KIM FERNANDES, ALEX AND ANDREW YEUNG
MR. VYT KRUCAS
DCC OAO

Welcome to the Brother André Virtual Tour 1999 Manual. This small booklet gives the basic premise of our project, how to navigate in the Brother André Virtual tour, and credits to the software programs that have allowed us to travel so far in the enormous world of computer software.

The tour was initially proposed after viewing a couple of sample web-sites that utilized unique 3-dimensional pictures that could be viewed in a 360-degree panorama. We decided that a virtual tour of our own high school would be a perfect application of the software, as it would allow BA to be viewed virtually anywhere in the world. As the lone group charting into new territory, it presented a challenge that we knew would provide gratifying results. No longer would web-sites be static pages just for viewing like books…now they would become virtual "holo-decks" that would allow the user to enter into the creators’ world!

Along the search for more unusual and cutting-edge technology, we found another interesting piece of software called 3DML, which would eventually allow us to re-create the world of Brother André using countless graphics files painstakingly produced in Paint Shop Pro 5.01 and Adobe Photoshop 5.0. After that came Cool Edit 96, Applet Headline Factory, Applet Image Mapper ++...the list goes on and on! We discovered new techniques and technologies to mimic the real Brother André Catholic High School as close as possible, and also became experienced in many different software programs, which we were then able to use in helping others.

· A3D Audio surround sound
· fairly quick load time (compared to other virtual programs such as vrml)
· graphics are easy to customize
· "blocksets" (pre-made gifs with a theme ex: Tomb Raider" available for download
· fairly easy learning curve (similar structure to html)

· PC with a Pentium 166
· Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT
· 24 MB RAM and 2MB VRAM
· monitor with at least VGA(640x480) and 8-bit color display. Recommended resolution is at 800x600 and High Colour (16-bit) display (3DML does not support True Colour (24-bit/32-bit) display).
· 8212 KB hard disk space for the Brother André Virtual Tour 1999 files + 3917.5 KB for the plug-ins and various plug-in files needed by different software programs.
· Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer versions that are 4.0 or higher. From our personal experience, Netscape Navigator 4.6 works best with our product.
· supports Direct3D 5.0 and/or 3D acceleration cards and software

When accessing the Brother Andre Virtual Tour 1999 via the big computer at Brother Andre, go into c:\virtual\main.htm to start the program. Be sure to open the file in Netscape Communicator 4.0 or higher as this browser was the most compatible and effective with our product.

If you are installing the Brother Andre Virtual Tour 1999 completely from scratch, copy all *.htm, *.3dml, and *.swf (shockwave flash) files along with the folders images, pans, sounds, teachers, and webgraphics in c:\virtual of the big computer into the directory of your choice. MAKE SURE that the folders are all contained in the same directory as the *.htm and *.3dml files, as these files are coded to read the folders from the directory that it is in. Next, you will be required to download the Flatland Rover plug-in files from www.flatland.com, as well as three "blocksets" that will contain source code needed to run the 3DML files (total size=1.49 MB). The three blocksets are basic.bset, village.bset, and islands.bset, which are found at http://blocksets.flatland.com/flatsets/(nameofblockset). These blocksets only need to be downloaded once and will be put into the memory of your computer. They will automatically be downloaded as needed when the Brother Andre Virtual Tour 1999 is initiated, as long as the user is connected to the Internet when first running the tour. Other plug-ins required (as stated by the Netscape Navigator Plug-ins Information):

*LivePicture Viewer Plug-in at www.livepicture.com (NPRVRT32.dll) (277 KB)
Mime Type Description Suffixes
application/vnd.netfpx FlashPix Files fpx
image/vnd.fpxFlashPix Files fpx
i-world/i-vrmlLivePicture Files ivr

*Macromedia Shockwave for Director plug-in, version 6.0.1 at www.macromedia.com (NP32DSW.dll) (22.5 KB) + plug-in files (1.63 MB)
Mime Type Description Suffixes
application/x-director Director dir, dxr, dcr

*Shockwave Flash 3.0 r8 at www.macromedia.com (npswf32.dll) (138 KB)
Mime Type Description Suffixes
application/futuresplashFutureSplash Player spl
application/x-shockwave-flashShockwave Flash swf

*Flatland Rover Plug-in at www.flatland.com (NPRover.dll) (360 KB)
Mime Type Description Suffixes
model/vnd.flatland.3dmlFlatland 3DML file 3dml
***Ensure that speakers are plugged into the computer to gain the full experience!

