The 2013 Project Commences

This week saw the start of my OpenSim project for 2013, which in the end saw a very different implementation from the original designs around a Formula 1 race circuit. As you can see from the screenshot we are using a residential centred approach, with the various builds acquired courtesy of OpenSim Creations and Linda Kellie, really worth a look if you have yet to visit these two sites. The sim will be in support of a Java desktop project , where students will produce a GUI app through which it will be possible to simulate control and status of electrical domestic appliances and produces summary power reports accompanied by an estimate of cost per Kw/Hr. A side effect of all this was that I finally got to seriously look at current charges per Kw/Hr, and subsequently found myself walking around my home in real life turning stuff off!

 

 

As you can see from this second screen shot the avatars are mostly arriving, one just in cloud state, and very much default in both clothing and appearance , though in my experience this will be just about the first thing that will change. Each of my students will be provided with a variation of appliance configuration that will be replicated in OpenSim and so will act as a control to the performance of their app. In the real world of course you could simply take yourself off and check the results you were getting with actual appliances, this not being particularly realistic, virtual is certainly the next best and possibly more fun thing. So what about actual appliances themselves, well I built most of these with one or two exceptions, they are turn On and Off using a Touch event and send data to a central meter that displays the consumption and cost as text, but first the students have the task of installing them in situ. This main building by the way was part of the Open VCE project and houses our SL Scripting exhibition built by Clive Pro.

Please stay in touch for updates, Vega

Forumla 1 circuit up and running



The formula 1 track is now functioning OK and the car itself is proving to be very drivable. At moment we have a Pole Postion lap time counter and a general lap counter with time logging also. Though the vehicle seems a little wooden as it were to drive in that there is very little in the way of banking motion, it does in all other respects feel, look and sound sufficiently OK to be of use to us for the coming project.

Bye for now Vega

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