Earthling: There are many things to watch in this website. From retro-games to flash movies. But the most interesting one is the VRML worlds, that are very fast to load. Some of them show very original visual effects, and others can give you good ideas for inspiration.
Virtual Insects: Collection of insects in VRML.
WebEarth: Mark Pesce (the father of VRML alongside with Tony Parisi) created this project that shows the Earth as it looks now as watched from satellites today. There are also other space objects to watch like the Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Worldbuilders Guild: Created by Mr. Phillip, this is a website full of VRML tutorials so you can learn many things about Blaxxun platform for virtual worlds, VRML, and Cybertown avatars.
LouiZeForum: Keep informed of what's hot on VRML/X3D and Blaxxun. Discuss about 3D topics and many other things.
MixED: It's a very original concept that consists in organizing worldbuilders exhibitions, and publishing interviews. In French and English. Read a review on what is MixED here. There's also a list of resources with more links.
Seamless3D: Seamless3D is the ultimate software for creating VRML/X3D models and single mesh avatars. These avatars can be used in Blaxxun worlds. Smooth animations and complete freedom of creation. The avatars generated can be humanoid or not, as show in this one, created by Bumpy.
This software was created by Graham Perrett, also known as Thyme. Spend some time in his website, read the tutorials, try the program, join the forums. It's really worth, if you are interested in VRML/X3D.
Thyme is also a very skilled worldbuilder. His worlds, specially Techuelife Island, are the proof of this. He masters both modeling and animation, and he's probably the one of the most skilled programmers of the 3D universe.
Also remember to visit Thyme's list of Resources.
Anima3D VRML Worlds: Excellent combination of VRML and scripting in some fun games.
Andrea Rogers: Andrea is a multimedia artist that creates music, images, photos, and 3D worlds, sometimes combining it all in fantasies that emerge from her imagination.
Erny's Index Of VRML Worlds: Erny is one of my favorite worldbuilders. It is unusual that one person combines the artistic taste with technical dexterity. Erny is a complete worldbuilder that has both skills. I'll cover his work in a future review.
For now, enjoy the amazing list of almost all the worlds of the Outers that many different worldbuilders did, and Erny gathered together in this page.
List Of 12 Cool VRML Websites
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Create Seamless Wood Textures For Free With WoodWorshop
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Torley Linden posted video tutorials and important info on how to create seamless textures with the freeware program WoodWorshop. Read it here.
News From This Week: SL and Web3D
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This and the last week has been full of news about virtual worlds. Here you are some of the most remarkable.
- SecondLife Bloggers, the Community created by Zoe Connolly for collaboration between people that blog about SL, has appeared featured in the official Ning's Blog. No doubts that Ning has paid attention to the potential and quality of such a project.
- A tutorial about how to stream audio on SecondLife has been published. Many will find it very interesting.
- Web3D Rebuilt its main page and portal. Now it is much improved, with RSS Feed for all sections. Now its navigation is much more improved.
They have also opened the opportunity to become an X3D blogger for their Portal, and from time to time be able to post a tutorial, article or industry news in their official blog.
ActiveWorlds 4.2 Released
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ActiveWorlds has launched the 4.2 version of their client software, server software and SDK.
The main changes are:
- Custom Avatars
- Mip-mapping on pictures
- Sign Fonts
- Saved Outgoing Telegrams
- Better Image Processing
- Transparent Toolbars
- Web Capturing
Those who have tested the new client says it runs a bit smoother and looks better. Also, having customizable avatars (through morphing) improves ActiveWorlds to a similar level as other virtual worlds.
The requirements for ActiveWorlds clients are very low, as seen here, which is a big advantage.
ActiveWorlds has been online since 1997, being one of the most veteran 3D chat and virtual worlds community out of the whole world.
Their business model is to be supported by its members paid subscriptions, and grow slowly, so you may have not heard too much about them. But this great community deserves our attention.
These days, new virtual worlds platforms try to generate the maximum hype that is possible. That way, the generate big income but also big expenses. ActiveWorlds got to be sustainable in the long term.
