Liquid Reality consists of a set of Java classes. Viewers and applications may work inside Netscape Navigator and Java applets. Recently, Microsoft licensed Virtual Reality for use in MS Internet Explorer and in future versions of Windows. Liquid Reality is still in beta. What makes Java unique is its platform independence, support of networking and integrated multi-threading.
All general comments made in the applet section apply here as well.
So naturally there is strong competition. Today standalone systems implemented in Java are few. Real world standalone Java applications are harder to find than applets used in business. Right now, Java is used widely in creating Web servers of more modern design. One example is Jigsaw, the new Web server of the W3C consortium in Boston.