Special thanks to Richard Olsson who helped me get the AWD2 exporter for Maya working—especially since I’m a Max guy! 

envirant.com/beta

Welcoming any comments or feedback.  Thanks again to the Away3D team for all your hard work on this engine. 

ps: since it’s in beta, please let me know any bugs you run into.  Thanks!

It’s a nice piece!  The only thing I’d say is that the ability to change Y value threw me off.  I was able to get myself lost and since it’s a website, I’d think that the main objective is to get people to read your content.  You might consider adding some code to restrict movement to just approved areas.

Second, I’d like to see some more attention paid to the textures.  They are a little “procedural” looking and I think you could get more of a wow factor with improved textures.

Ambitious idea, fairly well executed so far. I particularly liked the amount of detail in the outside environment, and felt compelled to fly over to check if it was geometry or a skydome.

I agree with Alex that feels it more intuitive to have the “avatar” or atleast the viewing position relative to the ground as appose to being able to drift off into space. Thankfully the direct links to the important areas can get you back on track. Your other work looks great, especially the Spider Phone.
What was that written in?

I would add a touch of anti-aliasing just to improve the edges of the icons etc., if that doesn’t make it too heavy.

All in all, very promising :O)
No actual bugs to report, ran smooth and loaded surprisingly fast.

@ Alex:  Thanks for the input.  I certainly do want to add collision detection when I get a chance.  I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  As far as the textures, yes, I think they could benefit a lot from light and normal maps which is also something I hope to get to eventually. 

@ theMightyAtom:  Glad you enjoyed the outdoor environment.  I have to admit, part of me is torn between confining viewers to the indoor areas or letting them fly about freely outside.  I’ll have to find a happy balance somewhere.  Though, as you pointed out, I did provide the drop down menu so people could easily get to information more quickly, or be free to roam about if they like. 

As far as the Spider Phone, I wrote that in my last major online 3D engine—Viewpoint Media Player (VMP)—before I switched to 3D Flash.  I actually worked for Viewpoint for 9 years.  They were once named MetaCreations which was responsible for software like Bryce and Poser.  The VMP was a good piece of technology for its time (it first debuted in 1999), but it lacked hardware acceleration.  Thanks too for the tip about antialiasing, I have implemented that now.

I remember it when it was MetaStream. At the time I was messing with VRML. It taught me the importance of a fake soft shadow under the object, still using that trick to this day

I’m actually working on something very similar to this, and I expect the beta to be launched very soon.

My project does have working collision detection (using away3Dphysics) so when it is finished I would be glad to show you how I did it

-Q

Hi Qbrain.  Sorry for the late response, but I’m just coming back to polishing up the site lately and was wondering if you had success implementing collision detection. 

My site is actually using an older version of the Away3D 4.0 libraries which relies heavily on AnimatedBitmapMaterial which no longer exists in the latest version of Away3d 4.0.  So I’m stuck with the older code base as trying to update would mean I’d have to rebuild everything using AnimatedBitmapMaterial.  I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.  Anyway, hopefully you implemeted collision detection in the older Away3D 4.0 code and could share it with me.  Thanks.