Many people are re-discovering ActiveWorlds nowadays, although they've been there since the beginning.
The renaissance of the interest about virtual worlds is re-activating the interest about AW. I will not abstain from this new wave of interest. In the future, I'll pay more attention to ActiveWorlds, as it is proved as one of the main branches of virtual worlds.
Here's a video of ActiveWorlds, that will give you an idea on how it looks.
Update: Mr. Phillip At MixED
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The exhibition of Mr. Phillip Sand Hansel II, sponsored by MixED, that was announced some time ago in another post. It is going to start tomorrow, this time hosted at VR4All.
The exhibition will start tomorrow, June 25, and will be online for 2 months.
But the meeting party will be on VR4All on Saturday June 28, at 20:00 GMT (ECT/UTC). Look in our sidebar to check the World Clock.
Where will it be? On VR4All:
You can enter with any nickname you choose. Don't fill any password. Use BSContact as browser plugin. VR4All is a VRML 3D Chat solution similar to Blaxxun.
Another good news is that the Worldbuilders Guild, the website of Mr.Phillip, is back online:
Virtual Reality For People With Disabilities
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Virtual reality is not only a way to have fun with strange gadgets or building immersive experiences. It can also save lives in an operating room, or better people's life.
As we said in a previous article:
So the use of virtual reality devices to help those people that have disabilities is quite obvious. Many people that are very limited in the day to day tasks of their real life, can get a big degree of freedom in virtual worlds.
And VR devices could also be employed to, through the computer, increase their degree of communication with others and the possibilities of doing things that could be impossible without this hardware.
Here you are some examples of this:
Cap that reads your mind:
Even people with severe disabilities could benefit of this, as no movement is required. Just think in something, that's all. The improvement of this type of hardware is the future.
Exoskeleton:
A weak body or a partially disabled one can perform actions easier when suited with this exoskeleton that reminds us some of those that we saw in sci-fic movies.
Brain reader:
Another brain reading technique. Seems that science tries to go that way, and I think this is a very good news for those with really serious disabilities.
Human brain. Don't do this at home. Photo by Gaetan Lee.This is a technique that has been used for the army, but now tries to be used for games. But it may also help people with disabilities, and it's another approach alternative to brain reading.
Two Texture Generators
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Reptile: Creates random textures using an enormous set of effects. The generated textures can be of any size and have in common that they are seamless. This means that they can be repeated without visible borders. So they are ideal for texturing objects, getting high quality appearance with a small texture. I've used it to create water textures.
GenTex: The free version of this program generates textures of wood, stones, skin... It does this visually. You just click the one you like best, and it is selected, and another set is generated, until you get what you want.
Myrl, Social Network For Second Life And Entropia Universe
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Myrl is a social network mainly created for users of Second Life and Entropia Universe. It is created to share and display the life of your avatars in these worlds.
Myrl screenshot. Photo by Myrl.
It's like a diary of the life of your avatars inside a social networking site. You can show your avatars, your photos, videos and stories.
Myrl has a blog in which you can see the progress of their project. I think they have the will to include other virtual worlds into their project.
For now Myrl is in beta, but you'll be admitted if you ask for it from their page.
Hiperia3D News Is Now A Netbeans Community Partner
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Hiperia3D News has just been admitted as a Netbeans Community Partner, in recognition for developing the X3DV Module Suite and contributing to the promotion of Netbeans !!!
This is great news for me, and a great honor. Now, Hiperia3D News is listed alongside with big enterprises and hardware and software companies that support Netbeans, like AMD or Hewlett-Packard, to name a few.
In the last months, the X3DV Module Suite have achieved the following:
- To be listed as a compatible plugin for X3D-Edit.
- Appear in the list of X3D Developer Tools at Web3D.org.
- Has been downloaded more than 800 times in its first months of existence.
- Now, has been recognized as a valuable contribution to Netbeans community.
4 Sources Of Free 3D Models
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Free 3D Models:
Many free 3D Models to download, of furniture, vehicles, plants and others.
