Distance working

Just last week when I was thinking I had gotten away with being visited by the flu bug making its seasonal rounds, I found myself displaying all the usual anti-social symptoms and decided to give up the struggle and take a few days off. Such things will inevitably leave any plans you may have for classes most definitely suspended. This does not have to be the case at all with virtual worlds however. Here you can see a few of the screen images that I captured with my group during the day, while I was safely quarantined at home and they were in college.

There were a whole raft of questions that I found myself able to deal with from building to scripting that went way beyond the project that I set, a very enthusiastic group.

In answer to the most obvious objection of course about still working while officially off and not feeling so good either, I agree, but once you have caught up with all those programs on your Sky planner, it beats watching day time TV hands down.

regards, and fully recovered, Vega

Solar Panel up for grabs

To assist my students with getting to grips with scripting in OpenSim, they have come at this from C and Java, I have installed a basic solar panel. The panel, which is 1m square is as you can see from the screen shot producing 150 Watts of power. I have not completed the coding for the example and the task of my group will be to see if they can tidy up the script and include features for time of day etc. For their own projects, and I have now given them all individual energy requirements, they will have to re-size the panel and modify the script so that enough power is generated.

Once in place they should begin to get an idea of the physical impact that production of electricity from solar energy will have upon a living environment, not something we think about when all we normally see is a light switch or power socket. What will happen at night, when there will be no Sun and so no power? Speculate about a storage system, which means being able to produce a lot more power than you actually need during the day, hence a much larger panel! such arguments will form the basis of the final evaluation.

If you would like to see how it all turns out then please stay in touch.

kind regards Vega

Scanner project from Clive Pro

Clive Pro is about to run his HE project on our OpenSim. Below you will find a copy of the assignment scenario and requirement for the HE group, we actually ran a similar project last year, but then it was in Second life!

Scenario

You are working for a Web development company. A colleague, who has just left the organisation, was working on an avatar scanner system to interface one or more scanner objects in either of the MUVEs, Second Life or OpenSim, with scripts and a database on an external Web server. Your supervisor has asked you to take up the project and complete it.

Requirement

An avatar scanning system is required for the Multi User Virtual Environment, OpenSim . You are to undertake development on a standalone simulator called bromsim. The system is to consist of two parts, a scanner object that can be rezzed on any land in-world where the owner has create rights and a LAMP Environment where scanner data is held in a database on an external Web server. Multiple scanner objects can be rezzed at different locations in-world, but these all report back to the same central external Web server.

When a scanner object is rezzed, or reset, it is to automatically report back its communications channel id, object id, region and exact co-ordinates to the Web server, which is to store this data in the database. If there is already data for this particular scanner object in the database, this existing data is to be erased before the new data is stored. At regular intervals the scanner object is to automatically scan its environment for avatars and temporarily store their names and the total number of avatar’s detected.

An administration Web page allows the user to list the active scanner objects in the database and contact individual scanner objects. The user can then choose either to ask the scanner object for the names and total numbers of avatars detected during most recent scan, or instruct the scanner object to self-destruct, in which case its details are also to be removed from the database.

You have access to the following uncommented scripts that your
ex-colleague developed:

i) scanner - written in Linden Scripting Language and designed to run
within a scanner object in-world.
ii) register.php - Designed to run on the external Web server
ii) scanner.php - Designed to run on the external Web server
iv) scan.php – Designed to run on the external Web server

We shall be posting feedback on this project so please stay in touch for that.

regards Vega

Work starts on the project builds

The National Software Development group have started on their OpenSim builds for the Solar Panel project as part of their course work for this term. Most of the students in the group had already enrolled with our OpenSim, but for those first timers, I sat and demonstrated the building tools; probably about 20 minutes of instruction seem to be OK.

This years project

My project for the virtual world this year will be based around an assignment for my BTEC National students in Software Development. Each will select a build from the four shown here, which they will have to power from an array of solar voltaic cells. To each I shall then assign a combination of energy requirements such as lights and appliances. While the initial exercise for this has already been written in Java, I have found from previous years that the conversion to Linden Script (oops), given their exposure to structured C also, presents no great difficulty beyond the idea of working in a state driven environment.

I feel the advantage of being able to make use of a dynamic virtual world environment such as OpenSim, allow students to experience their applications running more as a simulation rather than static desktop application, for instance:

•Make use of sun angle in relation to power output
•For sun angles below the horizon then power output will drop to zero
•Factor in virtual world cloud cover
•The impact on the size of an array to a property, they may not all fit onto the roof
•Use excess day power for night storage

Once the project is complete, I shall be posting views and feedback, so you may like to stay in touch for that.

regards Vega

Time to start scripting

Using our OpenSim as a means of encouraging students to explore virtual worlds continues to be increasingly popular. Beyond the building that has been taking place, the next stage is to get them all familiar with scripting. I have been working with Second Life and using it as part of my main stream course delivery for the last couple years now, and that has certainly proved to also be popular. The question is, just how much scripting functionality does OpenSim have by comparison to SL. The way have I decided to approach this is to simply give my students access to the simpler SL scripts and see how they get on, not that I am suggesting for one minute that OpenSim should be a carbon copy of SL, but the approach seems a reasonable way to start. The script library that I am using is at

http://freescriptlibrarysl.co.uk/Main/index.php?title=Main_Page

Once each of the students have run through a series of scripts for testing, I will get them to post their findings to this blog.

Civil order in a virtual world

I am really pleased to see that student building efforts in our new OpenSim is continuing at some pace, and still with little direct help from us Second Lifers, all very encouraging I must say.

From the post title though, you can rightly guess that I am going to blog about something different, so here's a little anecdote, you may find amusing and possibly useful. Given the stage of development that OpenSim is currently at with regard to any restrictions you would otherwise find easy to apply with respect to building in other similar worlds, some students have soon come to realise the ease with which they can construct things anywhere, everywhere, anytime, much to the annoyance of other residents!

What to do? There is always the weapon of first choice of course, verbal warning then next time account suspended, but maybe not the best approach here, instead:-

In this Monday’s class, I knew the group would be more than keen to know the results of a test from the previous week, so the conversation went something like this.

Let me apologise to you all regarding the test results, which I had set time aside for marking on Saturday. The thing is, when I looked out of my window on Saturday morning, I discovered that someone had actually parked a large van on my drive. It took me all the rest of that morning attempting to discover the owner and eventually having to contact the Police to get the vehicle removed, after which I had other more pressing things to do, so you will all have to hang on for a few more days for those results.

With this the whole group began informing me, as to what I should have done to get the vehicle off my drive. Some suggestions I must say were very original, while others clearly illegal and some damn right impossible. Anyway I eventually told them this was just fiction, but given their clear and strong views with regard to the sovereign nature of private property, should we not be prepared to extend such considerations into the virtual world?

The approach-elicited firm nods all round, particularly from one somewhat embarrassed looking individual sitting at the back, typical.

If you are just on the verge of engaging with virtual worlds, please let me encourage you without hesitation, but do be prepared for virtual civil society, its waiting just around the next prim.

In fact I can actually recommend some good reading on the subject:

My Tiny Life by Julien Dibble (a really worthwhile read, you may be surprised by the dates)

Exodus to the Virtual World by Edward Castronova (explores policy and constitution in a virtual world)

I Avatar by Mark Stephen Meadows (takes a more cultural perspective)

Good luck to all, and please stay in touch as we continue out virtual journey here at Bromley, and please feel free to reply with your own experiences.

regards Vega