Firstly, you will not be able to visit the world if you are viewing this web page on an Apple Macintosh. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Atmosphere, the Adobe software that makes all this possible has only been written for PC thus far. However, this issue might be addressed in the near future.

When you click into the painting above to launch the world, you will be asked if you want to install the plugin, 'Viewpoint Media Player', that allows you to see the world. Click 'Yes' otherwise you will not be able to see anything. This is a once only download for this particular piece of software and shouldn't take too long, the world will launch automatically once this plugin has self installed. If you need to come back and visit again or in fact any Atmosphere world in the future, then the loading time will only be based on the size of world you are visiting and of course whether you are using a dial up connection or a fast link.

The world will open in a new browser window and a spinning wire frame globe should appear in the middle of this initially black window, this informs you that the world is loading. As mentioned earlier, some worlds can have quite large loading times, this is due to the complexity of the geometry within a world, ie, the items that make up the world. Then there are the textures (pictures) for those items, they also have to be downloaded to your computer. So if things seem to be taking a time, please do be patient, the reward far surpasses any waiting time you may encounter.

The picture below shows the view of the 3d world upon entry, clicking into the main view will activate it and you will find that maybe you've already moved a little because you clicked and dragged the mouse. If you 'right click' in this window you will see a small menu pop up as shown below. For now just click the word 'Toolbar' and you will see a toolbar appear on the bottom of the screen.

The toolbar has a number of useful icons, and these allow you to perform various tasks such as choosing how you appear to others, giving yourself an in world name, controlling how fast you move etc.The whole concept is a very unique and satisfying experience. OK, so how do you move? Well, you can use the mouse but sometimes it might be better to use the arrow keys, it's simply down to personal preference. The forward arrow will move you forward and the back arrow, backwards. The left and right arrows will rotate you in either direction left or right. If however, you use the forward arrow whilst holding down the shift key, then you will rise up for as long as the arrow key is pressed. Holding the shift key down whilst pressing the left and right arrows will now slide you left or right rather than rotate you. There's another key combination too, using the forward or back arrow whilst holding the 'Ctrl' key, will tilt your view up or down. The best thing to do is experiment, you can't go wrong.

Maybe you want to be able to stay airbourne and take a look down at the world from above. You can do this too by clicking on the little dropping ball icon on the toolbar. When this icon is depressed, gravity is on and means you will always fall back to earth. Unchecked though, it enables you to stay up in the air when the forward (up) arrow key is pressed with the 'Shift' key at the same time. Let's take a look now at each of the icons on the toolbar in turn.

If this icon is depressed then your avatar will react as in the real world, ie, stop when an object is encountered. In its 'upstate', you can walk through walls etc.
Allows the user to stay airbourne when the icon is in its 'upstate'.
Allows the user to see the rear view of any avatar they might be wearing. If 'Shift' and 'Ctrl' are pressed together and the mouse dragged in the world view window, then you can spin around your avatar and view it from all around. Be careful to set it back to its initial position though, as it can be very hard to navigate through the world unless you do this.
There are two ways you can chat to other users in an Atmosphere world. One is to click the icon indicated, in which case a floating chat window will pop up and the other is to right click the mouse in the main view and click on the word 'Chat' from the small pop up menu. See below.
Sometimes designers of these environments might include some kind of interaction such as lowering or raising sound volume or reducing the amount of fog or glare effect present if any. Some avatars may also be animated and their various actions can be changed from the control panel.

Clicking the 'Preferences' icon will bring up a floating menu containing three further sub menus 'General', 'Display' and 'Chat'. From the 'General' tab you can change your name, check that 'Collisions' and 'Gravity' are on and also change the rate that you move through the world. The second tab 'Display', lets you change the way you see the world. If you have a graphics card that Atmosphere recognises then the 'Preferred Renderer' will default to 'Hardware'. If it can't find a recognised card, then it will default to 'Software Render'. Obviously, the world will work far better when in 'Hardware' mode, the movement is far more fluid and the lighting is much more even too.

There's another icon I haven't mentioned yet and it doesn't become visible until 'Enable Bookmarks' is ticked, found on the menu under the 'Chat' tab. You can see the current world you are in at the top left of the floating palette. Bookmarks are simply that, places that can

be saved into your collection. As this is probably the first time that most of you have paid a visit here then there won't be any other worlds in the 'My Bookmarks' section on the palette. My only reason for including this is for completeness of this navigation and useful tips section and to explain how to obtain and pass worlds to other users that you may meet in world. That's if you feel that you would like to explore other environments as well as this Van Gogh world. The sharing of worlds is quite simple, just drag from the 'My Bookmarks' section and drop it onto the 'Send World' square at the top right. If someone sends you a world you would like to keep, it will appear in the 'Received Bookmarks' section at the bottom of the palette. Drag this to 'My Bookmarks' and then each time you visit a world in the future, your bookmarked worlds will remain intact.
Clicking on this icon brings up the 'Users' palette and displays the name of other visitors and shows a picture of the avatar they are wearing. You can also tick the check box next to their name if you need to type something in private to them.

Finally we come to the 'Avatars' palette shown right of screen. You default to a blocky blue guy but more smoother style avatars are available. Changing avatars is similar to changing worlds. ie by dragging a new one from the 'My Avatars' section of the palette and dropping it onto the 'Current Avatar' box.

Avatar is an Indian word meaning 'A likeness of oneself'.

A word of caution here: When entering Vincent's house, you must be wearing the default avatar. The others are slightly larger and won't fit when you come to walk up the stairs.

Enjoy your visit and please do come back often. I do plan at some stage in the future to include more of the town of Arles so this will always be an ongoing, ever changing project. I've recreated Vincent's Bedroom Painting twice now, the first time in '93 showed what might have been at the other end of the bedroom. You will notice that in the version you're about to step into, that there is nothing at the unseen end. This is to allow you to move freely and so enable you to view the scene unhindered. If you tilt your view, you'll be able to recreate the view angle of the original painting.