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Last update February 28, 2000.
Introduction
The Tenochtitlan web site was designed as a "companion piece" to the
book The VRML 2.0 Handbook, incorporating
many of the features now available in VRML 2.0 (Now called VRML 97), including
animation, sounds, and sensors. Many of the smaller examples
used in the book are also based on parts of this VRML 2.0 world. You can
follow along the guided tour, as is outlined in the book, or feel free to explore
on your own.
This site was also an experiment in building a large scale world in an educational context.
Computer Associates has taken over CosmoPlayer. You can still download the player from their Cosmo site. However, this piece of content seems to have disappeared from their site. I am putting it up again as a service to folks who still use the Handbook, or who have enjoyed viewing Tenochtitlan in the past.
About the Tenochtitlan Site and the Guided Tour
The year is 1519. Hernan Cortes, flanked by his armed and mounted
Spanish conquistadors, is riding toward the island city of
Tenochtitlan, center of the Aztec Empire. Moctezuma, despite a series
of foreboding omens, has decided to receive Cortes and provide the
hospitality for which he and his people are known. Accordingly, the
Spanish entourage will be escorted about this wondrous city, as grand
as Seville, and more than four times its size. And now, nearly 500
years later, we are poised to follow in their footsteps as we visit a
portion of Tenochtitlan-the walled sacred precinct which is the
ceremonial heart of the city.
For an introduction to the site, you might want to follow the tour, which will take you to principal viewpoints in the scene. You can do this by clicking on the pointing hand to advance to the next stop. As you navigate through the model, you will find a number of other clickable objects--icons as well as pieces of the model itself. By selecting any of these objects, you can invoke different pages in this document containing information on the history of the Aztecs, the archaeological data, a map, and the bibliographic and reference material. The headdress icon invokes pages that chronicle the meeting between Moctezuma and Cortes from Moctezuma's viewpoint. Cortes' and the conquistadors comments are found on the pages invoked by clicking on the helmet icon. (NOTE: Some of these pages are based on actual chronicles of the events, while others have sprung from the author's imagination.)
Getting Started
The Web Site (SGI or fast PC version) has been gzipped, and is
1.378 MB including sound and texture map files. Sound files are in the .WAV
format, and the textures are in the .gif format. I tested this on my 233 MHz
PC, with no hardware acceleration, and it works fine--once it downloads. Please
try this one first.
The Web Site (slower PC version) is now up. It is subdivided into three smaller subworlds that can be downloaded one at a time, but the overall content will be the same. I turned off the two point lights and just used the headlight, so the lighting isn't quite as nice. 32 MB of memory is recommended for PC viewing, as well as having colors set to 16 bit or better. Set your monitor to 800x600 for a reasonable resolution. Using 8 bit color mode will produce an "interesting" but inaccurate set of colors.
For both versions, I fixed the problem with the .gz file extensions. This means that the files are gzipped, but the .gz extension is gone. This should eliminate the error messages you may have seen in the browser.
Still images are available, if you don't feel like waiting to download the whole world. There are various snaps from different parts of the tour. This is a good place to check on what your browser should be displaying!
Stills from the examples. Again, here is a good place to check whether your browser is displaying the right thing.
Known Bugs
As of June 22, 1998. I found a problem in viewing the world with CosmoPlayer
2.0 and Internet Explorer 4, in regards to the targets on the html pages. If
you click on the "Headdress" or "Helmet" icon, the browser
goes to the top of the page only, ignoring the specific target keywords.. However,
all these "Headdress" and "Helmet" sections are paired on
the same pages, so all you have to do is scroll down a small ways to find the
right narrative section. This works fine in Netscape. I checked this again
in February 2000, and still see the same thing.
About Browsers
The world is now VRML 2.0 compliant. All the available browsers are in
different states of completion, so not all the features will work perfectly
in all browsers, with the exception of CosmoWorlds running on SGI machines,
and on PCs. We urge you to keep downloading the latest version of your favorite
browser in order to track the updates.
So far, this world has been tested with the SGI CosmoPlayer versions for the SGI machine and for the PC. The world has been built using frames in Netscape, and tested with Netscape 3.01 Gold, with IE 4, and Netscape 4. I have tested with Netscape 4.5 and IE 4.01 in February 2000, and it still all works.
If you don't have it yet, download the CosmoPlayer browser now (for PC and SGI).
For best viewing, hide the buttons and navigation aids at the top of Netscape before downloading the world. On SGI machines without texture hardware, you might want to turn textures off from time to time to view the animation at a better frame rate.
Comments: delle@dellerae.com
