To view a VRML world, whether its one of the thousands out on the Web or a world you built yourself, you'll need a VRML browser.
What's a VRML browser? It's a program that reads a VRML file and displays the geometry, lighting, and animation as a 3D world. Most of the time, unless the world builder has turned off navigation, you can examine the objects in the VRML world or walk or fly through the world. A VRML browser may be a stand-alone program (which sometimes your Web browser uses as a helper application) or it may be a plugin for your Web browser. When you read the "Get Browser" page, you'll see what all the different kinds of VRML browsers are.
This section is all about choosing a VRML browser, installing it, and fixing any problems you have with it. You can use the keywords on the nav bar to the left to pick a section to look at or click on the links below.
First off, if you have a Web browser like Netscape Navigator or Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may already have a VRML plugin that was installed with that browser. Click on "Browser Test" and see if you do. If so, you might skip the rest of this section and start viewing some VRML worlds.
If you haven't got a VRML browser yet, you'll probably want to see what browsers are available, decide which one to get (both covered on the "Get Browser" page), install it, and head to the "Browser Test" page to see if you installed it OK.
There are a few brave (or foolish) souls who want to have multiple VRML browser plugins installed at the same time on their machine. The "Multi-Plugin" page talks about how they can minimize some of the pain involved.
The "Fix Problems" page follows immediately after the "Multi-Plugin" page for obvious reasons, although there are a few problems that owners of a single VRML browser can have as well. Hopefully you won't ever have to visit this page.
Did I leave something out about browsers that you need to know to view VRML worlds? Let me know.
-- Bob Crispen