Using Virtual Reality Concepts - Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games - page 277

8
Using Virtual Reality Concepts
The idea behind virtual reality is to give you the experience of being in an environment,
interacting with it, and moving through it, without actually going there. In the '90s,
Apple Computer developed QuickTime VR (QTVR) as an extension to QuickTime, to
enable users to create and experience virtual reality content through just a mouse and
keyboard. Although others have developed similar technologies to Apple's, we will refer
to QTVR as being representative of the general concepts we will be discussing here.
The basic idea behind QTVR is the following. Suppose you are standing in someplace of
interest, perhaps someplace you've always wanted to visit. You can look all around you,
left and right, up and down, any way that you want. You can pick up nearby objects
and look at them from any angle. You can move to some other point of interest to you
and further explore. QTVR offers the ability to look around in a format called panorama
movies, examine things in a format called object movies, and navigate to someplace
else where you can repeat the process.
QTVR is popular on the Web. Surfers can examine, in the round, anything from large
automobiles to tiny jewelry. Many virtual tours are also available, from exotic places
to your local golf course. While Flash is capable of importing video, it is not set up to
handle the QTVR extension. We can, however, create much of the same experience
of panoramas and object movies in Flash. This chapter focuses on
• Simulating simple object movies
• Object movies on a circular path
• Simulating panoramas
Object Movies
The material needed for an object movie can be created either photographically, with
video, or through the use of 3D software. An object movie is a series of still images
that show an object from a number of different angles. To create a photographic object