MS V-Chat Worlds Rediscovered
V-Chat worlds are held in a proprietary format that to my knowledge has never been publicly released. These are my notes on the .wdb file format, for anyone that might find them useful. I figured most of this out after many hours detective work with a hex editor, mapping the file out starting with obvious…
I wanted to preserve use of the original texture images with their vertically stacked animation frames, but also to have the animation work in a standalone x3d file that is inlined into the web page. V-Chat geometry is stored in world.wdb files which very usefully include the names of animated textures in the form AnimXXYY,…
Preview of Compass added, plenty of issues to address though: navigation, texture animation, geometry animation, rendering fidelity, links, portals and sound. Update: Navigation fixed – Viewpoint orientation had negative y value. Added Ctrl-drag for strafe and raise/lower. Trapped a potential divide by zero in the moveIt() function.
Blimey. So much has changed in the 15 years since I last had a web site that I’m having to head off to learn new things at every turn. The first cut of HutchWorld is now working well enough to publish. I’ve added a simple touch interface for tablets, including using multi-touch for ‘strafe’ and…