Dr Peter White's Blog

Thoughts and comments from Dr Peter White -- political, philosophical, spiritual, musical and more

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Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

I am retired from the Uni. of Queensland, and have numerous interests inside and outside of the uni. I play classical, bluegrass, country and folk guitar (hows that for a mix?) I am a member of the Australian Labor Party and am currently branch secretary of the Mt Coot-tha branch. I'm also involved in developing virtual reality builds and websites. Never bored!

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Walking through art

I've been working in virtual reality for some years now, both as a solo 'artist' and also with other people, creating some pretty interesting events and graphics as well.

The trick is to actually go into the builds and walk around. You can do this in Second Life, and also the program that I use called ActiveWorlds (AW), which is reputedly the most powerful 3D rendering engine online at the moment.

To do this, simply go to http://www.activeworlds.com and download their free 3D browser. It works fine on any Windows or Linux platform. It won't work on an Apple OS, but if your Apple can emulate Windows, you can do it that way.

If you download the AW browser, and then go into it, you will first be a 'tourist' at AWGate, the world all newcomers go to first. Once there, you can select any number of worlds to visit. There is also ample help at AWGate to help 'newbies' work their way through the interface.

Here you are represented as an 'avatar', which is a 3D rendition of you; you can become all sorts of things, or just stay a tourist. You can walk, run, and very often even fly around and look at things people have done.

Additionally, the AW program is continuously evolving and becoming more and more powerful, ideal for those who would like to try building something in AW. I won't go into it all here, but once you have visited, do ask me any questions that come to mind and I'll answer them for you.

We work in a world called 'Yellow' (short for Yellowstone), which was initially a VR build of Yellowstone Park, but has developed a bit further now. We have created villages, haunted houses, fully interactive games, contests for builders, and much more besides. Anyone can visit for free. If you are then interested you can become a citizen which gives you many more rights and privileges for a minimal fee of about US$70 per annum.

Anyway, here are a couple of screenshots of some of the builds we've done in Yellow. Remember if you go there, you can walk through them, interact with them, talk with other people there and basically have lots of fun.

Here was the 2010 Halloween party, where over 100 people from all over the world came and danced the night away.








Here is a screenshot of Doc1's Steampunk build for the Contraption contest held in August 2011.





And finally, here is the cover art for the October 2011 Yellow Gazette, an e-zine about Yellow that Apooka and I put together. This is her build and her screenshot.

BTW, you can have a look at the Yellow Gazette which is a combination of fact, tips, hints and fantasy at http://activeworlds.com/newsletter/yellow/

BTW my VR name is Ozman...

Enjoy!! :-)