Tropical Paradise

This is the first multi-node virtual-reality environment I created, back in 1997. This is a five-node tour, mostly photographed at The Baths on Virgin Gorda, with one node made in Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rain forest. The tour will even take you on a dive onto the coral reef, which may be the first underwater VR environment ever created. See if you can find the “virtual damselfish” there.

This project, first developed with Apple’s breakthrough QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) technology, won first prize in Apple’s 1998 QTVR competition. The prize was a Nikon 35mm SLR, which I used for a year before I dove into the digital realm.

In the decades since, as VR technologies evolved, the project was recompiled in Adobe Flash, and then as an HTML5 platform. The latest (2025) version uses Javascript for interactivity, WebP images, and WEBXR for compatibility with head-mounted displays.