Apple Quicktime VR files are movie files which are either generated about an object or looking from a node. These files take a great deal of processing time in advance, since a number of individual images must be recorded and then stitched together into a movie. Software animation programs such as Strata's Studio Pro can create the necessary images to produce Quicktime VR files. A number of nodes can be attached to each other to create a virtual, self-guided walkthrough. The user controls what is viewed by moving the mouse.

3D Meta Files are a part of Apple's Quickdraw 3D technology. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast from what I can tell, but it's a neat way of providing objects to look at. Apple made a bid to have the VRML 2.0 standard incorporate some of Quickdraw 3D, but I think that lost out to SGI's bid for the VRML 2.0 standard. (I haven't read up on this lately, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Apple does have a Netscape plug-in for these files, but it seems to have some problems with the new Quickdraw 3D version 1.5.

Macromedia's Shockwave deserves to be mentioned as another cool way of adding animations to your web pages. There has been a recent security alert regarding it which keeps me from demoing it, but the problem is supposed to be fixed in their next release. The plug-in lets you view Director and Authorware files in a web page, providing animation and interactive sites. When it's fixed, check it out.

Comparing animation to VRML is a little like comparing a book to a movie. Animation files have a fixed series of images giving you the illusion that you are moving through a three-dimensional space. VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) is a way of creating 3d models that live in the web. They are the three-dimensional equivalent of HTML files in that they can include links to other sites and can include other VRML files from other locations in their worlds. Check out the Yahoo Index for VRML to find more information about it. I'm using Netscape's Live3D to view the files on my machine.