When using the Marine Virtual Explorer, you are immersed in an computer generated world that represents a deep-sea hydrothermal vent field on the East Pacific Rise. MARVE is a media rich, data intensive web activity. You will not be able to successfully use it with a phone (56K) modem. Ideally you will have 256Kbps download speed or faster internet connection. If you dont have high speed internet access and want to use MARVE, please contact me, I can arrange to send you a CD for a nominal fee. Also, high speed internet access may not be enough, you will a decent computer to decode all the video that you download and keep up the interactivity. For Macintosh users, I suggest a G3 -300 with MacOS 8.6 or higher. For Windows, I recommend a 300 Mhz Pentium or faster. Windows 98 should be the oldest operating system. (I have not really tested the low the end, so things may work for you on slower machines).

The virtual world is created with a 3-D computer modeling tool (Lightwave3d by Newtek). The landform in the world is based on 1-meter resolution bathymetric of the study area, produced by Greg Kurras and Margo Edwards of the University of Hawaii. The study area is approximately 200 meters long by 150 meters wide. There is approximately 20 meters vertical relief in the area.

When viewing the world, you will feel like you are in a rocky, volcanic world. That rocky, volcanic feeling results from the the rocks and all the color you see in the model, and these are actual photographs taken from the study area and projected onto the landform model. This is the artist part. In the real world at 2500 m below the sea surface, there is no light and so one no really know what this world looks like, but the research scientists like the look.

From the 3-D computer model, we went to 20 locations and created 360° panoramic views. These views are then turned into a QuickTime VR panorama movie. The panorama movie shows only a partial view of the panorama. You can use the mouse (or the joystick) and turn the view to the right, left, up or down. In the panoramas, (in the model) are objects(such as the animals, the hydrothermal vents, the smoke from the vents, some of the rock formations, etc,) are clickable hotspots. Clicking on the hotspots brings up video taken from the Alvin submersible. (the video clips are 8-15 seconds so they load pretty quickly). The cursor changes to a "hand with circle" icon when over a clickable hotspot.

Some of the hotspots in the panorama take you to another of the 20 locations rather than lauch a video. When you travel from place to place using the hotspots, you should see animated sequence traveling through the model. You can also travel from location to location using the pink dots on the map. Clicking a dot will take you to that location (hyperdrive in the deep sea!)

In terms of viewing MARVE, the whole interactive module is created as a "shockwave" module and shockwave requires a special plugin for internet browsers. The videos and travel movies are in the Quicktime file format and thus requires the latest version of that computer utility. To enable printing from shockwave, you will be asked to download an "Xtra". The print button on your browser will not print what you see on the screen. You can only print the screen by clicking on the printer icon in the lower right corner of the submarine control panel.

Print button. This will print the whole screen when in map mode. When in the Notes tab or Water tab from the clipboard is showing, this will print the table shown on the screen.	Clicking this icon does not save your work, instead it evaluates your activity. It will notify you if you have completed the tasks for basic or advanced achievement	Clicking this icon exits the explorer. It will notify you if you have completed the tasks for basic or advanced achievement and then you can print your certificate of exploration

last revision {4/22/2002}