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The BBC's 3D reconstructions in VRML at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/history/3d.shtml.
They say to use Cosmo Player so, being ornery, I tried it in Cortona 1.5
on Netscape Communicator 4.7 and blaxxun Contact 4.2 on MSIE 5.0 and it
worked fine. The only problem was that the current version of Contact doesn't
support the Background node, so the sky was white. Apart from that, no
problems.
The flythrough (second viewpoint) is very well done, taking you through all the points of interest. This world is very heavily textured -- most of the 200K is textures -- so you can go to "high speed" mode instead of "high quality" mode if your VRML browser supports that choice. My favorite world on that page is their London Bridge reconstruction, which I find fascinating because of my interest in British history. I'd have liked some popup windows or frames that would explain things you clicked on, but the "About London Bridge" page linked to the URL above shows static screen shots with explanations. -B.C. |
X3D Proposal
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Blaxxun Interactive has a site at http://www.blaxxun.com/products/blaxxun3d/showcase/
that shows off their new application Blaxxun3D. Even if you haven't got
a browser or a plugin, so long as you've installed a web browser that was
released sometime after the steam age, you'll be able to see and navigate
through their demo worlds. The trick is that they've made a subset of VRML
that fits inside a 50K Java applet, which means that visitors can download
both the applet and the world in less time than it usually takes to download
a Web page from one of the flashier sites.
The demo that impressed me the most is their Colony City Plaza, familiar to all CoCi citizens, and how small both the applet and the world are. -B.C. |
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Great visualization of cellular processes!
Cells, organelles, & cellular processes- in depth! Includes Mitotic and Meiotic cell division, body tissue structures, and neural principles! |
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Visit this sacred site, scaled to cosmicharmony. Learn about the architecture and geometry of the Giza Plateau! You can also tune into a great variety of Real Audio Music from Independent Artists! |
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ThinkQuest's virtual gallery for their
Contemporary Art Experience at http://library.thinkquest.org/26183/vgallery.html
I know, they do everything wrong -- a VRML world that displays 2D images, they ship their images as PixelTextures, and the geometry is needlessly elaborate, but the glorious lighting and the high quality of the objects and images make up for it. -B.C. |
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If you build your own VRML worlds and don't have
a lot of money, you've probably already heard about Spazz3D, the
VRML modeler. They've got a gallery of samples from their users at http://www.spazz3d.com/samples.html
that has some outstanding creations.
Some of these worlds use the blaxxun extensions (e.g., NURBS) that aren't supported by other browsers yet. Since Spazz3D is an animation tool as well as a modeling tool, look for some outstanding examples of animation, including Addy's dancers (pictured) which blew me away. -B.C. |
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Cities of the world with current weather... VRML interface |
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Geometrek Worlds
You can meet your freinds here in their Multi-User Universes and chat in realtime! Also fun activities like chess, car races, a Rubix Cube puzzle, Missile Command, Mysterious Valley, and even a Disco! |
X3D Proposal
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Shout Interactive's Shout3D at http://www.shout3d.com/portfolio.html
is a similar technology. My favorite there is Beat Monk Bash that shows
off Jo and Oscar, two of the MOD characters that have won best of show
at SGI's VRML contest and standing ovations at the Web3D Roundups.
Shout3D is able to render animation of large scenes blazingly fast. -B.C. |
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Eagle Lunar Landing, Aerospace models |
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This is a cool piece, showcasing consulting stategy- and they champion vrml |
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If you remember Jurassic Park you no doubt
recall four things: (1) the "objects are closer than they appear" sign
on the mirror, (2) the "when dinosaurs ruled the earth" banner in the climactic
scene, (3) the really objectionable little kid you hoped would get eaten,
and (4) his fairly non-objectionable (for a kid) big sister who gazed into
an extremely cool navigator window and said, "it's a Unix system; I know
this."
Nobody's built one of those 3D filesystem browsers yet, but the network analyzer version of that tool is here now at http://www.eurecom.fr/~abel/cybernet/ from Institut Eurécom's CyberNet project. 3D visualization of large data sets is going to be the killer app for Web3D that gets it on the desks of pointy-haired bosses. My favorite of the worlds is the city metaphor used in SwapWorld. You need a stout CPU to run this -- both Cortona/Netscape and Contact/MSIE took approximately forever to bring up the initial scene on my pitiful P133/64M system. Browsing hint: Viewpoints are all overhead shots. Go to Examine mode and rotate the scene so that you can see the buildings in perspective. -B.C. |
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