Marine Virtual Explorer - MARVE CDROM

Virtual Reality Tour of the East Pacific Rise

by Dr. Charles Weiland

and

Dr. William Prothero

University of California, Santa Barbara

Supported under NSF/DUE 9752367

MARVE is a virtual field trip on a CDROM that takes you onto the research vessel Atlantis, into the deep diving submersible Alvin, and down to the depths of the Pacific Ocean on the East Pacific Rise (EPR). The EPR is a divergent plate boundary, where new seafloor is being created about as fast your fingernails grow. Seawater circulates into the crust where it is heated, dissolves chemical constituents of the crustal rocks, and emerges at localized hot spring vents. Rich biological communities of strange creatures depend on these hot springs, where the energy source is from chemicals (chemosynthesis) instead of the sun (photosynthesis).

The CD includes a virtual tour of the Alvin support ship, Atlantis, and the inside of the Alvin submarine. A virtual dive to the EPR allows you to view live video of the seafloor and hydrothermal vent sites and fauna such as tube worms, crabs, octopi, and others.

Link to Web version created by Dr. Charles Weiland <MARVE>

Obtaining the CDROM:

A new version of the MARVE CD is almost ready for release. It fixes a few interface problems and uses the latest version of MacroMedia Director, so should run on a wider variety of computers. It is currently available by personal request to William Prothero. Please include your name, mailing address, institution, and intended use for the CD.

• Quicktime 3.0 or higher. This should run on Windows and Macintosh Platforms. To get quicktime, for both Windows, go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/index.html

What is implemented?

• Click the "Enter" button below to view a sample VR scene.
• The VR scene - move the mouse to the VR window, hold down the mouse button, then drag the mouse. This allows you a 360 degree view of the rendered scene.

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Funding by National Science Foundation and University of California, Santa Barbara

Copyright, 1998. All rights are Reserved