Sony vrml filewatcher software#

In the meantime, Intervista, the other VRML company, was having Microsoft problems of its own. The CEO resigned, layoffs occurred, and products and divisions (including Cosmo Software) not related to the core hardware business were being shopped around or cut loose. Microsoft was eating their lunch and their stock was dropping like a stone.

Sony vrml filewatcher software#

First SGI, which owned Cosmo Software (the leading VRML technology provider), was having its own problems unrelated to VRML. Events were conspiring against the cool little technology invented on a mailing list. The Holy Grail was at hand for VRML, and it was all because of advertising and the power of vector graphics.Īlas, time was not on VRML’s side. Since it controlled what software its users had, the incompatibility issue would go away. A large, unnamed-but-you-can-guess-who-it-is online service became very interested in VRML as a way of enhancing the advertising on its site as well as punching up its user interface. And what was needed was a single large content provider to choose one of the VRML players and go with it. Because there was no single source controlling the look, feel, and interpretation of the data file, VRML began to be crushed under the weight of the “open standards” mantle.īut there was light at the end of the tunnel: advertising. Soon a proliferation of non-compatible VRML players were on the market, which meant that even if you saw VRML content on the web, chances were high that it wouldn’t run. It was as if all documents created in Word version 2.1 would be scrambled and incompatible in Word version 2.2. The leading VRML 2.0 browsers, the Cosmo Player from SGI’s Cosmo Software division and WorldView from VRML start-up Intervista, both had bugs which made corrected revisions incompatible with each other. Anyone could create a VRML browser but each browser would interpret the VRML file differently.ĭesigners and authors of VRML content were forced to develop multiple versions of the same work since their applications would look and behave differently, depending on which browser the viewer had on his/her machine. The problem was that although the VRML specification was sacrosanct, the way that spec was interpreted was not.