Test Your Browser

The tests on this page are not intended to be critical tests that push the limits of VRML browsers. Every known browser that supports VRML 1.0 will render the first image, and every known VRML 2.0 browser will render something on the second image. My intention is to give you a baseline of worlds that are known to work, so you can check your basic browser installation.

Let's see if your browser renders VRML 1.0. Click on the image below and see if you get text, garbage, an error message, or something that looks sort of like the image. Note: if you don't have a VRML plugin, Netscape Navigator will ask you if you want to install one. I recommend that you don't let Netscape install one for you this way, unless you're particularly brave or knowledgeable. Instead, go back to the "Get Browser" page, select a browser, and install it the regular way.

If it looked something like that image (the colors may be lighter or darker) then you've got a browser that can view VRML 1.0.

If your browser crashed when you tried to view the world or when you tried to return to this page, go to the "Fix Problems" page. Hopefully, your problem will be covered there.

Now let's see if you have a browser that supports VRML 2.0. Click on this image:

If you can't see the blue sky and green grass, your browser doesn't support Background nodes. That generally isn't too bad; lots of nodes are much more important, though you might want to think about upgrading later. If you see the sphere, you've got a browser that supports VRML 2.0.

If you've got a browser that will render VRML 1.0 and 2.0 without crashing, you probably won't miss much if you skip the rest of the "Viewing" section, unless you want to be brave and install multiple browser plugins.

Stess-testing your browser

The VRML standards are very specific about the things a browser has to do to be conformant. At the present state of the art, most browsers have most of the functionality they need. If you want to see how close your browser comes to the ideal, you can visit some of these sites:

• Jeff Close's VRML/Java test suite.
• Eric Haines's Pellucid - see how close your browser comes to the standard color & lighting model
• Chris Marrin's EAI examples. It's sometimes hard to tell if the External Authoring Interface (EAI) is working because not everyone writes reliable EAI code. In my experience, if the EAI is working on you machine, all of Chris's examples should work.
• Mitra's VRML 2.0 Test Suite
• NIST's VRML Test Suite -- the definitive tests for VRML browsers
• NIST's VRML Testing Resources
• Greg Roelofs' article on PNG support in VRML browsers

Did I leave something out? Let me know.