Make Your Website Reach Out With A Flash 3d Environment

2008-06-30 Word Count: 824 Category: Interior Design

A flash 3D environment can really make your website stand out. With many billions of websites on the internet today, making yours stand out from the crowd is a tough challenge, but one way in which you might be able to achieve this is through the use of a 3D environment, or in other words, creating the impression of a website which transcends the flat single dimension which most other websites inhabit, and generates the impression of a space which can be explored in all dimensions.

Usually, when we visit a website, it is a flat screen of information and content. The monitor we use to look at the website is flat, and this flatness creates a mental barrier between the visitor and the site's contents. This is a shame, because it may well be that the website has some tremendous content, but if it is flat then there will always be that barrier to overcome. However, introducing a 3D environment into a website immediately lifts the barrier out of the way, and immerses the visitor in a world which they can explore.

Straight away of course, by having a 3D environment your website is considerably different to any other site the visitor will have been to lately, and this alone will capture their interest, and is likely to be remembered for a long time. They may even recommend or link to your website from the novelty alone, although you'll obviously be careful to ensure that your website is not merely novelty alone, but gets the content across too.

We can think of your website in terms of a museum, gallery or office space. When people visit these places they don't expect to be prompted to stand in front of a notice board and stare at the content there before being whisked off to another board of information. People like to be able to look around them, to explore, to get a feel for the overall quality and style of the place. In other words, people enjoy being in control of the environment they inhabit. It's a natural need we all feel, and being able to look around us in all directions, and to explore the world around us gives us a feeling of ownership, understanding and helps cement an image and memory of the environment.

A website that incorporates a flash 3D environment provides this same impression and opportunity, allowing visitors to look around them and to explore the site, and its contents, by being in control of it. Of course, once of the biggest challenges, and the main question you're most likely thinking about now is how exactly do you go about creating a 3D environment for your website?

There are two main options. The first is a virtual reality website which uses the scripting language VRML, or Virtual Reality Modelling Language. This creates a fully immersive 3D environment that visitors can explore and can include links to information or other pages. The problems with this are fairly numerous. Firstly, it requires a fairly solid understanding of 3D modelling, and you'll need to create the entire 3D world from scratch, secondly, the visitor will need to download and install an plug-in in order to be able to see and browse your website, and thirdly, the overall size of your web pages will be so huge that it could take several minutes for them to load, even on a broadband internet connection.

Fortunately there is an alternative, and this is to use Flash. Flash is ideal as a system to create a 3D environment because of that fact that the files are usually so very small. I have come across a Flash 3D environment that is only around 15 kilobytes - that's less that an average page of writing alone! This Flash 3D environment actually allows me to explore in all directions, up, down, left and right, and even forwards and backwards. It doesn't have to be photo realistic, that's not what this is about, but it does create the illusion of a fully immersive 3D world, and immediately captures interest.

Unless you're a genius when it comes to using Flash I would strongly recommend you use one of the commercially available Flash 3D environment packages, but these are all very easily customisable, and will allow you to very quickly generate your own 3D environments to help ensure that your visitors are captivated. Of course, the extra beauty as far as using Flash is concerned, besides the very small file sizes and the ease of use, is the fact that it will not require anyone to install a plug-in, as the Flash plug-in is usually already installed on every computer. This means that your visitors can, within seconds, be exploring your web space and enjoying an experience that they'll remember for a lot longer than those of your competitors.

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