Paragraph's VHSB page - Includes downloadable eval. VRML Resources, Sites and FAQs Contact Mark Gibbs

By Mark Gibbs
IntraNet, 2/24/97

You are in a vast open space. A control panel floats before you. Press 'Information.'

An avatar who looks a lot like a mean 8-foot-tall gorilla in a leather uniform appears and checks your security clearance. He grunts, nods and vanishes. You read the words that appear in the air in front of you: Sales, Financial, Marketing, Production.

Press 'Financial.'

Models of the corporate financial state appear along with three-dimensional charts that change before your eyes as the accounting department records bills paid and payments received. You walk around, then fly over the models.

A look ahead

The underlying technology for this type of world creation is the maturing Virtual Reality Modeling Language. Prior to VRML 2.0, which became a standard in August 1996, it was only possible to create simple worlds. Attributes such as gravity, sound and even the ability to detect when the user collides with objects could only be accomplished through proprietary extensions.

VRML 2.0 addresses the issues of physics and behavior in virtual worlds. However, only a few companies have released even basically compatible editors and viewers. Paragraph International, Inc. numbers among them, with its Virtual Home Space Builder (VHSB) and Internet3D Space Builder (ISB) editing tools for Windows 95 and NT.

Paragraph has been in the VRML business since early 1995 when it released VHSB 1.0, the first publicly available VRML 1.0 editor. The company builds on its expertise with VHSB 2.2, which has three important features: support for VRML 2.0, ease of use and a low price. At $19.95 for the package downloadable from Paragraph's Web site, VHSB 2.2 is the least expensive VRML editor available.

VHSB is straightforward to install, although it is a rather disk-hungry application: Minimal and full installations require 37M and 208M bytes of storage, respectively.

Behind the screen

VHSB looks like a stripped-down architectural computer-aided design (CAD) system.

The application is simpler than a CAD system or one of the more complex VRML editing tools because it doesn't support any kind of curved surface. Although this makes VHSB easy to use, it severely limits it as a tool for building visually sophisticated worlds.

VHSB is based on the simple metaphor of creating architectural spaces. To create a new world, you start with a plan view of a flat plane. The only objects you can create in this world are boxes and walls. This means if you want to create a room, for example, you must first build a box and then use a cutout tool to hollow out the box and create the walls, floor and ceiling. Because you can only create objects in the plane builder pane, the height control must be used to define where the top and bottom of an object are.

This is an area of minor complaint for me. To set the top and bottom heights, you must drag the limit markers in the height control pane. But the range of height represented by the smallest mouse movement is often too large for exact positioning. As a result, you frequently have to settle for a position of 2.97 or 3.02 rather than the value of 3.00 you want.

Here is how you'd create a virtual shop using VHSB. First, decide how big you want the shop's shell and set the height control to the shell's maximum and minimum heights. In the plane builder pane, select a point as the corner and drag the outline to the required plan size. When you let go, a cube will appear in the perspective window. You can then begin to carve out doors, windows and rooms by selecting the required heights and cutting out boxes from the shell.

Once you've built the shell, you can add objects such as a counter and apply textures to surfaces, as well as position and attach URLs to movies and pictures.

On the downside, created objects can't be moved or resized. That means if you want to move an object, you actually have to cut it out of the scene and then recreate it in the new spot.

VHSB shines in its support for applying textures, pictures and movies to objects. For example, textures applied as wallpapers can be animated so that effects such as flowing water can be achieved easily. You simply drag the required wallpaper, picture or movie from the decoration pane and drop it onto the target surface in the perspective pane.

You can attach actions to decorations to allow links to URLs or other documents, cause scenes to be loaded or saved, sound or movie files to be played or a combination of such actions. Output from VHSB is in VRML 1.0, VRML 2.0 or Paragraph's own proprietary MUS format.

Since VRML 2.0-compliant browsers and plug-ins are generally buggy or incomplete, specific VHSB features, such as animated textures, won't necessarily be displayed by a VRML browser. To address this, Paragraph supplies a good stand-alone viewer and a Netscape Communications Corp. Navigator plug-in to accurately render its MUS format files for users. As a vehicle for exploring VRML, VHSB is an excellent value. Its only drawback is likely to be the amount of time you'll spend playing...er, working with it.