This page is for the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) models I built decades ago, when VRML was having it's day and I got into it. These are all very old models written in VRML 2.0. To view them, you need to either have a VRML plug-in for your browser or download the worlds and use a VRML viewer.  Unfortunately many of the viewers have fallen by the wayside over the years, including Cosmo Player, which many of these were developed for. I've used FreeWrl in the past, and while it didn't support every featured last I looked, it worked pretty well. I'm currently trying out the X_ITE plugin for Chrome. For more information about VRML and other Web 3D technologies, checkout the Web3D Consortium...
 
The first is a model of my house.  It was build using Cosmo Software's HomeSpace Designer, with a little hand-editing of the resulting VRML file. Walk around it and check it out.  The textures were edited from a picture I had of the house.  It's the first VRML model I built.
The second model consists of two 3D surface plots depicting the travel time benefits of ITS.  This was hand-coded using data from a study on how to assess the costs and benefits of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) when conducting transportation planning studies. 
The third model is another hand-coded plot.  This "cityscape" plot was coded to make it relatively easy to edit the files to create graphs for each metric for each option.  The results are from the same study as above, using Mitretek's (now Noblis') "PRUEVIN" methodology for incorporating ITS costs and benefits into regional transportation planning studies.
 The fourth model, Virml Creek, is by far my most ambitious.  It is a model of a whitewater slalom run, complete with a kayak that runs the course. A video that I put together based on this world won the Digital Motion category at the 1999 National Paddling Film Festival.
The fifth model, the kitchen, isn't an award winner for VRML design, but it was assembled in a single evening to help select floor and countertop patterns for a kitchen remodeling project. There are a ton of free tools to do this online now, and to do it much better, but this was pretty cutting edge stuff in the 1990's. It was done entirely using Cosmo HomeSpace Designer (and some extra scanned textures). 
This is a small model of a dorm room in Leete Hall in North Halls at Penn State, circa the mid-1970's. NO LONGER FULLY WORKING

Here's the Sunwheel, inspired by the Sunwheel project at the University of Massachusetts.  Most of it is really basic, but it's got some animation, animated lighting effects, and sounds in the winter solstice view.

The latest model, GPS, is one my son and I put together for a 6th grade math project on GPS.  The animation shows the signals coming out of 4 GPS satellites, intersecting at a location on the earth. There's a couple of viewpoints to start from.


This page last updated February 10, 2024