After opening up the main.htm file in your web browser, you are given five buttons to push. The first one is the yellow "welcome" button that is a *.wav file specifically designed to welcome you, the user. The next four buttons are actually part of an image map that will lead you to one of four other web pages: credits.htm, 3dml.htm, pans.htm, or staff.htm. All of these pages, with the exception of 3dml.htm, contain a button that will allow the user to go back to main.htm. The 3dml.htm file automatically links the user to the BA Virtual Tour, which contains its own portal (link) that will allow the user to go back to main.htm. The credits page gives acknowledge to the wide range of software programs that were used in the creation of our tour of BA. The pans page lets the user select any one of the 19 panoramas that we created using LivePicture PhotoVista. When the user clicks on a panorama, a new window will open up displaying the panorama so that the user can still use the pans page. The staff page will give the user the opportunity to see all of the principals, vice-principals, and department heads for the 1998-1999 Brother Andre School Year. In addition to this, the user may click on any of the pictures to listen to the staff speaking a few words either about themselves, the school, or about BA! (unfortunately, Ms. Van Oosten’s voice was unable to be recorded for this option). The last, and certainly not least, link is the 3dml.htm one. As previously mentioned the Brother Andre Virtual Tour 1999 will automatically commence once the link has been selected. The instructions in the tour are as follows:

VIRTUAL TOUR:
The rotating 2-D legend image may be activated by placing the mouse cursor on top of the image. When triggered, an image map of the first and second floors of Brother Andre will appear. This map will allow the user to ‘teleport’ to any area of the school on the first floor (the 2^nd floor has not been completed) by pointing to any area of the map which they would like to see.

***NOTE: the image map pops up according to where your mouse is located when placed over the legend image. If it is hard to see, move the cursor off of the image then place it back on the image closer to the center of the window.

Portals with the happy face tiled on them may be accessed either by clicking it with the mouse or by walking in front of the portal. When set off, the user will be taken to a panorama of the area that they are currently in. The panorama will open in a new browser window so that the user may simultaneously continue the virtual tour. An exception to this is that the portal that is located at the front entrance of the school where the user first appears will take the user back to the main.htm page when activated.

• the majority of the doors that the user sees will not be able to be accessed; the only exception to these are doors that are 2-D images (they will have the same image on one side as the other), which the user will be able to walk through
• the staff room door located at the front of the school, just to the left as you first enter the school, is the only solid block which the user can pass through. It is labeled "Enter Here…". Unfortunately, when walked through, it may seem like part of the floor and ceiling have disappeared. To get through this problem, be sure to turn right as soon as you pass through the door. The error is caused because there is a solid block behind the door so that when you enter the door, you really hit a solid block (which Flatland Rover makes invisible) instead of the staff room.
• if the user exits through doors that lead out of the Brother Andre building, the user will be met by brick walls that are impenetrable
• various pop-up text will be seen by the user either in the top-left hand corner or the center of the window; be aware of these as they may provide valuable information

WEB PAGE:
Navigating the introductory screen is made easiest through the use of a mouse. Users should be familiar with how to enter various links on the web page, as it is a standard web page.
Ex: A link is indicated when the mouse cursor turns into a hand, and clicking with the hand cursor will trigger the link.

PANORAMAS:
To move around the panorama, use the mouse. By clicking and holding the left mouse button on top of the panorama, the user can ‘drag’ around the picture to get the full 360 degree view. To zoom in and out of the pictures, use the ‘A’ and ‘Z’ keys respectively.

