user tips

VRML or X3D is an open standard for interactive Web3D graphics developed specifically to enable building of Virtual Worlds on the Internet and since the beginning it has approved its strenghts in that regard many times. Large number of 3D chat worlds based entirely on VRML is probably the main reason that this technology is still alive and, what is most important, its popularity growing more than ever. Puting aside numerous successful projects it has enabled there are also few more things worth to mention about VRML. It is extensible, ie. it is able to adopt new standards introduced in 3D industry as they arrive, for example, Contact player from Bitmanagement has all features you can find in latest 3D game engines, multitexturing, dinamic shaders etc. Another crucial thing is its ease of use when it comes to the end user. All what you need to do in order to be able to explore Virtual Worlds is to download your free copy of VRML browser, link on the right, I suggest Bitmanagement Contact because worlds and games on this site are built and tested in that one. It is a tiny selfextracting .exe file, after download is finished open it, click the next button few times and you are done...and ready for cyberspace. Contact will install itself as a helper application for your Web browser so you can visit Virtual Worlds using IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari etc.

If you have a decent connection you can spare yourself of manual installation and install it on demand, just by visiting Web page where it is enabled. If you want to visit Piazza del Duomo and to install Contact at the same time, click here. It is about 4.5MB all together, so be patient few moments, ie. be patient until you see the famous Milano square on your screen then you are free to go around and explore. For movement you can use mouse, hold left button and move the mouse, or arrow keys at your keyboard. There are few types of movement available, by default it is Walk, you can also Fly or Slide if you want to move in a plane, there are also Pan and Examine to rotate yourself or the scene. Choose different movements using right click at 3D window and choose the type you need from the Context Meny, there you can find a lot of other settings too.

Sometimes it is necessary to have two or more VRML plug-ins installed, some worlds are built specifically for Contact or Cortona for example. On Windows it is not a problem, it stores application data in its system registry and which VRML browser IE will use at the moment is determined by the folowing registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\model/vrml
After you have installed Contact open regedit.exe, go to the key above and choose File/Export and you'll get a text file containing exactly this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\model/vrml] "CLSID"="{4B6E3013-6E45-11D0-9309-0020AFE05CC8}" "Extension"=".wrl"

Save the file as contact.reg, after that you can install Cortona and repeat this procedure and you'll get similar file, only "CLSID" will be different and you can save it as cortona.reg. Last installed plug-in is the default one, ie. that is the one IE will use to open .wrl files, now you can switch the default by executing particular .reg file, just confirm that you want to change registry entry and IE will use that plug-in. This procedure can be used for other plug-ins also, note that Contact, Octaga and Flux can work as stand alone applications, you don't need web browser for those. Also important, Blaxxun's and Bitmanagement's Contact have the same "CLSID" so you can have only one Contact installed. By the way, this "CLSID" is the one you would use to embed VRML world in a web page using object tag but that is a different story, accesssing ActiveX control from web page