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What is Universal Media?

"Universal Media increases the realism of online Web3D worlds (VRML, Java 3D, and other online 3D technologies) and decreases network downloads by defining a small, cross-platform library of locally resident media elements (textures, sounds and 3D objects) and a uniform resource name (URN) mechanism by which Web3D content creators can incorporate these media elements into their worlds. Universal Media allows content authors to create media-rich worlds that can be instantly loaded over even the slowest dial-up modem Internet connections. Content created using Universal Media loads, on average, 20 to 50 times faster then it would otherwise."

OK then, Universal Media is a good thing! blaxxun Contact specifically supports the concept. Microsoft Internet Explorer understands the URN concept. Netscape does not yet understand what a URN is and therefore kicks up an error. This fact causes Netscape users to think that Universal Media does not work. Is there a workaround? You betcha!

The VRML author must simply (?) wrap the URN in a URL to keep Netscape from choking and spitting up an error. Thusly...

http://www.web3dmedia.com/urn:web3d:media:/textures/nature/grass_1.jpg

Flux Studio does not yet support this "patch" so if you use it to make items that have Universal Media textures, you should export the VRML as ASCII text and hand edit the file to add the URL part.

Do you want to read the longer explanation by members of the UM Working Group of why and how this modification is needed?

UM comes to Cybertown!

Universal Media Textures 1.0 files are now copied to & online at
http://www.cybertown.com/UniversalMedia/

This means you could use
for the UM example below

texture ImageTexture {
url [
"urn:web3d:media:textures/nature/grass_1.jpg",
"http://www.web3d.org/WorkingGroups/media/textures/nature/grass_1.jpg"
]
}

directly the cybertown mirror :

texture ImageTexture {
url [http://www.cybertown.com/UniversalMedia/textures/nature/grass_1.jpg]
}

and/or if you want to use the UM download mechanism
texture ImageTexture {
url [
"urn:web3d:media:textures/nature/grass_1.jpg",
"http://www.web3d.org/WorkingGroups/media/textures/nature/grass_1.jpg"
"http://www.cybertown.com/UniversalMedia/textures/nature/grass_1.jpg"
]
}

A Universal Media Example file. 3 of the textures are URN in a URL style. I am having trouble getting the suggestion from the 1st part of this document to work with the examples in the 2nd part of this document. Testing of this continues.

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