Portal at AWGate

AW Gate, where you first land on entry to ActiveWorlds

About controls

There are lots of control features in ActiveWorlds that help you do things, and to move around. This month, we want to walk you through a few of these. We will continue this in the next Newbies page.

When you first log on, you will see what are called HUDs (heads up displays) located on your screen. You can move these HUDs around to suit yourself. To do this, hold down the right ALT key on your keyboard, and then right click on one of the HUDs. You will be able to move it pretty well anywhere on the screen. When you are happy where it is, just release mouse button.

There are three types of HUDs that appear on your screen. These may vary depending on which world you are in. We will use those available in Yellow here. The pictures below will show what these are

When you click on one of the buttons, a pull-down menu will appear, with a variety of options you can select. We will discuss these below.

The HUDs

The HUDs

The HUDs
Here are the three that appear in Yellow. All worlds have these three, but the bottom one in the picture on the left may vary considerably. This time we will be introducing you to the HUD on the top. Just select one of the options and left click on it. A pull down menu will appear. The pictures show examples of this. You then select which option you want.
Teleport option

The Teleport option
One of the great ways to get around in AW is to 'teleport'. Look at the options shown on the picture. You can do a number of things. One you might want to use a lot is clicking on the 'Remember' option. This will save the location you are in to a permanent file, which you can then call up at any time. More on this in the next issue. The 'Home' option will teleport you to your home base. The option 'Make this my home' will do just that -- where you are will be your home. This is where you will land anytime you log into ActiveWorlds.

Visibility

The Visibility option
You can adjust how far you can see in any given spot by increasing or decreasing your visibility. Just left click on a number and this is as far as you will be able to see. Remember, the longer your visibility, the more models and such the system will show. This means that in very crowded or dense areas, you will slow down considerably. Sometimes a builder will offer advice such as "Reduce visibility to 90". You will know when you are slowing down because it's hard to move around. The 'frame rate' (frames per second) is on the bottom of your AW screen and shows how fast you can go. This is like a movie or television. The system is taking pictures at a 'frame rate' of a certain amount. So, a fps of 60 is really good, whereas a fps of 4.2 is very slow.

Settings

The Settings option
If you select Options on the HUD, the pulldown menu will provide a number of items, all of which will enable you to set up your system to the best effect. The picture shows what appears if you select "Settings". This menu provides you lots of options to adjust AW to best suit your system. If you haven't already looked at this, explore all the options carefully and then you will be able to decide what is best for your own system.

Help

The Help option
AWI follows universal practice, by having a "Help" option at the end of the HUD. Here you will find options which will direct you to various AW pages for help. The AW browser is a very dynamic system which is continuously changing. It's important to keep abreast of these changes, and a direct way to find these out is to select the User Guide option and go from there.

And Finally...

We have not explored all the available options on the HUD. Experiment! Click on them all and see what comes up. This is the best way to get familiar with this very powerful program.

One last quick tip. Note that some of the options on the HUD are underlined. Another way to get the menu to come up is to use the Alt+ the letter underlined. This saves mouse clicking. So if you want to go to the Teleport option, just press Alt and T together.

If you have any questions about any of this, or other topics, telegram Ozman or Apooka, or email yellowgazette@cox.net and if we can't help, we will direct you to someone who can.