Austin Tate's Blog

The Magical Kingdom is a region in Second Life built by The Muggles group involving Dain Voxel and Suzie Anderton.

• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/THE%20MAGICAL%20KINGDOM/
• Second Life Destination Guide – The Magical Kingdom
• Second Life – The Magical Kingdom Flickr Group

Video by InWorld Films

Click to view 360° image on Flickr

I was prompted to make this blog post by Simon Atkinson’s own blog post detailing the history of Master Models and Space Models (see this 2023 blog post). Here are some of the links related to Master Models and Space Models association with Gerry Anderson productions such as Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds and Joe 90. In 1960 Master Models produced the puppet-scale model of Supercar used in filming the series.

• http://www.mastermodels.co.uk/
• http://www.mastermodels.co.uk/gallery/thunderbirds/
• https://satkinsoncreativearts.com/the-space-models-story

1960 – Supercar – Puppet-scale Model – Just out of the Master Models Workshop.
Note the girder style front canopy support, which was replaced before filming the series.
Original Image – Master Models.

Panel on “A New Reality: Building the Metaverse” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 18th January 2023.
Speakers: Nicholas Thompson, Chris Cox, Enrique Lores, Paula Ingabire, Neal Stephenson and Cathy Li.

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/sessions/a-new-reality-building-the-metaverse

Other Metaverse Related Content at the World Economic Forum

• https://www.weforum.org/topics/the-metaverse
• https://www.weforum.org/search?query=metaverse
• https://www.weforum.org/global-collaboration-village
• https://initiatives.weforum.org/defining-and-building-the-metaverse/home
• https://www.weforum.org/reports/interoperability-in-the-metaverse
  (PDF Report 18-Jan-2023)
• https://www.weforum.org/reports/demystifying-the-consumer-metaverse
  (PDF Report 18-Jan-2023)

WEF Global Cooperation Village

Press Conference on the “Global Collaboration Village” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 17th January 2023.
Speakers: Adrian Monck (WEF), Klaus Schwab (WEF), Julie Sweet (Accenture) and Brad Smith (Microsoft)

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/sessions/press-conference-global-collaboration-village

Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer. I have found it useful for debugging UDP packet exchange issues between OpenSimulator and the Firestorm Virtual World Viewer.
This blog posts provides links and resources in case its useful in future or for others.

• https://www.wireshark.org/
• Wireshark for Windows should already include support for the Lua scripting language which enables Lua plugins to allow for dissection of logs. And Lua should already be enabled. See https://wiki.wireshark.org/Lua
• Wireshark LLUDP Plugin:
  • http://opensimulator.org/wiki/LLUDP_Dissector
  • https://github.com/Neopallium/lludp_dissector

Wireshark Usage

1. You can start and stop (or reset to empty) the logs via the “Capture” menu.
2. You can save a log via the “File” menu.
3. The logs can be opened in Wireshark for analysis.
4. You can limit the elements of the log you explore via the “Analyze” -> “Follow” menu. E.g. for “UDP Steam”.
5. More detailed analysis can be performed by installing specialised “Dissector” plugins, e.g. for the Linden Lab UDP virtual world protocols.

Installing and Using the LLUDP Dissector

This section is still under development as I try to use the plugin.

Wireshark Help -> About Wireshark – Plugin tab should indicate which plugins are active.

I am trying to work out where to put the plugin .lua code. Wireshark Help -> About Wireshark – Folders tab indicates Global Lua Plugins are placed in C:\Program Files\Wireshark\plugins. They should (I think) be able to be placed in a sub-directory (e.g. lludp”). But I seem to need it in BOTH C:\Program Files\Wireshark\plugins\lludp and C:\Program Files\Wireshark\lludp to avoid startup problems. maybe some hard paths are wired into the .lua scripts.

Edit -> Preferences -> Protocols -> LLUDP allows for the configuration of the LLUDP Plugin.

message_temlate.msg file for Firestorm is usually at C:\Program Files\FirestormOS-Releasex64\app_settings\message_template.msg

Tools -> LLUDP Stats Tap may start to watch LLUDP messages?

