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56% February 1996 / International What's New Software / VR Development Tools For Windows 95 And NT

Summary: VR Development Tools For Windows 95 And NT. RealiMation is a development toolkit for virtual-reality applications that combines a delivery API, a functional world builder, and an editor in a single environment. The package supports simulations, visualizations, and games that can be explored on a PC screen using a freeware 3-D viewer called RealiView. Allowing real-time multichannel network operation, RealiMation runs under Windows 95 and NT on Intel, Digital Equipment Alpha, and PowerPC machines. Price: Under 6000 Pounds UK.

Summary: Virtual Reality for Everyone. Rainer Mauth Most of today's professional animation software forces you to edit frames instead of time sequences. But not Datapath's interactive animation program Realimation Space Time Editor (STE) for Windows 95 and NT. With STE you don't create an animation as a sequence of single frames. Instead, motion is just another property of an object.

Summary: Alternative SCSI Utilities. If your needs are modest, the cost of a download might be all you have to pay for a useful SCSI utility. If your work has you constantly mounting and dismounting removable media such as SyQuest cartridges or MO disks, check out Robert Polic's SCSIProbe 3.5. It's a freeware Control Panel that scans the SCSI bus and displays the peripherals in a window. You can reset the SCSI bus, and a Mount button lets you mount removable media. SCSIProbe can install its own Extension that automatically mounts the media if it's present in a drive at boot time, and it lets you mount drives with a hot-key combination after the Mac is up and running.

Summary: The BYTE Network Project. I enjoyed Jon Udell's article on establishing a World Wide Web site ("Hello, World," July), especially the sidebar titled "Don't Dis the Host." I, too, use and prefer text-based Internet access. Udell called himself a "knuckle-scraping Neanderthal" for preferring text browsers. Thanks for affirming that there are still some fellow Paleolithic types out on the Internet.

Summary: World Processing. You probably don't want to plan on writing the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) in your text editor. Even though VRML's designers wanted to let nonprogrammers create their own virtual spaces quickly and painlessly, it's not quite as simple to describe a 3-D scene as it is to describe a page in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Fortunately, many existing modeling and CAD tools now offer VRML export, and VRML-centered tools are arriving. Animation, texturing, and photo-realistic rendering are among the qualities that distinguish VRML authoring tools from one another.

Summary: The Web Means Business. Companies are increasingly turning to the World Wide Web to spread the word on their products and services. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols A year ago, only a seasoned Internet surfer could tell you that WWW stood for the World Wide Web, an Internet-borne distributed collection of documents that you can navigate via hypertext. Today, the Internet's popularity is booming, and it's being partly driven by the WWW's red-hot popularity. The Internet has a rich assortment of information resources and retrieval tools, such as Archie, gopher, and WAIS (Wide Area Information Service).

Summary: Agents On The Loose. Tom R. Halfhill and Andy Reinhardt Telescript, General Magic's communications-oriented programming language, lets developers write tools that permit casual users who know nothing about programming to create intelligent applications that seek out and retrieve important information. What kinds of applications does Telescript enable? Think how PostScript made it easy for nonprogrammers to enrich documents with new data types--such as graphics, color, fonts, and photos--and then reproduce those documents on a wide variety of output devices without writing--or even seeing--any PostScript code. Telescript hopes to do the same thing for communications.

Summary: The Net's Next Big Thing: Virtual Reality. John Vacca A platform-independent standard for VR (virtual reality) called VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) could make navigating through on-line museums, libraries, and marketplaces on the Internet as common as interacting with textual information is on the WWW (World Wide Web) today. By the time you read this, VRML pioneer Mark Pesce expects to have the first freeware VRML authoring tools and browsers for Windows, Mac, and Motif platforms available on the Internet (http://www. eit. com/vrml/).

Summary: Visual Pascal with a Punch. Borland's Delphi program addresses client/server and general-purpose applications development needs. Tom R. Halfhill Programmers have been waiting since 1991 for Borland International (Scotts Valley, CA, (800) 891-2223) to offer an alternative to Microsoft's Visual Basic, the leading tool for rapid applications development on Windows. The wait is nearly over. Delphi, scheduled for release early this year, unites a VB-like visual-design environment with the industrial strength of Borland's Pascal compiler and database-connectivity engines.

