Dive Tutorial Dive Tutorial
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This tutorial is primarily intended for novel users of Dive, but can also serve as an introduction to the system. The tutorial only introduces simple concepts, while more elaborate user interfaces can be found in the Dive data files in the release or in the Dive applications web site
The tutorial describes how to navigate, how to load objects, how to change worlds, and how to communicate with other participants. You can either just read the tutorial or you can start vishnu and do the operations that are described in the tutorial in parallel.
When vishnu is started in the tutorial world, the user sees the above view of a street. The vishnu window consists of a header with a set of menubuttons with pull-down menus; a viewport displaying the 3D view of the world; and a statusbar.
Clicking on the "Help" menu button in the upper right corner of the vishnu window displays a number of help items, among them, a text-only version of this tutorial.
The simplest way is to move using the keyboard vehicle :
Turn left.
Move forward.
Move backward.
If you press and drag with the left mouse button on the upper triangle, you move forward or backward and rotate sideways. If you interact with the the box, you are translated up and sideways; while the lower icon pitches and rolls.
If you click on the "Go to the Podium" sign in the view shown at the beginning of this document, you will automatically be transported to the Podium:
There are two boxes, one sphere, a bookshelf, a jukebox and two actors at the podium, each having simple associated event-based behaviours. For example, if you click on the red box, it rotates, the blue box moves upwards, the yellow sphere jumps up and down, while the blockie turns and faces you as you approach it.
The books in the bookshelf are also associated with behaviours. If you click on a book, it moves out from the shelf and is placed in front of your eyes.
A book has a reference to a URL, which can be read in a HTML-browser (netscape or a Tk/Tcl based HTML-browser). The book in this example has a reference to the DIVE home page. When you click on a page, a browser is spawn and you can read the page (see the figure below). A book is closed and moved back to the shelf if a user clicks on the close button.
The jukebox to the right of the bookshelf, demonstrates the 3D-sound in Dive. There are four sound tracks on the jukebox. Each sound track has a reference a sound file.
To here the sound you select Audio out from the Audio menu.
If you click on one of the grey buttons to the right, the jukebox starts to play music. If you walk far away from the jukebox, you cannot hear the music. If you then walk to the jukebox, you can hear the music louder and louder when you get closer to it. When the jukebox is playing a song, you cannot stop it. You have to listen to the end of the song and then start a new song.
This very simple event-based behaviour is implemented with the Dive/Tcl interface .
A slightly more elaborate behaviours example is the cartoon avatar:
If you press the left mouse button on the cartoon, a menu pops up. By pressing the menus on the right, the cartoon figure changes its attributes and attitudes. These beviours are completely embedded in the cartoon body object and defined with the Dive/Tcl interface with Tk extensions. When you approach the cartoon avatar, it turns to you and bow to you.
In this example, the user is represented by a blockie, but it can easily be changed. For example, by marking the cartoon body with "shift-click", and selecting Change avatar from the Self menu, the body-icon is switched to the cartoon body:
You can undo this change by selecting Undo change avatar. You can also load in any body by selecting Load in the Self menu. There are a variety of body-icons in the Dive data distribution usually beginning with "body_".
The Load in Front command in the Object menu loads a .vr or vrml 1.0 object into the world in front of the actor. In the view below, AniHouse.wrl has been loaded.
Any vrml or .vr file can be loaded, either as a url or as a regular file.
Objects are moved by pressing the middle mouse button over the object and dragging the mouse.
Objects are rotated objects by pressing the right mouse button and moving the mouse.
Objects are marked by pressing the left mouse button and the shift button simultaneously.
Several operations can be performed on marked objects, including displaying the source of an object:
More operations can be found in the Objects menu.
Viewpoints: displays all predefined camera positions.
Bookmarks: Allows you to save viewpoints to a personal file.
Worlds: Displays a list of all worlds that the user has entered.
Actors:
Displays a list of all actors presently in the same world.
The other menus behave in a similar manner.
In the tutorial world there are roadsigns to two other worlds (Sics and Dive Town). If you click on either of these, you will be transferred to these other worlds. The Sics world shown below with full textures, is a switching point to several other Dive worlds:
Near the podium, there is another type of gateway:
If you pass through this portal, you will come to Dive Town.
You can also change worlds by explicitly writing the name of a URL or file in the Load item in the World menu, or select an already visisted world in the "Worlds" or "Bookmarks" menu tool.
Anneli Avatare, anneli@sics.se, Olof Hagsand, olof@sics.se