> Every time VRML practitioners approach the problem of how to represent space on the screen, they have no focused reason to make any particular trade-off of detail versus rendering speed, or making objects versus making spaces, because VRML isn't for anything except itself. Many times, having a particular, near-term need to solve brings a project's virtues into sharp focus, and gives it enough clarity to live on its own.
>Quake does something well instead of many things poorly...The VRML community has failed to come up with anything this compelling -- not despite the community's best intentions, but because of them.
I can definitely see parallels between the situation today, where depsite failed attempts at a rebrand of virtual worlds as the "metaverse", the closest to a success in establishing virtual worlds is kids playing in Minecraft and Fortnite.
I once asked Mark Pesche: What about time? What about scripting? "We'll add those later." But you need both from the start. "VR" is not a 3D still life painting.
One of the most common annoying question lots of people asked Mark at the time was "How does VRML relate to XML?" to which the annoying answer was "it doesn't".
All that relentless XML badgering from XML drones eventually drove Mark to the point of publishing a vitriolic anti-XML diatribe in high dudgeon, based on the premise that Microsoft was going in whole hog on XML, therefore XML was Evil, because Microsoft is Evil, so you shouldn't use XML, because Microsoft ruined XML, and you should use VRML, because VRML doesn't use XML, which is the great thing about VRML.
Might as well combine the anti-Microsoft fervor with the anti-XML backlash of the times to promote VRML.
XML certainly is evil, but not because of Microsoft supporting it!
This annoying misconception about VRML using XML may be why they eventually retronymed VRML from "Virtual Reality Markup Language" to "Virtual Reality Modeling Language" at one point. (YAML went through the same "oops" realization).
He also wrote another epic diatribe dramatically comparing himself and the VRML inner cabal to the true elder gods of old mythology, who after creating the universe and starting it going, were finally going to step aside and let the new kingdom of mankind and their lesser imaginary gods take over their own fate and bla bla bla...
I haven't been able to dig up any archives of whatever mailing list I read that stuff on, but if anybody has some of the old school vrml mailing list archives sitting around, I'd love to have a link or a copy -- it was terrific entertainment!
Ya, Pesce was insufferable. After berating a poor woman for "stealing" the generic title of his own unannounced, unpublished VRML book, I helpfully suggested alternate titles. From memory:
> Every time VRML practitioners approach the problem of how to represent space on the screen, they have no focused reason to make any particular trade-off of detail versus rendering speed, or making objects versus making spaces, because VRML isn't for anything except itself. Many times, having a particular, near-term need to solve brings a project's virtues into sharp focus, and gives it enough clarity to live on its own.
>
> Clay Shirky