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RE: [www-vrml] AnnualPluginCheckup and Pavlov's Profs



>In the past I had relied on Chisel to help clean up my code - to which I am very grateful to Trapezium for releasing into >the wild.  I haven't checked lately to see if if still works with the latest platform versions.   

 

I’d be surprised if it did not. It is written in java after all.

 

>And it had been for a while, and P-graphics did an awesome job maintaining their product.  But they don't seem able >to keep up with the changing times, so that now my content doesn't seem to work anywhere.  

 

Are you saying Cortona doesn’t work on Vista and I.E.? (Yeah shame on me as a developer for not having Vista –that’s a to-do) Cortona works fine for me on XP and I.E. 7 and previously 6, which I am willing to bet is the majority of end user systems out there. –after I fiddled with a bunch of settings in security and internet options that is.

 

I read in your previous post about Cortona not working with Firefox3. Am sure PG will fix it eventually, but I am guessing they are looking at priorities and the actual amount of end-users with that particular html browser.

 

>I would like to stress also the difference between a player and a plugin when it comes to delivering a seamlessly >integrated web presentation.  For most of my academic clientele, it's unacceptable to have to jump out to a non->browser application when the expectation is to have the content neatly presented in a single browser window. > Professors tend to get antsy when there are too many windows floating around on screen.  So still I am looking for the >in-browser experience to return.

 

I’ve ranted before and I’ll rant again that the VRML plug-in as a priority was a huge mistake.

Your post is one more proof of that mistake.

 

 The plug-ins starry-eyed heyday is over and now end users have been spoiled into expecting it –much as my cats expect wet food with their dry and if I don’t supply it I’ll hear about it.

Sorry to be flippant, but just mail the profs one of those annoying framed “inspirational” posters with the curling ocean wave proclaiming “layed-oooops I mean “change” and tell ’em to go buy a several hundred thousand dollar license for Unreal Tournament so they can unnecessarily boost tuition rates in a struggling economy.

My cats love the poster –one hangs over their cat pans, but then again they don’t enjoy tenure.

 

tc

Russ Kinter

 


From: owner-www-vrml@web3d.org [mailto:owner-www-vrml@web3d.org] On Behalf Of willRourk
Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 1:30 PM
To: Web3D Mailing List
Subject: Re: [www-vrml] AnnualPluginCheckup

 

Hi Len-

Thanks very much for your response.

My work is freely available online for critique or debugging.  And occasionally I have presented some of my worlds throughout the history of this list, but that was back then we didn't have the crisis we currently have.  So there was no need for debugging assistance.  In the past I had relied on Chisel to help clean up my code - to which I am very grateful to Trapezium for releasing into the wild.  I haven't checked lately to see if if still works with the latest platform versions.   

 

As far as browsers/players go I had relied on Cortona (after Cosmo but that's going back too far) which I believed to be stable enough.  And it had been for a while, and P-graphics did an awesome job maintaining their product.  But they don't seem able to keep up with the changing times, so that now my content doesn't seem to work anywhere.  And I can understand that, given that VRML/X3D has always been a tough technology to sell to a public that would rather do less for themselves to code their own virtual worlds, rather than have it handed over to them in a neat package like Active Worlds and Second Life.  

 

I would like to stress also the difference between a player and a plugin when it comes to delivering a seamlessly integrated web presentation.  For most of my academic clientele, it's unacceptable to have to jump out to a non-browser application when the expectation is to have the content neatly presented in a single browser window.  Professors tend to get antsy when there are too many windows floating around on screen.  So still I am looking for the in-browser experience to return.  Thanks to BitManagment I'm still holding on by a thread for now.

 

Believe me, I believe in this community, and I try as best as I can to maintain it's life by building more interactive 3D.  But for me, the life of my content is presentation dependent.  And as I sit and watch my modes of presentation die off, my content feels like it's in the Autumn of its life.

All the Best

-willrourk

 

 

 

On Aug 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, Len wrote:



Hi Will:

 

By putting it where the community can help you debug it for a new platform.  I don’t know about the status of Mac browsers, but FreeWRL keeps getting better.

 

Living content changes, Will.   As artists of such, we have to rehost when necessary.    I’ve always found when I had to do that, the open list members are very willing to help on debug.    The tools are there.   I’d say pick one browser that is stable in the market.  Contact is good but it isn’t free.    Flux/Vivaty, Octaga, FreeWRL and the others vary in their profile handling, but if you pick a profile, they work.

 

The life of the community is the life of the content.

 

len

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-www-vrml@web3d.org [mailto:owner-www-vrml@web3d.org] On Behalf Of willRourk
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 2:36 PM
To: Web3D Mailing List
Subject: [www-vrml] AnnualPluginCheckup

 

Hi all-

Now that Web3D 2008 has come and gone, just thought I'd check in with the big list to see what people are using out there to view and interact with VRML/X3D.  On my end, I've been fielding a lot of complaints from many of my long time academic clients who can no longer view their VRML in a web browser on any platform.  With the release of Mac Intel machines, Cortona no longer works for Mac.  With the release of Firefox 3, Cortona does not work on Windows.  Fortunately, the Bit Management Contact plugin will do the job for some of our faculty who teach using VRML on Windows.  True, Octaga does a nice job as a standalone player for either platform, but most of my clients would like to preserve a seamless web enabled presentation provided by a VRML plugin and not have to jump out to an application.  Most of the other plugins and players out there today cannot run the kind of media intensive VRML that I have built for my clients.   And I'm talking about content that once ran beautifully on the 2 big platforms with Cortona - and Cosmo for that matter.

 

Can anybody out there send me an encouraging word that our beloved web3D technologies are not going to die off and that all the content I've been producing for the past 12 years is not going to disappear into a heap of text?  Is there an alternative to VRML or X3D as the reigning Web3D technology?  I would find it hard to believe that these two could be replaced by anything that's as easy to work with, has as great a set of features that have been meticulously fine tuned by a talented open source community and functions democratically across all of our web browsers.  Call me old school, but I like to stick with a technology that I believe to be downright useful.  Hell I still fine tune my VRML in CosmoWorlds occasionally just for kicks. 

 

How does a non-progamming, content builder ensure that his VRML remains useful these days?

Thanx for any assistance.

-WillRourk

 

           willrourk

    digital media lab

 university of virginia

   will@virginia.edu

      434-243-6300

 

 

 

           willrourk

    digital media lab

 university of virginia

   will@virginia.edu

      434-243-6300