Virtual ORL

At ORL we wear active badges which locate us in the building. Using VRML 2.0, we take the information from these badges and use it to dynamically update the positions of people in a 3D map of the building. To find out where somebody is and who they are with, you need only look at the 3D map.

To run this software you will need Netscape Navigator 3, which you can download from here, and the Silicon Graphics Cosmo Player VRML2.0 plugin, which you can download from here.

The software works by embedding a VRML world (the 3D map of our building) and a Java applet into the same web page, and using Netscape's LiveConnect to set up communications between the applet and the VRML world. Every ten seconds the applet connects to the an active badge server here at ORL and receives updated badge information. It uses this to calculate the positions of people in the map and sends these updated positions to the VRML browser, which moves the photos of the people around appropriately.

The VRML model of our building is about 25K in size. In addition to this, there is about 170K of (jpeg) photograph data to download.

Note that, because of a problem with the external interface code, the software will not restart correctly if you leave the page and then return to it, so it is recommended to load the page into a new window (click on the link with the right button).

If you are using the browser from behind a firewall, the packet filter at your end may prevent the applet connecting to our active badge server, resulting in some error like `security.socket.connect: www.orl.co.uk -> www.orl.co.uk'.

Also, remember that we are in the UK, and the place will look pretty empty before 9am and after 6pm our time.