SAN MATEO (12-07-95) - Hoping to add an extra dimension to the World Wide Web, vendors are pushing development tools for creating a new generation of three-dimensional Home pages.
Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) last week announced plans to deliver Cosmo, a suite of multimedia and 3-D authoring tools, by the middle of next year.
In the meantime, ParaGraph International Inc. this week will ship a 3- D authoring tool for Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT called Virtual Home Space Builder.
Although tools for creating online 3-D environments are emerging, the technology is well ahead of demand, analysts said.
"It's a technology in search of applications," said David Ludlum, an analyst at IDC Link, in New York. "I see it as more relevant to consumers. [But] the main constraint now is bandwidth rather than the 3-D technologies themselves."
SGI's Cosmo will include a visual authoring tool, Cosmo Create, that allows designers to create 3-D environments based on Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), a 3-D standard that includes specifications for delivering compressed files over networks.
Cosmo will also allow developers to enhance 3-D applications using Java, which SGI licensed from Sun Microsystems Inc. last week. The company will package 3-D Java libraries, run-time engine, and a debugger with the suite.
Cosmo will also come packaged with SGI's Irix operating system and a Windows viewer that can function as either a stand-alone browser or as a plug-in to existing Web browsers.
To manage three-dimensional and other multimedia files, Silicon Graphics will offer Cosmo MediaBase, an Irix multimedia database that acts as a Hypertext Transfer Protocol server for delivering 3-D over the Internet.
Pricing for Cosmo hasn't been set.
For Windows users, Virtual Home Space Builder offers similar visual 3- D authoring capabilities. This product, which can output files as VRML or in ParaGraph's own proprietary format, comes with textures, including tiled and animated textures with transparent colors. The library also comes with image, video, and sound libraries, including WAV, MIDI, and RealAudio file formats. All media types can be combined into one 3-D environment.
The product also comes with sample 3-D environments. Uniform Resource Locators can be embedded in any screen object, letting users hyperlink to other VRML or Hypertext Markup Language pages.
Virtual Home Space Builder is priced at US$495. A more limited version of the product sells for $49.95. A beta version can be downloaded from the company's Home page.
Silicon Graphics, in Mountain View, Calif., can be reached at (800) 800-7441 or on the Web at http://www.sgi.com.
ParaGraph International, in Campbell, Calif., can be reached at (800) 810-0055 or on the World Wide Web at http://www.paragraph.com.
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