Mr. Marx's office oversees construction and development on campus. Architectural blueprints and maps are available which show the planned and proposed expansions to be developed on recently purchased property located south of the Robertshaw building, identified as the South Campus. However, most people do not have the opportunity or knowledge to read these blueprints and visualize what the new development might look like when completed. Construction of physical 3-D models for such a large area and number of buildings is expensive and time-consuming. By beginning this on-going VRML project, Mr. Marx hopes to give the campus community and general public an opportunity to see how the proposed South Campus area will look as it is developed.

It was, therefore, the plan of the South Campus VRML team to create an elevation grid to simulate the terrain of the South Campus area. U.S. Geological Survey data for this property was supplied by Mr. Ron Wilson of IUP's Spatial Sciences Research Center and manipulated by IUP students to create a 3-D landscape. Unfortunately, because the elevation points of the data were spaced 30 meters apart and the data is pre-construction data, the changes in elevation in the landscape grid created from the USGS were too abrupt. (See the3-D test grid.) Therefore, an alternate, flatter elevation grid was created and used. Simple geometric models of the proposed buildings were created and placed onto this elevation grid. Because most of the buildings are still in the planning stages, no detailed blueprints are yet available for them. Since concrete plans are not available, most of the building models are creations of the VRML team.

On the other hand, a full set of blueprints are available for the President's house. Thus, more detail has been added to the exterior of this model, and the interiors of several of the first floor rooms have been modeled as well. Because choices for the exterior and interior finishes and colors had not yet been made, these decisions were made by the VRML team for the VRML models. One advantage to VRML modeling of the South Campus is that as decisions are made and plans become more concrete, the South Campus VRML model can be modified to reflect those decisions.

In addition to VRML modeling, webpages are available which include textual information on the South Campus buildings and expansion as well as excerpts from IUP's twenty-year long-range campus development plan.