Welcome to the HIT Lab VRML Gallery, an on-line gallery of architectural virtual environments created at or in association with the Human Interface Technology Laboratory. It is intended to aid in the organization and demonstration of the HIT Lab's virtual worlds, and is represented here as hyperlinked VRML 1.0 files. The architectural program and snapshots from within the gallery are documented as well.
The gallery was designed and built by Dace Campbell as part of his design thesis, in partial fulfillment of his Master of Architecture degree. The thesis, a pioneering exploration into virtual architecture, is an opportunity to discover the characteristics and limitations of architectural metaphor as applied in the virtual realm of "cyberspace."
This project was presented to the public in real-time in February 1996, using the HIT Lab's GreenSpace software. The GreenSpace software, based on SGI's OpenInventor 2.1, allows one to navigate immersively, and seamlessly, between files of virtual environments. The gallery was designed to take advantage of this. The GreenSpace/inventor version of the gallery enables a participant to move through contiguous geometric space while the files describing the three-dimensional environment switch according to which links are crossed. There are eight such original files, which lead to several dozen virtual worlds via the galleries. Unfortunately, such "transparent" links in contiguous "cyberspace" are not possible as partitioned, level-of-detail switches in the VRML 1.0 files provided here. There are therefore twenty-one VRML files here which describe the gallery to account for the fact that one can enter a space from multiple points. These also lead to several dozen virtual worlds, the same worlds accessible from the other VRML repositoyr pages. Since many of the links between files which describe the gallery are transparent (like a glass door), there is little indication of where to find the links. To address this problem, bright orange door frames have been authored in around each "transparent" link to another gallery file.
The VRML files have been tested with Webspace and Live3D, both of which are heavily recommended for browsing the gallery. Also, the unzipped versions of the files are quite large (up to 4.5 MB!). Please expect long load times between files.
