Book Image

WebGL HOTSHOT

By : Mitch Williams
Book Image

WebGL HOTSHOT

By: Mitch Williams

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (17 chapters)
WebGL HOTSHOT
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Portals to navigate virtual spaces


Even before the World Wide Web, linking to data non-sequentially was introduced in Apple's Hypercard. We know it today as hyperlinks or simply links in a website. Prior to this, most data was linear, such as this book or an article, where we read from the beginning to end. It took time for links to become intuitive. However, now when we see text underlined, a different color, or the mouse icon change, we know that clicking on hyperlinks takes us to another web page.

Virtual worlds have an even better navigation system—the portal. Perhaps our first portal could be attributed to the Star Trek transporter that could beam you from the Enterprise to another planet. So popular was the transporter that the phrase beam me up is part of our culture. Star Trek was hardly the first although, as other fictional works conceived vortexes to transfer from place to place. However, now 3D worlds make practical use of these portals, enabling us to navigate virtual worlds...