News from the Race Track

Work has been going particularly well down at the virtual Formula 1 track in OpenSim this week. To begin with I decided to build a light rack system for the race start than runs through the Red, Amber Orange sequence and of course logs the lap time for the avatar, this particular version as I mentioned in my last post is just for Pole Position at the moment.

While the OpenSim Formula 1 racing experience will I am certain represent a valuable and popular aspect of the project, this will not be where the grades are to be found, they require my students to develop a desktop application designed in OO and implemented using Java. If anyone out there has tried to get Java to connect to a MySql database then you will know it either works first time or requires just a little attention to detail in getting the right drivers and permissions. Well I got them to work OK in the end, and if you are looking for a tutorial this is a very useful link  that you may like to follow. I have included a small screen shot here of my test Java app running in command line mode that my students will develop into a GUI version capable of processing the final collection of logged data.

The next stage for the OpenSim part of the project will be to develop a means of capturing the various lap counts and times, so please stay in touch for updates. Do feel free to comment on your own experiences with using OpenSim

Vega

The Race Track is Ready

Well its end of term now and I am busily spending some of my time working on the Formula 1 OpenSim project. Having cleared down the Mars base project from last year I converted the terrain to a 1m high flat island that covers the sim just short of the boundary limits so that we can have plenty of room for those different race tracks. One reason that I chose to have a particularly flat terrain though is that although the vehicles (Formula 1 cars) will appear to be grounded on the tarmac, in reality the script will be sensing land, so keeping land at a constant height should make for a smooth ride.

Choice of materials has been an important consideration in this project. For instance, the wheels of vehicles do not actually have to turn, you simply simulate rotation through rotating textures, and so you need the wheels to be made of the lowest friction material available, and this is glass! I also found that the crash barrier are also very sensitive to material type, and after a few tests found that metal gave the best results. I have had a good numbers of test drives around the circuit, tweeking and evaluating settings of the vehicle script and am happy with performance so far, though how things will work out with all my students driving at the same time remains to be seen.

One feature of the project that I particularly wanted to implement is the ability to log data i.e. driver details etc to an external web database. I had my first attempt at this today and it seems to be working just fine; please see the screen shot from my phpMyADMIN Sql query. There is of course some ground still to cover, excuse the pun, but things are looking particularly promising for this years project right now, so please stay in touch for more updates.

Vega

A Day At The Races

Well it’s coming to that time of year again when I need to start thinking about the project for my Foundation Degree students who are studying Object Oriented Design. As a supplement their actual project, that will be written in Java, I like to make use of our OpenSim Virtual World Platform here at the College. If you have been following this blog, then you will know that last year we had a Mars sim, were students could experience a virtual field trip to the red planet and gather data on temperatures, atmospheric pressure, wind and solar energy for their Mars base environment control application. Earlier this week I had a discussion with my new group and they expressed a particular reference for a gaming element in their use OpenSim, and in the end we decided upon a motor racing theme. The core project will be to create a desktop application that will store and allocate pole positions, calculate race points along with various driver, team and vehicle details. The simulator part will be in the form of designing and creating racetracks for the various events, where they will get be become the actual drivers, sounds fun enough to me. As a bare minimum, I thought it would be reasonable for me to at least provide the group with some basic components and from the screen shot you can see a quarter circle and straight section of track that I made. The cars, I actually acquired from OpenSim Creations by Garry Beaumont, I though I have decided to include my own version of wheels for the vehicles. As anyone that has tried the physics engine in SecondLife and then attempted to apply the scripting solution to OpenSim will know, its not that straightforward, but having said this, I have downloaded a script from OpenSim.org by Kitto Flora and it runs OK, and I am working on some small modifications over the coming weeks. My next task is to clear down and prepare the simulator some time this week ready for the project, I will for sure be posting more updates as we move along, so please stay in touch


Bye for now Vega

Two new regions ready to go

The end of term came with the arrival of two requests that I had been expecting for virtual worlds. There was some possibility of giving each its own server, but in the end I decided to make use of the server running our Comenius virtual world project. My first attempt to create a new region adjacent to the Comenius build did appear to make everything just a little to crowded, and so I decided to leave a sim space between each region. This created the desired effect and also means that avatars will not simply be able to walk over, though Teleporting is still possible.
I set-up meetings to discuss such issues as terrains, builds, scripting and use with both of my colleagues and managed to deliver the sims ready to go after a couple of days, please see accompanying screen shots. More posts will follow on these as the intention is for students to be introduced to the virtual world and their facilities during Induction this coming September.




I have also been busy uploading some more of my own builds to OpenSim Creations, and this week I delivered Solarum, a two floor low prim, low footprint solar home, which at the moment I see has been downloaded thirteen times. The residence can of course be enhanced by the inclusion of the wind turbine that I mentioned in the previous post, so happy with that.

Stay in touch for more updates, have a good summer, regards Vega

Terrains and Wind Turbines

Getting ready to meet up with our two staff members that requested an Open Sim instance for their groups, I realised this week that it would be a good idea to actually put together a small portfolio of terrains for them to choose from. So far I have managed assemble or create fourteen, and these range from equally sized small flat plots for individual projects too much larger equally sized plots for group project work. The others fall into a much wider range of island groups, coves, hilly, and mountainous. I am thinking about actual content, but for now leaning more in the direction of letting people create their own, it would be a good way getting building skills for our students.


