I've been thinking lately about those really hot items that have now disappeared and why. Some of them I thought were sure fire winners. What gives an idea staying power?

VRML was supposed to be the next extension of html. Instead of flat pages we were supposed to be able to walk around like Tron through 3D cities of data. You can still get cortina authoring software for $700+ . Fifteen years later most webpages are still 2D. There are some obscure but interesting webpages. The italians have a virtual michaelangelo museum. Most pages like the Wizards Vale or vrml magazine were abandoned ten years ago. Why no interest? The bandwidth is there to spare now with people like World of Warcraft running virtual worlds with hundreds of members simultaneously.

Afterdark was Berkley systems fancy screensaver.  There were 40 or so different modules including a game called maelstrom. It seemed like every wannabe was making a screensaver authoring tool. Then windows decided to change graphics in 98 to active X. Bryce could still process without it but software like Afterdark suddenly lost their core commands. Most screensavers today are pretty lame by comparison. I'm sure there's a market for another Afterdark but no one seems to want to try anymore.

Themes in Windows were great. No body seems to be making them anymore except movies like spiderman and a lot of SOW type renders. you rarely get the whole package anymore with sounds for everything and wait, network, resize icons. There are lots of bad themes around where every error involves listening to a 15 minute long sound clip instead of a simple beep. There are also lots of themes that are windows 95-98 and just don't work on your system. I used to run through the theme file with find and replace to correct the path statements. Now I no longer bother. You could edit them in plus, then you couldn't, then you could edit the whole setup in properties. Once again the software kept changing again and again.

I'm thinking, "why is an old program like Bryce still here?" The interface is the same and easy to use. What you did in 4 still works in 6 for the most part. The software was never crippled by a change in the operating systems. When the software was almost abandoned it got cheap. There are lots of active sites with people talking about Bryce, not ten year old abandoned sites with broken images. If you wan't to learn how to edit terrains you don't have to pay someone $100 for the magic secret, you just ask.