MZTV Museum of Television Interactive 3D Gallery
Michael Adams, MZTV Museum of Television, Canada
http://www.mztv.com

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 2

The MZTV Museuem of Television has very recently created an online, interactive 3D gallery of 7 of the vintage TV sets in it's collection. The sets are presented as photographically-textured, animated 3D objects that allow viewers to "pick up" and rotate the sets in any direction, to zoom in on fine details, and to see and hear, for example, how a 1928 mechanical TV actually works.

The content also features a video virtual host who provides commentary and additional information (the commentary is also provided as optional close captioned text in both English and French). Clicking on a full tour or particular feature button cues both the relevant animation of the TV set and the relevant virtual host clip.

The presentation is delivered in the Museum of Television on 4 touch screen computers (users rotate the sets by simply dragging a finger on the screen). Online visitors who have high-speed access (cable/dsl or above) interact with the same content, while visitors with dial-up access interact with just the 3D sets (i.e. no virtual host).

The content was developed by staff of the Museum and diginiche inc., a Toronto-based developer of interactive 3D content, and the project was supported by the New Media Fund of Telefilm Canada.

Note that currently you can see the sets on the MZTV web site (http://www.mztv.com) . The virtual host versions will be added early in the new year when the new MZTV site is launched. In the meantime, viewers can see the complete virtual host experiences by visiting the diginiche site at:

http://www.diginiche.com/staging/library and using the following password "mztv_32".

Please also note that currently visitors must be on a PC computer (the Mac version of the plug-in will be released in January, 2004).