3DML VIRTUAL TOUR
‘Walking’ around the virtual high school is also best handled with a mouse. The user may use the mouse to navigate by pressing and holding the left mouse button down, according to the direction in which the mouse arrow is pointing. The arrow can point either in the up (forward), down (backward), turn left or turn right directions. The mouse arrow will sometimes turn into a pointing hand icon, indicating that when the left mouse button is clicked, the user will be taken to another ‘link’, just like in a web page.

• The purpose of the right mouse button is to look anywhere in the 360 degrees available. (ex: to look up at the sky). The user must hold the right mouse button down to change the direction being viewed.
• Holding down the SHIFT key while moving the mouse will allow the user to move left or right rather than turn. Holding down the CTRL key while moving the mouse will allow the user to run instead of walk.
• Holding down the "A" key will allow the user to look up, while holding down the "Z" key will allow the user to look down. When the forward arrow is clicked with the left mouse button, the user automatically will return to the default position of looking straight ahead.
• Pressing the "+" button on your keyboard will allow the user to move faster while pressing the "-" button will reduce the user’s speed.
• At the bottom left hand corner of the 3DML BA Virtual Tour(when in Full Screen Mode), there are 5 icons. The first icon furthest to the left, which resembles a blue spark, will take you to www.flatland.com when clicked. The next icon to the right of the spark resembling two arrowheads side by side will let the user select from all spots (3DML files) that have recently been viewed on the computer. The user may also select "Return to entrance" which will take the user back to the default starting position of the spot in the current window. The subsequent icon, the circle with the cross in the middle, is the Options Icon, and it will inform the user of the various modifiers, mouse and keyboard controls, as well as the selection of various other options. The following light bulb icon allows the user to control the brightness of the spot. The last icon, the hammer, is the Builder’s Guide Icon, and when clicked, will bring the user to http://www.flatland.com/build_direct.html. This site will provide the user with links and tips on how to build your own web site in the 3^rd dimension, as well as where to find great textures, graphics, or just a location to post your 3DML questions.

The Brother Andre Virtual tour 1999 went through many modifications throughout its conceptual stages. About halfway into the project, we noticed that the sum of our file sizes were getting quite large, and the outcome of this was that we had to do some "software downsizing" to ensure that the user didn’t have to wait countless minutes for our site to load up. This resulted in less detailed graphics, minimal and medium-quality sound use, and reusing blocks in 3DML (this means that some blocks may have a door image on one side and a hallway one on the other side so that the block can be used in more than one area).

The sound files were recorded into Windows PCM ‘*.wav’ format using a sample rate of 11025, ‘mono’ channels, and 16-bit resolution.

Our trio had to edit many of the panoramas too using graphics intensive software such as Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 in order to "fill in" missing areas. These missing areas were the effect of not having all of the pictures taken by the digital camera properly aligned when they were stitched together (using LivePicture PhotoVista). Unless we were professional photographers with equipment that was specifically designed to be used with the digital camera, this error could not have been avoided. The majority of editing was done using the ‘smudge’ tool, as well as some <ahem> clever ‘cut & paste’ techniques (you may notice some areas such as the SE hallway missing their familiar lost and found box!).

The 3DML virtual tour went through many revisions as the days went by because of our addition of more doors, longer hallways, larger walking areas etc., etc., etc. With the 3DML file nearing 1000 lines of code and the deadline for the project fast approaching, we decided that we would only have time to incorporate the first floor of BA into our project. This is why the second floor has ‘under construction’ signs! Despite not being able to have the second floor of BA accessible, we are still proud of what we have accomplished and believe that the second floor will(may?) be completed in the near future.

