virtual reality and visualisation links

Alan's teaching resources

tutorial on virtual reality
one of my papers on space and time from FADIVA workshop in 1996
chapter on information visualisation from my HCI Book 3rd edition
my research topics page on visualisation - this just has links to my own papers, but you can use these to chase further references

Java demonstration of interactive stacking histograms

reference

Encyclopedia.com articles on virtual reality and multimedia

research groups

the GVU centre at Georgia Tech - extensive pages on: scientific visualisation, data visualisation, and biomedical applications of VR/visualisation, and
VR exposure therapy for phobias
Lancaster University's VR group - work extensively on: collaborative virtual environments, populated information terrains (collaborative data visualisation) and also have two world building tools AC3D and VR-Mog
Nottingham University's Communications Research Group - great work on: distributed collaborative VR and also 'inhabited' TeleVision. (They have also done great arts events including distributed VR poetry reading, but I can't find pics on their site; if you find it let me know!)
UCL's Virtual Environments and Graphics Group - this has recently moved from QMW and their pages don't seem fully sorted yet, but they do have useful links to other web resources
The Committee (location unknown) working on the omega point - VR.5

virtual collaborative environments

Contact Consortium HomePage - THE place for links
The Palace - one of the worlds there
Virtual wedding
Internet foyer

visualisation pages

SpotFire (formerly IVEE)
OPTIONS Design Exploration System (Southhampton University)
Information Visualization (Tufts)
Anthony's Virtual Reality Playhouse (UCL)
Superscape Interactive 3D Software - Virtual Reality - VR - 3D Web Pages - Free 3D Viewer

VRML and 3D

X3D & VRML at the Web3D Consortium, the body that develops and promotes these and related formats
Wikipedia list of 3D world-builders
Virtual Humanoid Animation Working Group

VRML examples

When you are looking at a virtual world you can use "Document Source" from Netscape's View menu to see the VRML code that produced it.

a sphere
add color
alternatively wrap a texture round it - you can use any gif or jpeg image
other shapes such as a cone
put them together - OOPs! - all objects are centred at origin, need to use a Transform node to move one of the objects
try again with a cone and sphere - that's better
a framed picture built out of 'cubes' - N.B. in VRML cube means cuboid!
finally a rogue's gallery - this uses WWWInline nodes to include one VRML file within another. Also, WWWAnchor nodes are used to link to other web pages.