Viewing VRML files on Ubuntu

[Ari Torhamo]

su, 2011-01-02 kello 16:54 -0500, Ric Moore kirjoitti:

> If you didn't install the executable in someplace in the path
> like /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, then to execute the binary or script in
> it's present directory just use: ./nameofbinary  on the command line.
> It's the ./ that tells the OS it is OK to run the binary from it's
> present location, instead of an official binary directory. Hope that
> helps. Ric

Thanks for replying, Ric. With Octagaplayer the problem doesn't seem to
be Ubuntu not seeing the executable file, but some file missing.

I found a program called Jmol, which is GPL and apparently quite
popular. It written in Java, and works both as a browser applet and a
stand alone application. I had to install Sun/Oracle Java to get it to
work properly, though. I found some high quality content to be viewed
with the program, although so far only for browser embedded view. VRML
files should work too, although I'm not quite sure, which applet Firefox
is using at present to show the VRML files. Viewing with browser is
surprisingly fast, although loading the 3D model takes some
time. ...duh, Jmol just stopped working stand-alone. Terminal gives this
error message:

Exception in thread "main" java.awt.HeadlessException
	at
java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.checkHeadless(GraphicsEnvironment.java:173)
	at java.awt.Window.<init>(Window.java:437)
	at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Frame.java:419)
	at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Frame.java:384)
	at javax.swing.JFrame.<init>(JFrame.java:174)
	at org.openscience.jmol.app.jmolpanel.JmolPanel.startJmol(Unknown
Source)
	at org.openscience.jmol.app.Jmol.main(Unknown Source)

Re-installing Java didn't help. I hope the browser plugin keeps working,
as I'd like to use more time to look at the molecules, than to try to
get viewer software to work... 

-Ari-