Its been quite some time (2014) since I checked on how Aithun the Dwarf and his companion bear, Morro, were getting on in World of Warcraft. Nearly 9 years! But Aithun and his companion are still staying at their Hearthstone Inn – the Lion’s Pride Inn in Goldshire – and I hope having a relaxing time in that protected environment.

Other characters reside in the Thunderhorn and Azuremyst realms in World of Warcraft and are also taking a rest from their adventures.

So, once again for now, I will leave Aithun the Dwarf and Morro the Bear in the Lion’s Pride Inn. and the other characters scattered across Azeroth. Say hi to them if you pass by. Mind y’er back!

Virgin Orbit’s “Start Me Up” Mission is the first launch of an orbital vehicle from a UK spaceport.

LiveStream and Replay

Cloud Edge on the Echo Mountain region in Second Life is a wonderful atmospheric walk in the mountains above the cloud. It is created by Funky Banana.

• https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Echo%20Mountain/144/207/75
• Blog Post by Inara Pey 5-Jan-2023
• Blog Post by Caitlin Tobias 5-Jan-2023 – Blog Post by Caitlin Tobias 5-Jan-2023

Click to view 360° image on Flickr

View in VR with Firestorm VR Mod

The Hypergrid Safari Group met on 4th January 2023 to visit the 3rd Rock Grid’s “HAL 9000” 2001: A Space Odyssey themed region and audio-visual experience by Alia Soulstar who created all of the visual aspects of this build and Lorin Tone who created the sound effects and music used in the movie along with some music that was NOT used in the movie with Han BoShi executing some of the more challenging scripting aspects of the build.

Alia has created all of the visual aspects of this build, my job has been to implement the sound effects and music used in the movie along with some music that was NOT used in the movie.

hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/HAL%209000/658/642/22

Behind the Scenes Build Video

Blog post under development. Ideas and thoughts.

There has been a frequent criticism of knowledge-based approaches to planning, including Hierarchical network task (HTN) style planning, as to where the encoded processes, descriptions of tasks and agent capabilities, domain constraints, etc come from. I.e. where does the knowledge come from? Its sometimes called the “Knowledge Bottleneck”.

While much of the knowledge encoded in the operators or activity descriptions in early hierarchical task network planners was hand encoded, there has been a lot of work on knowledge capture and domain description methods and tools over the years. Some involved taking authenticated manuals for a domain (such as search and rescue) and extracting the often carefully documented processes involved.

There has been a recent rise in popularity, scope and power of Large Language Models – essentially data extracted from a large corpus (often from internet and web sources) and used to train systems which can generate a range of outputs based on that data. Moe attention is rightly being paid now to the veracity of the results they produce, their biases, their provenance, and their maintenance. There is far to go. But an intriguing possibility emerges… one that needs thought and care ahead of time to ensure its truly useful. And it could be part of the solution to the knowledge bottleneck for knowledge-based planning.

Extract and represent in a shared, reusable form the process knowledge from published manuals, guides, recipes, repair instructions accessible o the internet or world Wide Web.

Metadata and Annotations

It is essential that the knowledge represented can be used with permission, reliably and expandability.

Data Sources

There are very many sources of the data that could be obtained. Some initial rules might help guide reliable and maintainable knowledge bases.

1. Only use sources that are permitted by their licence. The source must have a creditable citation as well as what might be a temporary physical or digital location (library sources, web URL, etc). The original material, the citation, the licence and any current location must be maintained alongside the data itself for any future checking, repeatability , etc.
2. The date of use, version and any update checks must be maintained in the meta data.
3. Consider the frequency of update, checks, ways to have community feedback, corrections, etc.
4. A lot more to come…

Possible Target Representations

While any good representation of the knowledge gained should be easily transformed into future emerging representations and use standards as they emerge, there are some potential initial targets using what is already available on known. Here are some thoughts from our own decades of research on plan representation, shared planning representations which computer systems, people and robots can share, rationale capture in plans, underlying core ontologies for describing activity and agent capability, semantic web representations of processes, etc.