There are many high quality trains, aircrafts, ships (including a galleon) and cars.
Avatara: Avatars that can be used in Blaxxun's multiuser VRML worlds. There are humans, animals, vehicles, dinosaurs and more. The shapes are not too complex but are fast and fun to use as avatars in multiuser worlds.
VRML Models: Decent VRML models from different sources. Animals, mainly insects, an elephant and some other. The license of these models is not specified, although I think most of them are on the public domain.
SAVAGE: Enormous archive of dynamic 3D military models, all open source and in X3D. There are also code examples in X3D for building HUDs and other things that may be useful in worldbuilding, and some tools.
Vote For X3DV Module Suite In SourceForge
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All the opensource projects in SourceForge can be nominated for awards in different categories. It's time to nominate your favorite ones.
Look on the right and you'll see that if you have an OpenID or an account on Yahoo, Blogger, LiveJournal or AIM, you can use it to vote.
Then, you can go to the page http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08-nominate and search for projects to nominate. Another option is to visit their page at SourceForge and click the button for nominating them.
The projects with more nominations will later be selected for being voted by all the users.
The winners will receive a trophy of a robot. It's an award mostly for reputation.
Why don't you vote for the X3DV Module Suite? Just login in SourceForge and click this button:
Thank you, and remember to nominate all opensource projects you like!
Other Planets And Virtual Worlds
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Many worldbuilders, in some moment, have thought in creating a world located in a distant planet outside our Solar System, or maybe in our neighbour planet Mars. How would those worlds look? What is the color of their skies, seas and rivers? What strange animals may live in their lands?
Exoplanetology is a blog that talks about what science knows about those worlds. This site can be a source of inspiration for building these kind of works. Exoplanetology is the science that studies the planets outside the Solar System and life in them.
Exploring its articles, there are a variety of small treasures for us, like videos of documentaries. I also found a software that is in development and will be realeased this month, exoExplorer. It's a software to visualize exoplanets and walk through them in an immersive 3D environment.
Screenshot of exoExplorerAnd that takes us to the last site, the home of exoExplorer, and where you'll find news from the study of life in other planets:
More Events: Zaragoza And Bitfilm Festival
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New events have been added to the Hiperia3D News Calendar Of Worldwide 3D Events.
Virtual Educa Zaragoza
Location: Zaragoza (Spain)
Days: Jule 14-18
IX International meeting of Virtual Educa Zaragoza. There will be a seminar about "Education in 3D Virtual Worlds". More info in their site:
Monastery of Stone (Monasterio de Piedra) Natural Park in Zaragoza.Photo by vito7.
First Digital Film Festival: Bitfilm Festival
Location: The virtual world of Bitropolis in Twinity.
Days: May 1 to July 12
The Bitfilm Festival is a festival of digital films, that tries to keep a high quality of content.
Twinity virtual world. Photo by Torley.This year, for the very first time, the festival is being held in both the real world and the virtual world.
Habitat: The First Virtual World
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F. Randall Farmer has made public a promotional video of the first virtual world. Farmer is one of the co-creators of the first virtual world, Lucasfilm's Habitat.
He has a blog in which he continues to analyze his experiences and also the current events in virtual worlds, with the light that experience gives (Habitat Chronicles).
Randal Farmer announced this video in the Association Of Virtual Wolrds, in this article.
If you want to extend your knowledge about Habitat, you can also read the document that he made about the lessons that their creators learned building and running this virtual world.
In our list of "who was the first" we should add others, like the first multiuser 3D first person shooter game(simulated) was Maze Wars. Also, Habitat was 2D, but had many of the features that virtual worlds have. Later, some 3D multiuser virtual worlds platforms emerged, like Blaxxun, ActiveWorlds and Traveller.
The place to know more about this is http://www.vwtimeline.org/, where you'll find a timeline and many interesting data about all this stuff.
Hiperia3D News is a Netbeans Community Partner, in recognition for developing the 
