Installation Hints

The necessary installation steps for UNIX and Windows.

How to use VRweb for UNIX/X11

Download the help archive help.tar.gz (for VRweb 1.1.2) and unpack it with the command

  gzip -cd help.tar.gz | tar xvf - This will create a subdirectory help. View the file install.html therein with your favourite webbrowser - it describes all necessary steps for installating VRweb.

The UNIX binaries are compressed with gzip. Run gunzip on the appropriate version of vrweb and you have an executable.

The source code distribution is a gzipped tar-archive. You can uncompress and untar it in one step with the command

  gzip -cd vrweb.src.tar.gz | tar xvf - All further necessary steps for source code compilation are explained in file INSTALLATION contained in the archive.

With your Web viewer you will need an entry for VRML files in your ~/.mailcap:

Netscape:

x-world/x-vrml; vrweb -URL '%u' -remote %s

Mosaic:

x-world/x-vrml; vrweb -mosaic -remote %s

In both cases make sure to place the full name of the binary instead of "vrweb" (e.g. vrweb-ogl on SGI, vrweb-mesa on other platforms, if you renamed the binary to that shorter name).

VRweb will run gunzip on compressed files automatically if necessary (this is often done by your Web browser). If you wish to open a new VRweb window for each new scene, omit "-remote" in the command line.

To view worlds saved onto disk (also when gzipped) provide the filename as argument to vrweb.

With Harmony (the Hyper-G UNIX/X11 client) use the appropriate version of harscened.

Call any program with argument -h to get a short explanation of possible arguments.

How to use VRweb for Windows

To install VRweb for Windows create a directory and unzip the archive with

unzip vrw_nt 

or

unzip vrw_win

Then you can create an icon in the Program Manager. In a later version we will supply an install program.

To install VRweb with Mosaic 2.00:

Get a VRML scene from your prefered sever. Mosaic asks you whether to save the file to disk or to configure a viewer. Select to configure a viewer and another dialog appears. Press the browse button and select VRweb at the location you did put it to. Press OK and Mosaic is configured for use with VRweb.

Configuration with Netscape is analogous.

To install Vrweb with Amadeus 1.00:

edit the following files:

AMADEUS.INI:

[Scene]
sdf=scene.exe $arg0
wrl=scene.exe $arg0

add this line in the scene section

MAGIC:
# Scene viewer VRML
0       string          #VRML                   wrl

add these lines at the end of the file.

NT Specials:

Due to the NT Bug # 15544 the system can be shut down with a system error using VRweb for NT. You can use VRweb, if you either install glsrv.dll into your Windows NT system32 directory or contact Microsoft Product Support Services and reference the bug.

Windows'95 Specials:

If you do not have already installed OpenGL for Windows'95 download and unzip the archive ogl95.zip containing the necessary libraries.

Win32s Specials:

If you have not installed Win32s and WinG yet please install it before running VRweb: Get the Zip archieves win32s.zip and wing10.zip. Unzip them and run Setup for each of them.

Last updated: Gerbert Orasche and Michael Pichler, February 7 1996.