• OWL/OWL-S – W3C Ontology Web language – Services.
• SPAR – (DARPA) Shared Planning and Activity Representation.
• ISO 18629/NIST PSL – Process Specification Language.
• <I-N-C-A> – Issues, Noes, Constraints and Annotations Ontology.

Domain and Plan Knowledge Capture Work

TBA

References

NIST PSL – https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/nist/

ISO 18629 – https://www.iso.org/standard/35431.html

SPAR – https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/spar/

Tate, A. (2003) : a Shared Model for Mixed-initiative Synthesis Tasks, Proceedings of the Workshop on Mixed-Initiative Intelligent Systems (MIIS) at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-03), pp. 125-130, Acapulco, Mexico, August 2003.
https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/2003/2003-ijcai-miis-tate-inca.pdf

Tate, A., Dalton. J. and Levine, J. Multi-Perspective Planning – Using Domain Constraints to Support the Coordinated Development of Plans, O-Plan Final Technical Report AFRL-IF-RS-TR-1999-60 April 1999.
https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/oplan/documents/1999/1999-afrl-oplan-tr-99-60.pdf

Polyak, S. and Tate, A. (1998) Rationale in Planning: Causality, Dependencies and Decisions, The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol 13(3), September, pp. 247-262, 1998.
https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/oplan/documents/1998/98-ker-rationale.pdf

Tate, A., Wickler, G., McCluskey, T.L. and Chrpa, L. (2012) Machine Learning and Adaptation of Domain Models to Support Real Time Planning in Autonomous Systems – Month 6 Report, HedLAMP Project Report, University of Edinburgh and University of Huddersfield, 31st August 2012.
https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/2012/2012-hedlamp-report-tate-month-6-report.pdf

Paper on extracting processes from Search and Rescue Manuals…

Tate, A. (2002) Personal Help Device (PHD) and the Safety Net – a personal agent and its associated local, regional, national and international infrastructure for Aid and Rescue, Papers for the UK Computing Research Committee Workshop on Grand Challenges for Computer Science, National e-Science Centre (NeSC), Edinburgh, Scotland, 25/26 November 2002.
https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/2002/2002-grand-challenge-help-grid.pdf

Try the timed ski runs on Coeur Lac d’Annecy Ski Resort… https://secondlife.com/destination/coeur-lac-dannecy-ski-resort

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Coeur%20Lac%20Annecy/51/21/2179/

I was inspired by one of Inara Pey’s excellent Second Life destinations reviews to visit another nice replica of Fallingwater in Second Life. Fallingwater the home designed by Frank Llody Wright for Edgar J. Kaufmann and his family in the mid-1930s.

The Fallingwater build is by Miltone Marquette at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fivepenny/112/40/45. Contact Miltone directly in-world and to arrange a time when you might visit his reproduction of Fallingwater. A video tour is shown below…

“Shoji Falling Water – 1/4 Sim” by Namuri

“Shoji Falling Water – 1/4 Sim” is a nice Second Life marketplace item by Namuri. It requires a large plot of Second Life land to rez and should be placed along with its included landscaping to work correctly.
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Shoji-Falling-Water-14-Sim/7944058

Esprit Christmas Village and Skating Lake by Camila Runo

There is a well developed winter themed region on Esprit by Camila Runo. Walk the winter woodland trails and skate the surrounding lake. Then visit the Christmas village for a glass of Gluhwein and some friendly chat. Don’t forget to get your Christmas tree before you leave.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Esprit/204/57/2026

Winter Wonderland by Linden Lab

Also, there is the Winter Wonderland created by Linden Lab themselves, where the annual snow ball flights take place between Second Life residents and the Lindens and Moles.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Winter%20Wonderland%205/113/7/31

Flyte Ice Skating Lake by Jenna Dirval
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/FlyGearZ/7/215/26

Stanlee Ice Skating Lake by Logan Marcus (quvie)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Stanlee/33/138/2601

The OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC) is one of the longest running virtual conference series, having started in 2013 and run annually since. This is OSCC’s 10th year and the event celebrates 16 years of OpenSimulator as the first commit was January 31, 2007. The OpenSimulator community and Avacon Inc. come together to run the event on the OpenSimulator Community Conference (OpenSimCC – http://cc.opensimulator.org:8005) grid.

