VRML Models

The main part of my work I do in C++ using OpenGL and OpenGL Performer as well as other APIs for non 3D stuff. However, I used VRML models to check out some ideas and concepts. The models are converted from other 3D file formats using converters built on top of OpenGL Performer including my own to read and write VRML2 (geometry only).

VRML2 models provide the following advantages:

• provide all essential features of VR models
• are human readable and can therefore be processed even with text editors
• involve VRML script (similar to Java Script) and can therefore easily enriched with simple interactions
• are system independent (browsers available for nearly every reasonable hardware and operating system).

Samples

Head Up Model
Bag Protect

Compress VRML Files

Due to its human-readability VRML files tend to become very large. This does not fit so well into the Internet concept to keep things simple and small for short download times. There are some tricks to shrink VRML files (commands typed in a shell on Linux or Windows/Cygwin):

1. Remove leading spaces and tabs:
   > cat file.wrl | sed -e 's#^[ \t]*##' > file.1.wrl
   If files are written well structured (indented) this can save a significant amount of bytes (in some cases more than 12 %).
2. Compress the file itself:
   > gzip file.1.wrl ; mv file.1.wrl.gz file.gz.wrl
   As usual for human readable text files, gzip will achieve impressive compression rates (upto 90 %) especially for large files. Most VRML browsers are able to detect compressed files and will uncompress them silently.