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Internet Explorer 2, in 1995, had support for VRML. A full 20 years before the Oculus Rift officially launched. I had never heard of that markup language and ha

Internet Explorer 2, in 1995, had support for VRML. A full 20 years before the Oculus Rift officially launched. I had never heard of that markup language and had to Google it. Talk about being ahead of its time...

shrikant 7y ago
IIRC around that time, there was VRML porn that could only be viewed with Netscape Navigator, and IE often struggled with this. Source: A friend of a friend, of course...
jgrahamc 7y ago
Yep. Around that time (1996 I think) I built a prototype UI for doing exploration of a network and its connectivity in VRML.
wink 7y ago
Maybe my filter bubble, but VRML was kind of talked about in the late 90s (when we got on the internet) but the implementation, features, and general application state was more of a running joke. Also that's probably why it faded so relatively quickly, nobody used it.
- stiGGG 7y ago
  I remember the most famous techno club from my nearest city used that to provide a virtual room tour on their website. I was too young then to get past the bouncers and liked that feature :)
  - wink 7y ago
    That's really cool. I honestly don't remember seeing anything besides Hello World examples and they didn't really impress me :|
52-6F-62 7y ago
Oh I remember playing around with some of the 3D chats that came out using that in the late 90s. I was amazed. (A little post-IE2, mind)
bitwize 7y ago
The VR hypetrain left the station in the early-mid 90s. There were movies and TV shows about it. VR was going to be the revolution that changed everything -- William Gibson's cyberspace in your living room. But it was all experimental -- big clunky headgear and CPUs and GPUs that were too weak to produce any but a clunky, janky, laggy, polygon-y experience. And most people couldn't afford the fancy gear; for the most part VRML happened on people's monitors. The recent VR hype happened because with modern PC hardware, the tech finally caught up to sustain an immersive, low-latency experience -- and some very smart dudes had the ambition to make 90s retrofuturism real.

shrikant 7y ago

IIRC around that time, there was VRML porn that could only be viewed with Netscape Navigator, and IE often struggled with this. Source: A friend of a friend, of course...

jgrahamc 7y ago

Yep. Around that time (1996 I think) I built a prototype UI for doing exploration of a network and its connectivity in VRML.

wink 7y ago

Maybe my filter bubble, but VRML was kind of talked about in the late 90s (when we got on the internet) but the implementation, features, and general application state was more of a running joke. Also that's probably why it faded so relatively quickly, nobody used it.

stiGGG 7y ago
I remember the most famous techno club from my nearest city used that to provide a virtual room tour on their website. I was too young then to get past the bouncers and liked that feature :)
- wink 7y ago
  That's really cool. I honestly don't remember seeing anything besides Hello World examples and they didn't really impress me :|

52-6F-62 7y ago

Oh I remember playing around with some of the 3D chats that came out using that in the late 90s. I was amazed. (A little post-IE2, mind)

bitwize 7y ago

The VR hypetrain left the station in the early-mid 90s. There were movies and TV shows about it. VR was going to be the revolution that changed everything -- William Gibson's cyberspace in your living room. But it was all experimental -- big clunky headgear and CPUs and GPUs that were too weak to produce any but a clunky, janky, laggy, polygon-y experience. And most people couldn't afford the fancy gear; for the most part VRML happened on people's monitors. The recent VR hype happened because with modern PC hardware, the tech finally caught up to sustain an immersive, low-latency experience -- and some very smart dudes had the ambition to make 90s retrofuturism real.