March 2011 Archives

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:11:12 : Great vid by Andrew Boyarsky of CUNY on the NYC project - showing why they took the #sl route http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEKQG88AuM
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:00:33 : Daden Blog: Adventures in #opensim data plotting #3 http://t.co/5zKKdXh finally got 3D line plotting working

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:17:39 : Just heard that one of our clients won 2nd Prize at the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge #gt11. Congrats to Andrew and the team.
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:34:57 : Head spinning again from too much quarternion maths, but think I may have finally cracked it
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:31:53 : #gt11 go New York!
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:58:34 : #gt11 richard boyd's daughter trying to change TV channel by wiping her hand across it - love it!
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:53:36 : #gt11 whole panel making me more and more convinced we should be based in the US not the UK!
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:52:38 : #gt11 he's talking about our Datascape by the sound of it - last year FVWC finalist!
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:51:06 : #gt11 virtual world as collaborative user interface to other apps
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:20:49 : #gt11 - better fidelity model is Prof Stones of environment - task - interaction, and possibly avatar
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:15:37 : #gt11 lot of sense coming from Richard Boyd of Lockheed Martin about what we need for the future of virtual worlds
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:05:41 : #gt11 Richard Boyd - 70-75% of people can't extrapolate from 2D plans to 3D builds - anyone know the source of that stat?
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:59:45 : Tuning into the virtual worlds debate at #gt11 via Metanomics - Doug already talking about context sensitive AIs and wide operational areas

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:15:12 : #GT11 And EDGE Quests spookily similar to our NYC ones (which I admit were doppelgängers of WoW!) Fingers crossed for NYC for #GT11 awards
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:13:07 : Interesting reading about D9 ( new DoD trg #vw) at #GT11 - looks like they want to escape VBS2 licence costs. EDGE from Tami/Doug also nice
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:36:46 : RT @JennFor: The US Army's new virtual enviro: EDGE |  http://bit.ly/ej7oOA (heard at GameTech)
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:23:30 : #gdwtraveller spaceship in #opensim and whole sim rezzing - Daden Blog http://t.co/FmgPjQY via @AddThis
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:52:50 : Just populating a demo model for a client with some little stick figures - makes the space alive. Then emailed whole OAR straight to him.

Finally completed my Empress Marava (not Minerva!) Far Trader build in OpenSim. The Far Trader is one of the work-horses of the Traveller role-playing game.

The really neat thing is not so much the spacecraft (which I could go on detailing for ages) but what can happen outside it.

So you start on a barren planet:

You close the loading ramp on the empty landscape and head for the bridge.

You then head off into space. A touch of a button on the pilots console de-rezzes the world and rezzes the starscape in a 256m diameter sphere (ought to work on a suitable brown-out transition for take-off and landing). So the view out the window changes but more importantly if you don your EVA suit and walk out the airlock you now find:

(need to do a nice jump transition too!)

Then you head down to the starport. Again a touch of a button derezzes the stars and rezzes a whole spaceport ready for you.

I'll work up a few other environments but you get the drift. Quite apart from the role-playing side of this it also begins to make a nice vehicle for STEM based education.

Full image set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/burdenshaw/sets/72157626207815093/

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:09:40 : Contibute to DotGovLabs discussion on virtual worlds and ASC/autism - https://dotgovlabs.direct.gov.uk/Page/ViewIdea?ideaid=1073
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:04:22 : Oops, wrong book - try this one http://www.igi-global.com/bookstore/titledetails.aspx?titleid=47435

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:44:23 : Just ordered Teaching through MUVEs which has our PIVOTE chapter in it. http://www.igi-global.com/bookstore/titledetails.aspx?titleid=41765

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:38:36 : Virtual Refugee Camp #opensim - Daden Blog http://t.co/EBsU7Fp - to give you some idea of why I'm in Geneva

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:33:48 : At #LHR enroute to Geneva for a UKTI trade mission to the UN. Hope the quake isn't distracting them too much

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:47:44 : Just finished our virtual refugee camp demo on #opensim ready for next week. Will try and blog and post photos tomorrow

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:19:20 : #mipim Daden releases white paper on virtual worlds for the built environment http://bit.ly/hlqmCx

Trying hard to restart the RTT (real time Traveller) idea I had a few years ago, but with information spread across multiple web pages, apps and sites it's actually still really hard to do without pen and paper. My online referees companion should almost male it doable - we'll see.

I think I might bin the Real Time bit though - just can't stand the thought of being stuck in jump space for a week!

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:26:59 : Summit of Foel Goch, SW of Corwen
http://plixi.com/p/82143068
Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:26:49 : What frustrates me about long walks (& baths) is they generate more ideas than I have time to implement
Sun, 06 Mar 2011 11:25:19 : I sure prefer a small mountain in the middle of nowhere, no people & I've never been up, to a tall one that's busy and I've been to before

For ages I've been after a nice algorithm for predicting traffic from one Traveller world to another. Most Traveller tables are based around the players owning a ship and wanting to pick up passengers and freight, not a player looking to hitch a ride. So finally worked out one which was nice and simple whilst walking on Foel Goch today, and coded most of it up on the iPad using JsAnywhere in a cafe in Corwen. Will tart the UI up later once the other Companion modules are done.

Go to Next Ship To...

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:32:08 : At Warwick Arts Centre to see The Tempest in Russian by Cheek by Jowl's sister company from Russia. Theatre packed.
Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:36:46 : Very interesting project discussion this morning about Frames of Reference in immersive 3D data visualisation - could be key to whole thing

OK, with my new found Traveller enthusiasm I've brought my in-progress work on an Empress Minerva Far Trader across from Second Life to OpenSim. Now just in he process of re-texturing it and then complete the build. What I really want to then do is see how I can use it as the hub of Traveller adventuring in OpenSim - for instance changing the cockpit view to represent travel through space, and rezzing new environments when you land - all with the spaceship staying still!

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:20:07 : Mobile MMORPG - Traveller AR http://t.co/YaGJ0Pq via @traveller_ar #gdwtraveller. Well that saves a lot of effort of building it myself!

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:48:41 : Daden Blog: http://www.daden.co.uk/blog/2011/02/its-all-full-of-stars-25-light.html - plotting 2000 nearby stars in #Opensim

Traveller thoughts been all over the place as I've started to re-engage. First thought was a revival of idea for making a more realistic Traveller - 3D space maps, realistic solar systems, AI etc, but its just too big a jump (although its a "powered by Traveller" setting I might do some time, and for my latest work on 3D star maps see http://www.daden.co.uk/blog/2011/02/its-all-full-of-stars-25-light.html.

I then thought of finishing my Port2Jump application, but thought it too big (although I may soon get back to it), and moving my Minerva model to OpenSim will be a big job (although watching Dune I'm drawn to the idea of just creating some environment sims in OpenSim).

So I finally hit upon the idea of creating a Referee's Screen on the web that I could use from the iPad. Had a great time over the last few days pulling bits together from IMTU rules and MT (my favourite OTU rules) and Snapshot/AHL. What's now dawned on me though is that what I really want is microTraveller - a version of the Traveller rules that's so simple and easy to use that not only will they fit on a few screens of the iPad but I can actually play it more or less from memory (the task system of course being key here). The other part to the Referee's Screen/Companion is of course the software, automating all those parts of the rules that are needed that are just too complex to remember for data reasons (eg encounter tables etc), so that you can create encounters, map a world, jump to orbit etc just in a single mouse-click. So that's the aim, lets see where it goes to.