Special Report
VRML '97 Symposium
By Sue Wilcox
The night before the VRML '97 Symposium started, a group of VRML developers sat in the hotel bar, in deep discussion about how many avatars can fit into a space and whether using auras helps cope with crowds. The fact that designers have to worry about overcrowding in virtual worlds shows just how far VRML has come since 1995, when a few VRML founders got together in San Diego for the first VRML Symposium.
This year's event represented VRML's attempt to be taken seriously as a 3D geometry-description language. Sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH and Sigcomm, the conference focused on VRML research, technology, and applications. About 500 attendees packed the Hyatt Regency conference center in Monterey to hear a profusion of scientific papers, witness demos of new VRML-related products, and assess corporate faith in VRML.
As at any good conference, interesting events happened simultaneously. Fortunately, the organizers set up parallel tracks to accommodate the attendees' three major concerns: debating working-group issues, learning new tips and tricks, and hearing academic papers on development issues.
Day One
The first day of the conference offered a choice of working groups or instructive seminars. The working groups were ubiquitous -- they've been splitting off from the main VRML mailing list and establishing narrowly targeted areas for several months. About sixteen specialized groups now cover subjects ranging from textures, to color fidelity, to multiuser infrastructure.
