He hops! He looks back and forth! He hunts down acorns and devours them
with his mighty incisors! All while savoring his caessree virtual existence
in a charming and restful grove of oak trees near (0, 0, 0).
Come watch the Squirrel and his community of cloned siblings romp and frolic
on a polygonal plane as they fill their cheek pouches with the bounty of the
virtual canopy.
You can experience the Canonical Virtual Squirrel for yourself on the
World-Wide Web. Go to http://www.immersive.com and follow the directions on
the home page.
The Canonical Virtual Squirrel is a VR applet written by Hakan "Zap"
Andersson. This applet implements many of the features of the Squirrel
"thought experiment" as discussed on the VRML mailing lists over the last
several months.
Zap implemented the Canonical Virtual Squirrel using Immersive Systems'
Meme(tm) Development System. The Squirrel embodies the first practical
example of a number of proposed mechanisms that have, until now, only existed
as conjecture. The brain-engine duality proposed by Zap
(http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/vr_prop.html) and discussed by Bernie
Roehl (http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/behav.html) has been implemented in
preliminary form, and clock time is used to determine intervals over which
various behaviors and conditions persist.
Zap's work is buttressed by the powerful dynamic object model in Meme,
and makes use of the inter-object messaging technology to mediate
communications among the components of the virtual world. Each object in the
Squirrel applet is autonomous, containing its own description and rules of
behavior. The conceptual elegance of the Meme object model frees the
designer from the distraction of considering the overall program, and allows
undivided attention to be paid to the individual object and its
relationships.
Zap and Immersive Systems welcome any comments or suggestions regarding
the Canonical Virtual Squirrel. Send e-mail for Zap to
[email protected]. Questions regarding Meme can be sent to
[email protected].
Immersive Systems, Inc. is based in San Francisco. The company is committed
to the development of an open architecture for distributed virtual reality on
the Internet. Why live in a marked-up world? Meme is Worlds Better.
----
Marc de Groot | Immersive Systems, Inc.
<[email protected]> | http://www.immersive.com
| Real VR for the net!
"It doesn't matter what they say, as long as they get the URL right!"