Discription and Info

Introduction

Leaves is a virtual reality chat room that uses the Activeworlds browser software. The browser may be downloaded for free at www.activeworlds.com.

Nature Theme

Imagine what it would be like to jump into a landscape oil painting, to be able to walk around and enjoy the content of the painting from the inside. Leaves world is based on the vision that a nature wilderness landscape can be extended into a three dimensional computer environment.

Building scenery in a computer environment is all about illusion. If you step close to an oil painting, the techniques used to apply paint to the canvas look like smears and dabs, but when you step back, the technique suddenly appears to come to life, almost like a photograph. Similar techniques apply to computer environments. Various graphical techniques can be applied, and if you step back a slightly, the illusion comes to life.

People have been doing oil painting for centuries, but virtual reality is a relativly new medium. The techniques still need to be developed, and as the capabilities of computer technology improve, the techniques will evolve.

Leaves is our attempt to develop a nature theme 3D environment. As you look at different parts of the world, you will see different people's techniques. Most of the world is based on iterative experimenting and improving. We learn as we go, we keep what works, and we rebuild what doesn't, as shown in these historic photos.

Several areas in leaves are based on real world locations. One of these is a campground where cotarr spent his holiday vacation as a child in the redwood forests of Northern California.

Leaves Builders (73)

Leaves Awards

Nov 2004

Dec 2005

Apr 2007

May 2007
Feb 2007
Sep 2005
May 2005
Jun 2004
Nov 2001

Articles

Building in Leaves

This is not a public building world. However, we may be interested in help from a limited number of builders who share the love for this type of nature art.

We would like to keep with the landscape theme. It is interesting how virtual reality mirrors real life. The usual build request goes something like this. "Can I build here?" "What would you build?" "A big house. A house in the forest would look real nice" "We would really like to stick with the landscape theme, have you done any nature building?" "No...". "Well, if the people here only build houses, then we would have a city, not a forest.....".

On the other hand, if you are really inspired by this type of building, gram cotarr, and show him something you have built. From there, we can learn together.

Leaves Owner

Hi. I'm cotarr, and Leaves is my world. I first discovered AlphaWorld in 1996, but the computer was slow, the modem was slow and the graphics were limited. I rediscovered Activeworlds in 1999, and I started my own world Leaves in April 2000.

I've always had a love of landscape oil paintings, and I have boxes of canvas with my amateur attempts at painting. Likewise, I've come to 3D computer environments ready to learn and experiment, and the Leaves world represents some of the results.

I've also had a love of online chat going back years and years. I really enjoy the combination of the 3D building and chat. I've written a few of my personal thoughts and opinions of online chat in a page Chat Room Reflections.

You can also visit cotarr's home page

Leaves Textures

The backdrop is a collage of digital photos in Alaska along the Inland Passage. For more info on the skybox, click here

Many of the tree and plant textures are masked digital photos made using Paintshop Pro. You may have noticed a lot of 2D objects of plants and trees. I have tried to stay away from high virtex count objects, so that as a compromise, I can instead have a high object density. Many overlapping objects seems to give a good appearance of depth preception. Remember, like oil painting, it's all about illusion. Also, from a scenery consideration, it allows for a fast frame rate which the browser adjusts to long visibility, and long visibility is important in a landscape view.

Terrain

Some of the old areas are being converted to terrain ground. One example being the cabin at 15n 0w. The hill01.rwx objects were deleted, and terrain was adjusted to match the existing objects, then the plants and trees were adjusted slightly as necessary. Before terrain, there were about 11,000 hill01.rwx with various textures used to make up the rolling hills in leaves. However, in some area's, it is almost impossible to change to terrain, the these areas will be left unchanged.

World Server

Leaves is running on a P-90 20-User license. The extents of the world go from 90N,S,E,W or a real world equivalent area of about 3.2 square kilometers.

Leaves is set up on two independant servers for backup. Remember, hobbyists like to tinker. Both of Leaves's servers run Linux. There are two independant object path sites with equivalent files for backup.

The database does use a registry to reserve land. Many of the objects have been customized to allow overlap at the edges of a build without encroachment, but not beyond the center of the objects. Below ground is a series of wall and walk objects that are used by the bot to manage user property.

LeafBot