@thegibson @requiem VRML doesn't further the interests of those who are currently in the business of doing VR.
VRML's potential is to empower people to create new applications. VR is mostly being furthered by an advertising company (Faceboo...I mean Meta) and gaming/entertainment companies. Their aim is to get people to consume their offerings rather than be creative.
@requiem @rysiek Lots of people (cough furries) are having a blast with VR Chat, it seems. People are paying decent amounts of money for, e.g., realistic avatars, for example.
Look up all the different worlds that Coopertom created. I mean, they're all just pointless fun; but, there are people making "stuff" out there. I remember when this became a thing: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/11/9/21557029/four-seasons-total-landscaping-furries-vrchat-trump
Basically, I would envision the best environment for 3D software development would be a MUD-like application. Maybe it's time to bring MUF out of mothballs.
As for BASIC -- why not? Modern incarnations of it are quite powerful and decently expressive. Python or Lua would be good too.
@requiem @rysiek I don't think it is that big of a leap. MUDs are basically analogous to HyperCard. You create a virtual world from within the world, then attach event-driven scripts to in-world objects to add specific behaviors as they're needed. (MUF stands for Multi-User Forth, by the way.)
I think you've made the age-old mistake that literally everyone makes when discussing BASIC. You're confusing Microsoft BASIC as found in AppleSoft or Commodore BASIC for a modern dialect of the language, which today is object-oriented, devoid of line numbers, and even capable of supporting structured data types.
Visual Basic is a good analogy here; about the only thing it shares with its Commodore BASIC great-great-grandfather is the LET and DIM keywords. For everything else, it fits the bill perfectly: it's event-driven, it's capable of interfacing with modules written in other languages, it's object-oriented, and it's compiled (the latest dialect compiles to the CLR and is seamless with other CLR-based languages).
@requiem the computers we used to use at the time came with BASIC included and VR shouldn't be any different. It needs to have creation tools and user hosted spaces available without mandatory remote service accounts or it'll remain a company's walled garden rather than an environment that supports the user.
In these past 30 years there's been some commercial attempts like Active Worlds, Second Life, and recently High Fidelity and NeosVR that freely exposed the creation tools and offer some manner of simple scripting language to the user. Those were a compromise between user and corporate control but they did show what happens when you give power to the users both inside and outside the 3D environments.
The hardware is finally becoming a commodity and we have the opportunity to make the dream happen. And with companies like Microsoft and Facebook at the lead it's no longer just an opportunity - we have to offer an alternative or the same old scenario will play itself all over again.
@feonixrift @requiem @vertigo @rysiek
would something like blocky (snap/byob/scratch) in a-frame do it ? https://github.com/mrfrase3/a-blocks
I think @utopiah did some experiments to do the block combination in the vr view (but can't find it now)
@requiem Thanks for the perspective. I agree with you , I don't see VR as a viable commercial entity yet. VR to me is more fun and learning than anything. I just want to see the VR chat worlds come back lol.
@Olm_e @feonixrift @requiem @vertigo @rysiek related thread https://mobile.twitter.com/utopiah/status/1402524001621135360 and initially motivation https://mobile.twitter.com/slsoftworks/status/941403037880520705 but no usable code, just explorations.
@utopiah @Olm_e @feonixrift @requiem @rysiek Looks like they're modelling the environment after Scratch?
This makes me wonder how well AmigaVision could be adapted to function in a 3D environment.
@vertigo @Olm_e @feonixrift @requiem @rysiek actually Scratch itself relies on https://developers.google.com/blockly/ so if your main focus is providing visual better affordances for a known grammar and set of primitives and if you don't mind using a Google library you could rely on it. It's been in use for quite a while. I personally re-implemented because I was curious about starting from first principles and didn't want to limit myself to a 2D screen. In terms of pedagogy Scratch is great but here too I find going back to research from Seymour Papert or Mitchel Resnick to be more interesting to consider in order to port to another context.
@utopiah
I really prefer snap! and for iot snap4arduino that are reimplementation of scratch in an html app with added functions (they say for real CS work) where you can create your own bloc (hence former "build your own block name") and both GNU and can work offline ... I don't know about the way to integrate it in VR but it's for me way better than relying on ggl stuff ;p (I'm teaching some child with it)
https://snap.berkeley.edu/about
http://snap4arduino.rocks/
@vertigo @feonixrift @requiem @rysiek
@polychrome @requiem @msh @thegibson
I'm working on a fediverse-based alternative for interconnected virtual worlds to break out of the walled garden model https://web.immers.space
Immers Space is also a platform cooperative that shares governance power with users & creators
@datatitian @polychrome @requiem @msh @thegibson
Wow , this reminds me so much of VR in the 90's , you guys remember VRML worlds ?
@Nixfreak @datatitian @polychrome @requiem @msh
I remember thinking VRML would be the future. :)
@thegibson @datatitian @polychrome @requiem @msh
LOL yeah same here , I thought "This is the future". Now you can do the same thing using #X3D
@Nixfreak VRML is the ancestor of X3D and still a subset of it IIRC so of course you can 
@msh @thegibson @datatitian @polychrome @requiem
Mark I was saying that you can do the same thing with #X3D now since #VRML is outdated.
@Nixfreak yeah I caught on I'm just slow lol...but it makes me think why does VR have to be super fancy anyways? There may be use cases where staying within the VRML-compatible bits is sufficient and simpler to work in.
The standard alone won't save us; we have to make accessible ways to use the standard. undoubtedly the corporate-meta players will leverage these standards anyways but in such a way to make them less acceptable to metaverse participants...such efforts have been made with standards from RSS to SMTP to XMPP after all...
@Nixfreak (hmm maybe I ruined the subtle joke about VRML being the past if that is the case sorry I sometimes ruin jokes lol)
@requiem people get headaches and nausea and maybe even seizures because of low frame rate and lag and the first instinct is to make the hardware more powerful and expensive instead of dialling back on resolution and textures and crap
@msh @thegibson @datatitian @polychrome @requiem
Good point on rss and xmpp. Yeah your right there doesn't have to be a standard 'per-se' I mean I had a ton of fun with VRML back in the day. Most people don't or can't afford $1K video card anyway. I'm just saying trying to program all the coords for a scene is a nightmare and using something like #blender would be much, much easier to export out a X3D scene.
@Nixfreak @msh @thegibson @polychrome @requiem
Hubs has a pretty good visual VR world builder at https://hubs.mozilla.com/spoke
Upsides: supports lots of different assets and media, published scenes run on dekstop/mobile/VR, includes multiplayer with voice
Downsides: no visual logic programming, requires a complicated cloud infrastructure stack to deploy your own if you want to move off the main Mozilla site
@datatitian does your fork of Hubs deals with the need for complicated server infrastructure stack if you want to deploy your own instance? @Nixfreak @msh @TheGibson @requiem
@requiem Well, if you feel like it maybe it's time for a CrowdSupply campaign like https://www.crowdsupply.com/slimevr/slimevr-full-body-tracker but for a #HMD.