My Virtual Workbench Project

My project for the coming months is to build what I call a "Virtual Workbench" whereby a user, standing at the "workbench", will be able to conduct basic practical physical science tasks and stimulating simulations, interacting in realtime with the apparatus comprising them. As I progress through this project I will discuss certain aspects of interest to "3DRadders" and make available for download the various completed tasks. The content used in the tasks, and also the source code, will not be freely accessible............it will all be encapsulated into the downloaded exe file.

The Room

My first step was to provide a room for my workbench. I chose this to be small and simple with bare brick walls, white ceiling tiles and clay floor tiles. The workbench, which is the central focus point of the room (and where all activity takes place), consists of a U-shaped piece of pine board supported by a few strategically placed packing crates. A large whiteboard is fastened to the front wall of the room. This whiteboard is used to display task instructions, help instructions, diagrams, photographs and movies.

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Oh, and there is also a locked door (this room is strictly private!) in the back wall :-

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The user, who is working at the bench, has the following views:-

Left

Front

Right

Navigation & Control

The user can move and look around freely in the room using the keyboard keys:-  
[Up Arrow]       = Move forward
[Down Arrow]  = Move back
[Left Arrow]      = Sidestep left
[Right Arrow]   = Sidestep right  
[A]   = Turn left
[D]  = Turn right
[S]  = Look up
[X]  = Look down  
I wanted to keep the mouse purely for selecting and manipulating the items that are being used on the workbench. Which leads me to: Task 1 : Manipulating Objects

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