The new smcaruso.com: interactive, everywhere.
A lot of the work that I've been putting in lately has been motivated by wanting to make interesting interactive 3D environments accessible to everyone. I think they're great as an addition to live events and exhibits, alternatives for folks who can't come to visit in person, references for visitors to revisit later, and even components of a physical experience in the form of touch- or motion-controlled exhibit elements.
To that end, I've put together a new website that demonstrates some web-based techniques that load fast and perform well on any device, not just graphics workstations and streaming servers. This style of interactive experience will live alongside my Unreal Engine-based 3D applications for desktop, mobile, streaming and VR, which are best suited for photorealistic graphics. On the web, though, these are fantastic.
Try it out at www.smcaruso.com — full real-time interactive 3D on your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone.
The site is also available natively in VR through WebXR, great for standalone VR headsets like the Oculus Quest 2.
The interactive environment is modeled in Blender, and rendered in real-time in clients' web browsers using Three.js and WebGL. The page also contains standard CSS-styled HTML, still accessible by screen readers.
3D objects in the scene react to mouseover and touch events, and when clicked or tapped open panels with HTML content.
A VR-optimized version of the site is available at www.smcaruso.com/vr or through the link in the Mobile VR section.
