IBM Researchers responsible for a new kind of geometric compression technology, aimed at squeezing down the size of VRML files, said this week that they hope the technology is adopted into the most recent Virtual Reality Modeling Language VRML 2 by the end of this year. The technology, designed to relieve bandwidth constraints which have been holding back the market growth of 3D interactive virtual internet worlds, is just one part of a wider binary compression scheme between IBM, Apple Computer Inc and VR developer Paragraph International. For the past year or so the companies have been working under IBM’s lead to combine a binary format that would work with IBM’s geometric compression technology to achieve compact rapidly parsable VRML files.At the moment the technology is still at proposal level. said Gabriel Taubin, manager of the Visual and Geometric Computing group at the IBM research center in New York But we have been working with the VRML Consortium to make the technology an extension to the current standard.The main advantage of the technology is that it allows you to transmit more data in the same time frame so you can begin to play with much larger models. People will be able to play with much more compelling content, he said. Where IBM has provided the reference implementation of the compression/decompression algorithms used in the scheme. Apple has contributed secondary filed compression technology and Paragraph has developed the reference implementation of the ASC11/binary parser. Taubin also said the technology could be useful for MPEG 4 compression.
