VRML community there.

BigBook, an Internet yellow pages company, has released a VRML alpha version of BigBook3D, according to Clay Graham, BigBook's Manager of Virtual Reality Engineering.

Caligari and Yahoo are creating a 3D VRML version of Yahoo. Robert Saint John is Chief Architect of the project, called Yahoo!3D.

The 3D Studio MAX VRML 2.0 Exporter is available from Kinetix. The software exports VRML with the Y coordinate and pointing into the screen, rather than the Z coordinate, so that users will need to add an extra Transform node to achieve the expected initial orientation.

The VRML community is examining VRML 2.0 binary format proposals from Apple, IBM and Paragraph.

EventOut

VRML enthusiasts will flocked to two conferences this month, Web Interactive in New York City at the beginning of August, and Siggraph in New Orleans in the second week of August. Web Interactive was the first conference with a significant amount of VRML coverage, including a whole conference track focusing on VRML and Mark Pesce as keynote speaker.

At Siggraph, the final version of the VRML 2.0 Specification was be presented to the VRML community at the VRML Birds of a Feather session.

Transform

Gavin Bell, formerly at SGI, is now doing something else. Rikk Carey, formerly at SGI, is now a full-time VRML servant. Timothy Childs, formerly of Virtual-I/O, is now working with Superscape. Clay Graham, formerly SGI's VRML Evangelist, is now Manager of V.R. Engineering at Big Book. Konstantin Guericke, formerly at Caligari, is now at Black Sun Interactive. John Gluck, formerly at Hewlett-Packard, is now an editor and interactive director at Aereal Inc. Jan Hardenbergh, formerly at Oki Advanced Products, is now part of Netscape's Live3D team. Erik Johnson has moved on from Caligari to Axial. Mike McCue, formerly CEO of Paper Software, is now Director of Client Technology at Netscape. Paper Software has been acquired by Netscape.

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