Summary: Vendors Battle Over Next Internet File System. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Browser wars, step aside. The next battle looming in cyberspace is over which file system will provide the underpinnings for better file transfer and group collaboration services on the Internet. Such a file system, whether from Sun or Microsoft or some other vendor, would improve upon the Internet's current HTTP and FTP. Sun's proposed new standard, the Web Network File System (WebNFS), is just what the Web needs, claims Brian Croll, director of marketing for Solaris Servers at Sun.

Summary: Linux Matters. It's inexpensive, but that's only the beginning of the story. Tom Yager You don't always get what you pay for. You can spend $1000 or more for fully tricked-out Unix for your PC. Or for about $25, you can get Linux, a Unix variant, which is just as good for running an in-house BBS, an employee information system, a World Wide Web server, or a Usenet news server.

Summary: Wired on the Web. It's not just for breakfast anymore; with HotJava, you'll get a jolt every time you use your World Wide Web browser. Andrew Singleton You're busily browsing the World Wide Web, clicking on links, avoiding commitment. Suddenly, the page comes to life. Animated figures tumble from the margins.

Summary: How We Tested. The six servers we tested for this Lab Report included three Unix-based systems, two Windows NT-based systems, and one running the Apple OS, powered by RISC, Pentium, and PowerPC processors, respectively. Each vendor installed the Web server communications software that comes with their systems. The combination of hardware, OS, and Web server software was different on each of the systems. The test-bed configuration was the same for all six servers.

Summary: Web Publishing Made Easier. Seeding text files with HTML tags is no fun. We looked at four programs that claim to do the work for you. Rex Baldazo and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Once, text was static, and it sat in rigid arrays between white-spaced prison bars. Then hypertext and hypermedia unlocked the door, and the World Wide Web pushed it wide open.

Summary: Underground Upgrades for Windows 95. Freeware, shareware, and low-cost utilities make Windows 95 what it should have been in the first place. Stanford Diehl Welcome to Windows 95.1. You cannot find it on store shelves or in a Microsoft brochure; it's spread out on BBSes, on-line services, and World Wide Web sites around the world. It comprises small, focused utilities that add key functionality to the Win 95 user interface (UI).

Summary: Pretty Good Privacy. This controversial security scheme for messages is a collection of international cryptographic methods. William Stallings If you rely on E-mail for business or personal communications, beware: If you send messages over a network, they are subject to eavesdropping. And, as Oliver North and John Poindexter found out, if messages are stored in a file, they are subject to perusal months or even years later. You also need to be concerned about impersonation: That message asking leading questions may not be from your attorney at all, but from some hotshot reporter with excellent hacking skills.

Summary: Pentium Secrets. The Pentium collects lots of information about code execution, and now you can get access to it. Terje Mathisen When Intel announced the Pentium processor in March 1993, I immediately ordered the three-volume user's manual. For people like me, who wanted to write the fastest, most efficient code possible, volume 3 appeared to be the most useful. Imagine my chagrin, then, when every interesting section on optimization contained a reference to Appendix H, which consists of a single, illuminating paragraph stating that the information I desired is "considered Intel confidential and proprietary."

Summary: Lessons Learned. Advice distilled from a year of site-building experience and reader feedback. Jon Udell A year ago, the BYTE Site served up its first document. By the time you read this, it will have delivered a million BYTE articles to a half-million visitors--an audience as large as our magazine's. Along the way, I've learned a lot about electronic publishing.

Summary: Search Again. Move beyond the basics to take advantage of query by example, concept searching, and field indexing. Jon Udell In my September 1995 column ("Web Search"), I showed how to add basic indexing and search functions to a Web site (see http://www. byte. com/art/9509/sec9/art1.

Summary: Booting, Benchmarking, and Bob's Your Uncle. Jerry's ongoing exploration of Windows takes him to novel boot-up utilities and more benchmarking of video cards. Jerry Pournelle There's so much to talk about this month that it's hard to choose a lead, but let's start with Bootcon 2.0, because it let us do more testing with less trouble. Bootcon offers you up to 26 different combinations of CONFIG. SYS and AUTOEXEC.