ActiveVRML: A System for Internet Active Content

ActiveVRML Documentation (Draft, March 1996)
These docs introduce the ActiveVRML approach to creating interactive applications, provide a conceptual overview of ActiveVRML, and include a reference manual with descriptions of ActiveVRML keywords, expressions, and types.

ActiveVRML vs. Other VRML 2.0 Proposals (March 1996)
This page includes responses to criticisms of ActiveVRML and to SGI's comparison of the SGI Moving Worlds proposal with ActiveVRML.

The ActiveVRML PDC Alpha Release   
Samples, tutorial, and an alpha version of ActiveVRML for developers who are interested in a preview of the technology. Please note that the alpha software requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, included in the Microsoft ActiveX™ Development Kit, which is available in preliminary form on this site.

The Active Virtual Reality Modeling Language (ActiveVRML) is an advanced markup language and a viewer for 3-D multimedia. It provides a powerful foundation for Internet interactive, animated, and multimedia-based content, targeting domains such as advertising, entertainment, online shopping, and technical illustrations.

Currently, the ActiveVRML viewer plugs into Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3.0 as an OCX and uses DirectX (including Direct3D) on Windows® 95. A preliminary release of the viewer for developers was handed out at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on March 12th. Web pages that use ActiveVRML can include interactive 3-D animation and 2-D cel animation accompanied by synchronized sounds. These effects can also be triggered by events from Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript) and from other languages. In the near future, ActiveVRML will be available on Windows NT™ and the Macintosh® for Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers, and on SGI/Irix for Netscape.

ActiveVRML is an open technology and was submitted by Microsoft as a VRML 2.0 proposal. The development of ActiveVRML was driven primarily by the following two considerations:

• Advanced authoring tools must be able to easily construct rich, complex, and compelling content using ActiveVRML.
• Viewers must be able to display ActiveVRML content efficiently and smoothly on a variety of platforms.

The main features of ActiveVRML are as follows:

1. Provides a comprehensive and platform-neutral modeling language for Internet interactive multimedia content. It is comprehensive in that it provides rich support for 3-D geometry, 2-D images, audio, user input, behaviors, and events.
2. Provides a highly efficient run time, especially on Microsoft Windows, and an OCX viewer that integrates with Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.
3. Complementary to, and works well with, VBScript and other languages, thus allowing for the leveraging of legacy code and expertise in these languages.
4. Ideal target for visual authoring tools -- such tools want to generate high-level models, not low-level programs.
5. Provides a solid foundation for network streaming and multi-user shared spaces.

© 1996 Microsoft Corporation

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