The extensible Virtual Reality Modelling Language
Carina is a software project by Dave Huffman (a grad student I am working with on the xVRML Project here at RIT). Carina is designed to be a viewer and a browser plugin for VR spaces, initially supporting xVRML.
Carina is being developed under Linux, and uses the QT library from Trolltech and OpenGL. The source for Carina is being released under the GPL, an open-source license arrangement. Dave is developing on his old Intel box, but the screen snapshot you see on this page is of Carina running on my old beat-up Mac at home. It runs as a "native" OS X application. If we can wrangle the proper licenses out of the Trolltech people, we will also develop a Windows port. We figure that supporting Linux, OS X, and Windows wll give us reasonably complete coverage of the machines used by most people.
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Carina is in an early stage of development; call it an early "alpha release". None the less, we wanted to post a screen snapshot so interested parties can see visible evidence of the current state of this xVRML Project viewer: we can actually see some stuff now. Thank you, Dave Huffman!
The screen snapshot of a test scene you see to the right on this page includes objects converted from VRML97 and saved as xVRML, both manually and using the "SaveAs xVRML" function of Carina. The avatar is a conversion of a VRML97 model by Miriam English, the rolltop desk and the chairs are conversions of 3Name3D VRML97 models, and the rest of the objects were converted from vrmLab VRML97 models or were created "by hand" in xVRML by Jeff Sonstein. Carina will support import from other formats in the future, along with additional "Save as xVRML," capabilities. This enables authors to easily convert existing object and scene libraries to xVRML.
Carina implements a fair bit of the spec already, and several major milestones have now been reached:
I have been trying out manual conversions of VRML2 files to xVRML and have been very pleased at how easy it is, but automating the conversion process is very nice for VR authors with complex scenes. Dave has also developed a commandline tool for batch conversions to compliment the "Save as xVRML," capabilities of Carina.
While this is a pre-alpha release of Carina, it does a lot already. Like the old saying goes:
It's not how high the elephant flies that is so amazing, it's that the elephant flies at all.
We are still arm-wrestling over some "picky details" in the current (beta) xVRML specifications; details which emerge as Dave builds this first tech demo xVRML viewer. As we get the details worked out, Dave will focus on completely supporting the spec first. Once the spec is fully implemented, then he gets to make it small and fast and reliable. Following this he plans to add support for loading additional 3D file formats. Last but not least in the immediate-plan department, Dave wants to create a web-browser plugin set out of Carina to go along with this stand-alone version. Thanks again, Dave!
Please note that he is implementing the static elements first, then the dynamic elements like scripts and routing of events. This is a big aid in providing implementation-experience-based feedback to the Project.
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Page created: 1 December 2004 Page last updated: 6 February 2005 |
The extensible Virtual Reality Modelling Language Project is housed at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, Information Technology Department. This site is maintained by Prof. Jeff Sonstein, a member of the Computer Mediated Experience Group, and is associated with the Center for Information Visualization and Interaction of the RIT Laboratory for Applied Computing.
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Site Created: 12 December 2003 © 2003 - 2005 Jeffrey Sonstein |
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