I have also been continuing with my submissions to OpenSim Creations with a working wind turbine. One of the aspects about working in a virtual world that I really like is being able to create a real world simulation. The wind turbine, as you can see from the image here, is basically of the type that you would typically find installed in a solar home style of project. Given the fact that the wind, though be it virtual, does actually blow in the virtual world, then its really only a case of using the correct function to get the value that you need and use it in a straight forward basic formula for a wind turbine. Of course one of the more challenging sides to a project like this is getting the blades to rotate in the correct plane irrespective of rezzed position. I must confess to getting around this tricky though not insoluble problem, as you are equally likely to find that the issues can more often be those of lag, and so my solution was to use a turbine blade texture and simply animate it. While I have not put too much detail in this post, you can if you are interested grab a copy of my wind turbine from here, it comes with fully commented code and tutorial.

Have fun Vega

OpenSim Is Growing

Our work here at the College with OpenSim is looking increasingly promising with our European partners in the Comenius project requesting that we maintain the project for the coming year, which is very encouraging indeed. As part of out Teaching and Learning Conference here at the College recently the Comenius OpenSim was demonstrated as part of our workshop offering and following this I received two requests for islands for next year from our own staff, brilliant and I shall be sure to blog on the outcome of those.





For my own part I decided that it was time to start making some of my own builds available to the OpenSim community, and so I have been uploading to OpenSim Creations. The builds are freely available and distributed under the Creative Commons License and they are under the avatar name Vega, so do please feel free to download and any positive comments would be welcome.

Bye for now, Vega

Life on Mars Overview and Feedback

The Overview and feedback from a 32 question student survey of the Life on Mars project is now available in the small hall of the main building here at Shimmer Island in Second Life or from this web link. The project itself was the result of work carried out by a group of level 5 Foundation Degree students here at Bromley College currently enrolled on the Network Computing course. The project was established in order to provide students with a virtual world field trip to the planet Mars. The project itself was in support of a final year assignment to produce a desktop simulation for a solar powered lighting and heating control system written in Java. In order to give student avatars a realistic experience of the planet Mars the following was carried out: - the terrain was terra-formed and suitably textured. For effect, the sound of wind was introduced, as was the arrival of random particle dust storms. Each student was allocated a unique combination of building components, which they formed into a connected accommodation unit. A small weather station was placed on the surface that relayed temperatures and wind speeds throughout the Martian day that was reasonably consistent with those found on the planet. Finally, each avatar came ready installed with spacesuit, boots, gloves, helmet and backpack life support. Please feel free to download the pdf and comment to this posting.

regards Vega

Some useful stuff

If like myself you have moved into OpenSim from Second Life, then there is no doubt that you may be finding resources particularly free ones are somewhat thin on the ground and locating them can be time consuming until you locate all those sim and web addresses. So I was really pleased to find a newsletter posting that pointed to a Google Search facility - HyperFind: OpenSim Content Custom Search Engine' At the present time searches include http://www.onikenkon.com/UCI , http://thehypergates.com/, http://www.lindakellie.com/ , http://www.avaverse.org/ ,  http://thoughtfulmonkey.com/ and I image that more will be added as they become available.

Are you using OpenSim as an education tool, then you may well be interetsed in Opensim-edu http://opensim-edu.org/blog/ the site features
How to guides, places to visit, OAR's and websites, well worth a visit

Finally, talking of using virtual worlds for education, I came across this chat log Transcript of March 23 NPC Meetup with Global Kids on "Playing 4 Peace". Apart from the obvious interest in what was was actaully being said and taking place at the meet, there are some very useful web and sim addresses that you may like to follow up on.
 
 
Bye for now and feel free to comment, Vega

New Waves, Videos and Metrics

Just by way of making small improvements the Comenius Island
sim I added some ocean wave effects called ‘Ocean and shore waves’ by Vanish at Opensim-Creations.com. They perform really well and can take a good bit of stretching and still look good, so if you are looking for some waves then I can recommend these.












I have finally got round to uploading my tutorials and a Mars Walkabout onto YouTube, and if you would like to see them they are embedded here below.

Changing Clothes in OpenSim

Introduction to Building in OpenSim

Life on Mars

OpenSim and SL Metrics

On a completely different note has anyone noticed the latest trend figures from SlUniverse for OpenSim regions, a little disappointing really Click Here

If you take a look at Second Life Grid Survey - EconomicMetrics page SL by contrast seems to be holding up reasonable well, there are a whole wealth of data here and even an API. Are educators drifting back to SL, not sure, but if you have any views then please feel free to reply.

