|
|
|
|
|
|
Our New AMMMF Website
By Harvey Jong
The Arizona Mineral and Mining Museum Foundation is developing a new official website. Like other community sites, the AMMMF web presence provides information on the Foundation's activities, publications, and volunteer efforts. But what makes this site unique is its extensive use of virtual reality technology. Currently, it features a virtual museum tour of the Foundation's collection and a virtual field trip to Bisbee. In each of these virtual tours, viewers can interactively pan and zoom around images using a mouse and keyboard. This ability to move around in an image creates the impression of visiting a location from a first person perspective.
With the virtual museum tour, one can spin around in a 360 degree circle from one of three locations in the collection gallery. The view changes in response to how a user moves or clicks their mouse. To move left or right, click the left mouse button and move the mouse in the desired direction. Doubling clicking the left mouse button on an appropriate "hotspot" allows one to go around a gallery corner or to get a close up view of a mineral case. In the near future, virtual specimens will be added which can be rotated and viewed from any angle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
mens, a virtual field trip to Red Cloud,
information on previous or planned trips, and collecting experiences of Foundation members.
The webmaster for the AMMMF website is Harvey Jong, president and owner of Digital Panoramas, Inc. - a small new media studio specializing in panoramic photography and desktop virtual reality. Harvey has been a Foundation member for two years and is involved with the Collection Committee. His long standing interests include photography, mineral collecting, and computers. The AMMMF website represents a unique convergence of these interests. His mineral collecting passions revolve around carbonate minerals with special emphasis on rhodochrosite. He has also been known to cook up some mean eggrolls and other Chinese cuisine.
You can get a sneak peak of the experimental site by opening the following page:
http://www.AZMinFun.com/index.html
This site uses the latest interactive Internet
technologies and is best viewed with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher web browser. Also, the browser's graphics, Java, and Javascript settings should be enabled.
Editor's Note: We are very fortunate to have members like Harvey, who's technical skills in a variety of fields are helping the Foundation to grow and advance in new directions. Thanks, Harvey!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Through virtual reality, the site explores new ways of sharing mineralogical knowledge and experience. The Foundation has an impressive mineral collection, while its members have extensive knowledge of mineral species and localities. Efforts are under way to capture this information
in an up-to-date computerized database. Eventually, this database will be linked with virtual reality data to create a visual on-line way of studying and enjoying minerals. In the future, one can search the database for, say, wulfenite from the Red Cloud Mine. The results of this search may include a list of specimens in the collection along with links to virtual speci
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