The procedures used to test our product for faults were generally long and tedious, as they required us to continually reload the software to see if all the links, graphics, sounds, and panoramas were working properly. Especially tedious was loading the BA Virtual Tour 3DML file because of its large size and intensive memory use. On our home computer, a Pentium I 266 MHz computer with 32 MB of RAM, it would take upwards of 30 long, long, LONG, seconds to load…and multiply that by about 20+ reloads per night and a lot of time is wasted! The computers at school, 300 MHz Celerons, were a lot quicker, and consequently, we tried to do as much work as possible with them. A great shortcut that our group discovered while working with the 3DML files was in using smaller "test 3DML files". As opposed to working with a file spanning 74x55 blocks/level + 3 levels, our test files contained about 5x3 blocks/level + 2 levels. We could now load images and new blocks in our test file, which was a lot more time efficient than our final 3DML file, to preview them before incorporating them into our final product.

Along with this shortcut, our group noticed that it was hard sometimes to switch from one computer to another at our school, even though all of the computers are networked. This was due to the fact that every time a new computer was used, either the plug-in for the software needed to be downloaded again, or the software wasn’t on the computer. We ultimately integrated all of our files onto 2 computers; one being a computer in the Server Room, and the other being the "big computer". The "big computer’s" advantages was that it had its own hard drive that we could use, it was portable/movable (more or less!), and it was a K6 300 MHz computer with 64 MB of RAM and S3 Video Card. We eventually uploaded all of our data onto this computer, which we used in our final presentation.

Using both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to view our product was productive in that we established which browser was the better one for our product. Although Explorer did work most of the time with our BA Virtual Tour, much of our testing was done with Netscape as it usually had fewer errors, in addition to the fact that the majority of Brother Andre’s computers do not have Explorer on them.

*Because the virtual tour is intended for use as an attachment to the Brother André Web Site, the initial web pages leading up to the tour were not ‘serious’, as evidenced by the ‘fun’ background graphics. These graphics were included for fun and can be removed to decrease loading time or to keep with a common theme!

*If the user somehow manages to get outside of the Brother Andre building, there are various portals distributed throughout the environment which, when clicked or walked on, will bring the user back to the front of Brother Andre.

*If the panoramas don’t work, try reloading/restarting your browser.

*Sometimes the sound may be hard to hear. Fortunately, due to the A3D Audio surround sound, careful positioning of the user in the 3-D environment will ensure that the sound is heard to the user’s liking.

*In our personal experience, the Flatland Rover plug-in works best for Netscape Communicator version 4 and up. Internet Explorer 4 and 5 work poorly with the plug-in, frequently having ‘errors with the plug-in’, resulting in the inability to run the virtual tour.

*In our personal experience, the LivePicture panorama files DO NOT run in Netscape Communicator (!!!) due to ‘not enough memory’ error messages. However, they DO RUN in Internet Explorer, with no problems at all! The plug-in for the LivePicture panorama files works for both Netscape and Internet Explorer.

*When zooming in and out of the panoramas, the user will see more and more pixels as the resolution becomes weaker and weaker.

*Flatland Rover requires a relatively fast computer; minimum Pentium recommended in our experience. Since the graphics files are all cached into memory, the larger the amount of RAM your computer has the higher the likelihood of a smoother running tour; 3-d accelerated cards are supported, but not recommended.

*Because the tour is a highly intensive graphics and coding program, the second floor and relocatable of the school were unable to be completed, and are not accessible in the tour. Future versions of the tour will likely have more detailed graphics, better animation and interaction, and run better, as computer power continues to increase and more user-friendly revisions of Flatland Rover are made available.

*Be patient when waiting for areas such as the virtual tours and panoramas to load. We have done our best to reduce file sizes and make the tour as efficient as possible so that loading times are at optimal speed, but if you complain, then its your own fault ‘cause you don’t have enough RAM’! Of course, since we’re using cutting-edge technology, when you come back to this project in a few years (when 3DML and LivePicture are mainstream!) everything will run without load times!!

*The majority of our graphics were created on a 256x256 image. Unfortunately, as a result of using the full image when creating graphics, some of the graphics were covered up when put into our spot. This is because each 3D block, on which images are placed on its faces, was partially covered up by the ceiling block. The ceiling blocks were the last blocks placed in our spot, and they occupy about 16 pixels (vertically) of the top of the blocks, thus blocking about 256x16 pixels of each image on the regular 3D blocks.

