Acknowledgements

First, I want to acknowledge and dedicate this book to my mother and father. Mom is the most emotionally intelligent person I know, and Dad is the most "Engineer's Engineer" that I know. A friend of theirs once said that I was the combination of the best of them. I've never been prouder than to hear that. This book is dedicated to all those who have started with me on my journey. A long time ago, on a computer system far, far away (CompuServe), there was a forum called Cyberforum. A meeting place for information, files, pictures, and discussions. We were inventing Cyber Space. All of that is gone now. We were there, we were the pioneers, but time went on and VR essentially collapsed, except for a few small islands. It's never really been gone, but it's been in the sunset. CompuServe also disappeared. Long live the Web. Now, VR is taking off again. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my friends. Paul and Mary Summit, for being the first to write about this brave new 3D world. Jerry Isdale, who's seminal paper on "What is VR" really broke it down for all of us. Jerry, this book wouldn't exist without you, thank you for all of your help. Phillpe Van Nedervelde, for getting CompuServe's attention on our little forum, and getting the rendering software that would allow me to make VR worlds based on CompuServe's protocols. To Karen Weatherbee, or WeeBee, for providing an artistic viewpoint; Mike "Mstripe", for knowing high performance code and getting me into Game Dev; Doug Faxon, Bernie Roehl for building some of the first public PC VR that didn't take a quarter of a million dollars, and showing people that you could walk around in alternate universes. And all of the others whose names I have forgotten. I'd also like to acknowledge the early VRML pioneers, Mark Pesce, Tony Parisi, Gavin Bell, and others; Len Bullard, Cindy Ballreich, Justin Couch, Don Brutzman, and everyone else on the old VRML list and the new X3D list. Also, thank you to the people at Facebook who are once again making Cyberspace real. Finally, to my brother Jim and his wife Margaret, who have always been there—even though, for the first few years on the planet, Jim was a bit of a pest. Sorry, I missed Thanksgiving this year, Margaret!