Virtual Reality on RISC OS

 
Jon Robinson
 
(Reportage by Martin Hansen)
 

In 1996 the Disney film, Toy Story, introduced Virtual Reality to the world. A groundbreaking film, it was admired for both it's fun story line and its computer generated world populated by likeable characters. In the computing press, interest in creating and viewing 3D models surged. Virtual Reality was the future.
 

 
In retrospect, it was a passing fad. Building 3D models is difficult and time consuming. As such, it's become sidelined into specialist activity. Today, it's no longer what most people would buy a computer for.
 
Jon Robinson and I have been looking again at what Virtual Reality has to offer. Jon has sent in a bugfixed RISC OS Virtual Reality viewer called VRMLeyes. Between us, we've assembled a collection of nine inspiring models which readers will enjoy dragging and dropping into the viewer.
 

 
I've tested VRMLeyes exhaustively under RISC OS 6 on both Virtual Acorn and Risc PC and it is fast, fun to use and stable. A9 and Iyonix users can run it using Aemulor. It likes to have seen !Paint first.
 
Start with the 'AgilityTest' model which will let you get used to the mouse controls. A top tip is to move the mouse slowly !
 
I wrote the 'AgilityTest' VRML file and you may like to look at it in a text editor to see how simple it is. Mostly, it's a long list of 3D coordinates and a further list of the order in which they are to be joined up. I also formatted the file 'TetraFive', when I converted it from 2.0 format into 1.0, which VRMLeyes prefers.
 
Jon Robinson would be particularly interested to hear from anyone interested in Virtual Reality or who has comments to make about VRMLeyes.

*DOWNLOAD VRMLeyes

 
Courtesy of Aspex Software, v1.01 (dated 16th August 2009) of VRMLeyes;

 
Visit the c.s.a.misc newsgroup to talk with Jon Robinson about 3D models under RISC OS.