How to view VRML

What is VRML?

VRML stands for Virtual Reality Modelling Language. A VRML file consists of a series of drawing instructions in 3 dimensions which can be rendered using a VRML browser. Commonly these are set up to be called from within a WWW browser (eg. Netscape), although VRML files can be downloaded individually and viewed using the VRML browser alone.

How do I view VRML?

A vast amount of information regarding VRML can be found at the VRML Repository. This covers the VRML specifications and contains links to VRML browsers which can be downloaded for many different platforms.

For Digital UNIX and IRIX 5.3 (Silicon Graphics) I recommend the browser VRweb, developed at the University of Graz, Austria. An alternative for IRIX is WebSpace, produced by SGI.

To set up a VRML browser as a helper application to your web browser, you will need to define the MIME type:

x-world/x-vrml

This can most conveniently be done from within your web browser. Alternatively edit your '.mime.types' file and add the line:

type=x-world/x-vrml             exts=wrl,vrml,wrl.gz,vrml.gz

Then edit your '.mailcap' file and add the line (eg. for VRweb):

x-world/x-vrml;vrweb -URL '%u' -remote %s