The main keynote presentations area uses the adjacent corners of 4 sims to provide capacity for up to around 400 attendees.

There are many other regions for avatars, shopping, exhibition booths for presenters, OpenSim community hub, music and dance venues, etc.

Links to my blog posts on earlier OpenSimulator Community Conferences.. https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/?s=oscc

Sponsors and Crowdfunders

Day One

The event opened with a visualisation of the commits to OpenSim over a period of 17 years…

Then continued with a panel of the OpenSim Core Developers…

Maria Korolov of Hypergrid Business then gave an overview of the status of PpenSim and OpenSim grids…

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/12092-second-life-destinations-le-chateau/

https://secondlife.com/destination/le-chateau-motel

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Swing%20Island/50/109/34/

Creator Victoire Sire says that the inspiration behind Le Chateau is a typical 80’s style American motel. I was interested to see that (from the poolside) it looks VERY similar to a Miami Beach hotel we stayed at in the mid 1980s called “Chateau by the Sea” on Collins Avenue, North Miami Beach.

Diva Canto provides the popular “Diva Distribution (D2)” precompiled version of OpenSim which includes a number of addon modules. One of these is called “Wifi” and provides a web front-end interface to OpenSim running in “Standalone” or “Grid mode with “Robust” services.

Wifi is documented on the OpenSim Wiki at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi through which links can be found to Diva Canto’s download and source areas on Github. Wifi serves web pages which provide services such as:

• Account creation, optionally controlled by the administrator
• Configurable default avatars for new accounts
• Account updates by both users and administrator
• Account deletion by administrator
• Password recovery via e-mail
• Simple user inventory management

Wifi as an OpenSim Add-in

Wifi is provided as an “add-in” library. Diva Canto has provided a blog post which describes the new Wifi mechanism and how to build and configure it, mostly geared at Unix/Linux users.

• Diva Canto Blog Post – Wifi and Other Diva Addons – 5-Apr-2015

Wifi for OpenSim Robust Grids for Windows Users

In case it is helpful to those running Robust grids under Windows, I describe here the mechanism I use to build, configure and run Wifi on our own grids.

1. Download the OpenSim source distribution as a zip file from one of the following:
   • OpenSim Source Code – Stable Release
   • OpenSim Source Code – Developer ViewGit (noting the risk of code in a state of flux)

   and unzip the source code to a suitable location. Note there is a folder called “addon-modules” at the top level (same level as the “bin” directory) which only contains a README.

2. Obtain the source of the Diva addons via
   • https://github.com/diva/diva-distribution/

   and unzip it to a temporary area. Copy ONLY the contents of the “addon-modules” from that area into the main unzipped OpenSim directory top level addon-modules directory. Take care as there is another directory “bin/addon-modules” which is NOT the one you want to copy to.

3. You may wish to alter some of the addon-module .cs files to remove warnings on compilation. ...\addon-modules\01DivaUtils\WebAppUtils.cs catch // (Exception e) occurs twice ...\addon-modules\21Wifi\WifiMain.cs catch // (InvalidOperationException e) occurs once
4. The following Diva addon modules are required for Wifi to work… the others are optional for uses beyond the Wifi interface and may be omitted…
   • 00Data
   • 00DivaInterfaces
   • 01DivaUtils
   • 1DivaOpenSimServices
   • 20WifiScriptEngine
   • 21Wifi
      
5. You can now build OpenSim as usual, and the addons will also be automatically compiled. E.g., in a Command Prompt shell “cd” (change directory) to the top level of the OpenSim unzipped directory and then run “runprebuild48.bat” followed by “compile.bat”. The resulting bin directory contains all you need and will have in it the addon Diva modules including Wifi.