*To have optimal smoothness when viewing the Virtual Tour (especially with slower computers!), the user may do the following:

1. Reduce the browser window
2. Reduce the viewing distance (under options-the circle with the cross in the middle in the lower left hand corner of the screen)
3. Uncheck the ‘3-d acceleration’ box under options button
4. Have only the necessary applications running (minimize multi-tasking!)

• Approximately 1000 lines of 3DML code
• The Brother André Virtual Tour 1999 encompasses the first floor of BA. This first floor is made up of 3 levels each level itself being comprised of 4070 ‘blocks’.
• Total Size of All Of Our Programmed Files: 8212 KB

In the future, we hope to make our site bigger, better and more detailed. The biggest problem we have right now is loading times, and the result has been that we have had to minimize the detail in our graphics, sound files, and blocksets used in our product. As well, the large size of our entire software package has made it hard to upload our site to a willing server. Fortunately, at www.tripod.com, we have discovered that they freely give 11 MBs of space to anybody that requires it. We have begun the process of uploading our site to their server, but a few problems have been encountered which we hope to soon fix. As cable modems become more widespread and download times decrease, we hope that our site will eventually become readily accessible and viewable.

Some of the changes that we would make generally revolve around the new version of Flatland Rover 1.2, which was released on the third week of June, 1999. This version has many new and exciting abilities, many of which we did not have time to take advantage of. Some of these abilities include:

A) brand new <ACTION> and <REPLACE> tags
They are bringing a whole new level of interaction to 3DML spots. With these tags you can set up a timer that will then replace one or more blocks in your map with another block. ACTION and REPLACE can be used to create all kinds of event-based interactions like changing the look of a block, making doors that open, making sounds occur when a user triggers an event, etc.

B) "once" and "single" PLAYBACK for SOUNDs
In addition to "random" and "looped", a SOUND can now have a PLAYBACK value of "once" or "single".

C) The FACES parameter
The FACES parameter determines how many sides of the polygons that make up a PART can be seen.

D) POPUPs that appear everywhere
If the LOCATION parameter is left out of a standalone (not in a CREATE tag) POPUP tag, then the POPUP will be displayed throughout the entire spot.

E) ORB links
The ORB tag can now take HREF, TARGET, and TEXT parameters so that your ORB texture can act as a link to any URL.

All of the new features and updates are detailed at http://www.flatland.com/tutversion.html.

*As we are writing this today on Tuesday, June 22, 1999, our group, as a result of being a member of the mailing list at www.flatland.com, just received brand new information that would’ve vastly improved our spot building efficiency and sanity. Spotnik 1.0 Spot Builder was released and it helps anyone to build a 3DML Web site "in just minutes" (as quoted by the e-mail). On top of this it uses a simple click and build environment through the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. It took us many, many hours to build ours. We had no click and build environment. We did not see what we got. We are not mad though.

Unfortunately, the 1.0 version still has a few features that haven't been incorporated into Spotnik though.

*** Special thanks to the following group as this project would never have gotten as far it did without their software, hardware, and support. ***

*ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 5.0 www.adobe.com

*APPLET IMAGE MAPPER ++ www.coffeecup.com

*APPLET HEADLINE FACTORY www.coffeecup.com

*COOL EDIT 96 www.syntrillium.com

*FLASH 3/4 www.macromedia.com

*FLATLAND ROVER PLUG-IN www.flatland.com

*INTERNET EXPLORER 4/5 www.microsoft.com

*LIVEPICTURE PHOTOVISTA www.livepicture.com

*NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 4.6 www.netscape.com

*PAINT SHOP PRO 5.01 www.jasc.com

*TEXTPAD 3.2.5 www.textpad.com

www.virtual-fx.net

www.flashlite.com

www.flashpad.com

*BA COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY DEPT. tripod

*MR. VYT KRUCAS digital camera, Cool Edit 96 video, microphone, speakers