That’s what the 1995 Metaverse looked like, and no, VRML didn’t work 26 years ago

Although it seems like a new term, the reality of the metaverse dates back to 1990, when companies, engineers and entrepreneurs managed to transfer a futuristic idea to the real world.

In the early 1990s, futurists and companies joined forces to create VRML, a virtual reality modeling language that promised to bring 3D graphics and virtual worlds to the web, heralding the dawn of the metaverse. Here’s what it was and why it didn’t work.

In an age when real-time 3D graphics were out of reach for the average citizen, 3D interfaces seemed the next step in the evolution of computers, and perhaps of humanity itself.

The main driver of the 3D craze at the time was virtual reality (VR), which promised bodily immersion in simulated 3D worlds.

Amid flowery, philosophical, and almost mystical language about what it meant to be a human in cyberspace in the early 1990s, engineers and journalists posited that VR would offer new ways to visualize complex data or create a more intuitive interface to interact with computers.

In 1992Neil Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. It crystallized ideas about alternative realities in global computer networks that came from various sources, such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), another influential cyberpunk novel.

In this atmosphere of rumors about VR In late 1993, computer engineers Mark Pesce and Anthony Parisi created the rudiments of a 3D web browser called Labyrinth. In May 1994, Pesce, Parisi, and Peter Kennard gave a presentation on Labyrinth at the first World Wide Web conference held in Geneva.

Shortly thereafter, another engineer named Dave Raggett presented a paper proposing Expanding the WWW to support platform-independent virtual reality. In that presentation, Raggett coined the term VRML (por Virtual Reality Modeling Language).

In your opinion, this new 3D navigation technology was the VR equivalent of HTML, which was the main markup language used to create pages on the World Wide Web at the time. As these concepts took hold, Pesce and Parisi created the first VRML browser in November of that year.

But what happened to VRML? As you may already assume, the VRML did not succeed. Although VRML 2.0 became an international standard with ISO in 1996, the final version of VRML, known as VRML97, was standardized in 1997.

Around this time, interest in VRML began to wane as it became apparent that online 3D worlds were not as practical or useful as the futurists had promised.

In 1996, CNET wrote about VRML’s failure to meet expectations, saying: “Bandwidth restrictions, hardware limitations, and worst of all, a lack of compelling applications can make 3D technology more virtual than real for the moment.“.

CNET nailed it. Computers were too slow to run complex VRML worlds at the time, and dial-up bandwidth was limited, which made loading times painful.

Major browsers never integrated VRML support, and users had to rely on third-party plugins or specialized chat clients to use it.

Not to mention that basically no one was viewing VRML files with real VR equipment: VR headsets were very expensive and low resolution at the time.

In this way the first attempt to create a metaverse crashed as soon as it took off. Now the situation has changed drastically, we have powerful computers at home, VR has dropped in price considerably and the current bandwidth allows unimaginable things. Will it succeed?