VR MUSEUM

Concept :

               The concept of this museum is the root of all museums, ' The cabinets of curiosities' . My understanding of the cabinet of curiosities was formed out of a fictional work by "Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child" (www.prestonchild.com).

Research:

                Doing some research on cabinets of curiosities it was found that they were pretty famous in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. This was the time when exploration was analogous to today's information age. It was the golden age of exploration and navigators brought extraordinary items of nature from several exotic locales they visited. "Wunderkammer" ( - Wonder Chamber - )as it was known in German housed rare collections (mostly personal at that time) and became a hobby for some aristrocrats.

                It was when they became PUBLIC that they shot to fame. By the end of the 18th century and the middle of 19th century they were so popular that businessmen started to commercialize cabinets of curiosities. The cabinets became areas of entertainment rather than learning which was their ulterior motive. People running these cabinets exploited this and began placing bogus exhibits to enhance the experience. For example, there was a stuffed mammoth (in the book by Preston/Child), which would spring into life suddenly while the show went on and put the hearts of the unsuspecting spectators in their mouths. It was actually a hired person entering under the belly of the mammoth and controlling it.

Theme:

                The theme of my cabinet of curiosities is "The collection of objects that are stolen by V.I.L.E henchmen in the 1985 game, 'Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?' by Broderbund (www.broderbund.com).

Models:

                The models for the museum were done in Wings 3D and exported as .OBJ (Wavefront) files. Texture mapping was done by AutoUV mapping supported by Wings 3D and GIMP image editor using JPEG files. Sincere thanks to 'Andrew Schultz' (schultza@earthlink.net) for providing the list of all the objects in his Game FAQ. read it

                       The list was just the motivation to model some curious objects that I can add to the collection. For each of the objects many different shapes of design were thought out. A total of 7 objects have been modeled till date. Click on the links to view the images: <not textured>

Montezuma's Mask     Alpaca Wall hanging      Samurai sword     The Gavel of Althing       Prize Orchid         Pidan         Boomerang

Electro:

            The museum has been depicted using Electro version 4.32 <www.evl.uic.edu/rlk/electro>

Screen shot of a stack of samurai swords.    ... more screens from the museum

Version 1.00 - VR Museum - Download here           | tar.gz |      | zip |        

Version 1.26 - VR Museum - Download here           | tar.gz |      | zip |       

Version 1.27 - VR Museum - Download here - Added more sounds - Refined the look and removed Windows Problems.            | tar.gz |