SIMA Reports

The 1995 Survey of Virtual Reality Activity in the UK

This report presents a summary of the findings of a survey of current work on Virtual Reality (VR) in the UK, conducted between March and November 1995.

The report covers the types of VR being researched or developed, hardware and software used, funding, perceived benefits of VR etc. It also provides full details for all respondents in the survey, and a list of resources to support VR workers. This repot is available in printed form as AGOCG Technical Report 27 from:

Dr A M Mumford
Computing Services
Loughborough University
LOUGHBOROUGH, LE11 3TU
a.m.mumford@lboro.ac.uk

VRML in Art and Design in Higher Education

This report has been written primarily with the requirements of potential VRML users in art and design higher education in mind. However, it should be of interest to people outside this sector as well. It is assumed that the reader is acquainted with some of the terminology and basic concepts of the WWW and 3D computer graphics. The aims of the report are as follows:

• to introduce the reader to VRML, describing its brief history, and outlining current and possible future development
• explain the main features of the VRML 1.0 language specification, through the use of an example
• describe some of the VRML browser software which are currently available for viewing VRML scenes
• provide some examples of the use of VRML on the WWW, with particular reference to art and design
• describe some of tools available for creating VRML models
• discuss issues concerned with making VRML files available on a WWW server
• provide pointers to where more information about all the above can be found.

Sue Cunningham
SIMA Multimedia Support Officer
Computer Graphics Unit
Manchester Computing
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK
Tel: +44 161 275 6803
Fax: +44 161 275 6040
sue.cunnigham@mcc.ac.uk
URL: http://info.mcc.ac.uk /CGU/mmsup.html