Bye for now Vega

Life on Mars

This week has seen a substantial amount of work come into existence for me when my HE students began their adventures on a virtual field trip to Isidis Planitia, that’s on the surface of Mars, and not by coincidence the landing point of the Beagle2 spacecraft, virtual worlds are just great. If by chance you are up for putting yet another ‘e’ version of eLearning into operation then you may like to consider emmersiveLearning. The main project is to use solar energy to provide heating and lighting for some form of accommodation written in Java, such was the original design spec. At that time though the group had no idea as to what type of accommodation or its location, and that was presented to them in the last period Monday, welcome to Mars.

This week has seen a substantial amount of work come into existence for me when my HE students began their adventures on a virtual field trip to Isidis Planitia, that’s on the surface of Mars, and not by coincidence the landing point of the Beagle2 spacecraft, which you can just see in the foreground, virtual worlds are just great. If by chance you are up for putting yet another ‘e’ version of eLearning into operation then you may like to consider emmersiveLearning. The main project is to use solar energy to provide heating and lighting for some form of accommodation written in Java, such was the original design spec. At that time though the group had no idea as to what type of accommodation or its location, and that was presented to them in the last period Monday, welcome to Mars.

So they could get an idea about the temperature ranges on a typical day on Mars, I produced a small weather station, and it produces some reasonable values for wind speed, temperature and barometric pressure.

First off I put together new region in Open Sim, then terra-formed and textured the scene. I required some space type accommodation and variation, so that everyone could have a personalised space. I found a really nice solution Tube City at OpenSim-Creations, this is a free set of buildings that matched the requirement very nicely, though I did re-texture them.

Here you can see part of the collection they have to choose from, in fact I decided on some groupings first and then put them into a lucky dip that everyone drew from. Have received the components its was just a case of them taking a copy for each build.

Well that was Monday afternoon and writing this now on Thursday morning as you can see there has been some enthusiastic work going on. I have been making the odd voyage to the red planet during the day and usually find some of the group in there discussing and working away at the task . While I need no convincing as to the collaborative benefits that exist using these real time 3D environments, the experience this week has been very rewarding in itself.

Playing Media

I have been both acquiring a creating some help mkaterials for the new users of our Comenious project, generally in the form of help panels that have been placed into a small tutorial building on the sim. While these are fine, I did particularly want to get some video tutorials together. If you have yet on try this approach then let me recommend CamStudio as an easy to use screen capture desktop application, it comes with a number really useful and uncluttered features. The output files from CamStudio can be either avi of swf format, I used the avi format and then converted them into mov format, which you will need for OpenSim using the convertfiles.com websites, easy to use and did the job no problem.
The process of playing media in OpenSim is described on this page and it includes a Freeview script.
The script makes use of a notecard called bookmarks. It was when I was running the script for the first time that I recognised the dialog from a media viewer I had downloaded some time ago in Second Life. The thing is that the content of the bookmark notecard does have to be in a particular format namely: -

video descriptionurl

Examples
Prim Basicshttp://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/video/build1.mov
Editing Clotheshttp://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/video/editclothes.mov

Please feel free to copy the url's into a web browser if you would like to see the content.

The vertical bar if you have difficulty finding it, can be produced by holding down the Alt key and typing 124 on the numeric keypad then releasing.

From the screen shot you can see that the actual image is sandwiched between two signs saying Touch for Menu. In fact these are two surface of a cube that has been tapered, and between them the surface that plays the video. I did this because when I tried the video player with a viewer that supported Shared Media, I seemed to loose the Script Touch event for the dialog on the screen surface, it seems to work though.

I have a new student project underway, and will be posting on that shortly so please stay in touch for something a little different.

Vega

VW in HE report

The ascilite 2011 'Changing Demands Changing Directions' survey report into use of Virtual World in HE entitled 'How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds' is available here

The report provides a nice background and current snapshot of activities taking place in the various Universities that contributed to the report, including key drivers and the perceived advantages and some difficulties experienced in using a range of Virtual worlds platforms, well worth a read.

Vega

Comenious island good to go

The Comenious virtual world is finally at the point where we have begun to create avatars for our members of staff here at Bromley and so far one from our partner in the Netherlands. The screen shot here shows the main island with its gallery display area, along with central meeting and tutorial hall. While I did create many of the builds here, including the little canal boat, others have been downloaded from OpenVCE project, Linda Kellie Creations and OpenSim Creations.
There an number of really nice builds available from OpenSim Creations, and of those two in particular caught my eye for this project. The first was this light house with keepers cottage. I did have to script the door and light beam but the rest rezzed just fine.
Having introduced the Keepers cottage, I could not resist the temptation to introduce a few furnishings, again some downloaded and others home brewed. One of the project team on seeing this suggested that the place could be used as a display area for student work also and why not, sounds good to me.
The second build from OpenSim Creations was a windmill complete with Millers cottage, and just off to the right out to sea you can just make out my clipper ship that sails around the island group.
As with the Light house keepers home, the Millers is also furnished along with bags of flour. This in fact was just to good an opportunity not to include a virtual mill effect, so you will find a rotating grinding stone accompanied by grinding sounds, just for a touch of realism.
The tutorial area has a number of screen shot and OpenVce panels and I will include some movies for things like, changing avatar appearance, building and texturing.
Well thats about all for now, but please stay in touch as the sim comes into use. regards Vega