6. Wifi allows for extensive localisation with several provided languages and instructions on how to add further languages. A script is included in Wifi which creates a .dll file containing the resources used when the Wifi module starts up to populate the WifiPages area. This setup step uses a script that requires “ResGen.exe” and “al.exe” to be available to run from a console and usually that means a path to the latest version of ResGen.exe and al.exe needs to be on the “Path” environmental variable… e.g. on Windows 10 using .NET 4.8 these usually located in…
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools
   So long as ResGen.exe and al.exe are accessible, which you can test by trying to run them in a Command prompt (cmd.exe), then run the script at addon-modules/21Wifi/Localization/make_languages.bat

7. Before you run Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe, configure Wifi for your requirements by creating a bin/Wifi.ini file (but see the section “Disable Wifi in OpenSim.exe” below for a suggested improvement). A basis for your own bin/Wifi.ini file can be found in addon-modules/21Wifi/Wifi.ini. Since Wifi.ini sets Wifi as disabled by default, you will have to explicitly enable it and change necessary information to access your OpenSim data base, set your administrator avatar name and e-mail, etc.

8. To allow tailoring of Wifi for your own grid, a directory “WifiPages” at the same level as the “bin” directory may be used where you can place specific *.html and any image/* files which will override the default equivalents in bin/WifiPages. The following pages can be overridden:
   • footer.html
   • header.html
   • links.html
   • splash.html
   • termsofservice.html
   • welcome.html
   • image/*

Disable Wifi in OpenSim.exe

With the default locations suggested in Robust.[HG.]ini.example and OpenSim.ini.example for the add-in configuration and registry locations, the addins are picked up by both Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe and use the same configuration for both. This means that if Wifi is enabled in Wifi.ini it runs in both Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe. This is not what is wanted for a grid and means that Wifi is served on the OpenSim default port (usually :9000) as well as the grid services port (usually :8002).

Hence, the following is the configuration used on Openvue and AiLand grids to allow for separate enabling of Wifi for Robust.exe and disabling Wifi for OpenSim.exe. Wifi.ini is MOVED from bin/Wifi.ini to config-addon-robust/Wifi.ini. These configuration settings may be useful as a basis for what others might wish to use…

-------- Robust.[HG].ini ---------------------- [Startup] RegistryLocation = "." ConfigDirectory = "./config-addon-robust" -------- OpenSim.ini--------------------------- [Startup] RegistryLocation = "." ConfigDirectory = "./config-addon-opensim" -------- config-addon-robust/Wifi.ini --------- ; Copied from Diva's Wifi.ini with [WifiService] Enabled = true ; and changes for your data base, admin avatar and grid environment ... -------- config-addon-opensim/Wifi.ini -------- [WifiService] Enabled = false

Notes on the Diva.Data.MySQL.dll StorageProvider used by WiFi

The WiFi Module uses the tailored Diva.Data.MySQL.dll as the “StorageProvider”. The default StorageProvider = OpenSim.Data.MySQL.dll should be used for the normal Robust.exe services as configured in Robust.[HG.]ini. Wifi itself picks up the (still necessary) StorageProvider = Diva.Data.MySQL.dll separately from the settings in Wifi.ini.

Setting up the Default Avatars for Wifi

Using the provided example Wifi.ini file you have an indication that you can select one of three default appearances for newly created avatars set up via Wifi. But in a new environment you must set those avatars up first.

1. Create the avatars with names “Female Avatar”, Male Avatar”, “Neutral Avatar”. and authorise them via the Wifi Admin is that is required.
2. Login as each avatar in turn. They will usually appear as a cloud initially and then after a short while (depending on the version of OpenSim you are using) rezz to appear as “Ruth” wearing four basic body parts, new pants and new shirt. Note these parts come directly from the OpenSim Library and MUST NOT be worn in your final appearance for the default avatars. You can COPY these library parts into the avatar’s inventory if you wish, or create new body parts and clothing, but before you finish you should remove any items that show as “worn” that are located in the OpenSim Library as those will not rezz on avatars created based on these models.
3. Create new body parts and clothing and edit them and/or add any other mesh, clothing, attachments or HUDs you wish to appear on the avatars.
4. Note you can extend (or change the avatars names or labels) for the range of default appearances that are shown in Wifi and/or change the preselected default by altering Wifi.ini. ;; Syntax: AvatarAccount_<AvatarType> = "<FirstName> <LastName>" ;; (replace spaces in <AvatarType> with underscore) AvatarAccount_Female="Female Avatar" AvatarAccount_Male="Male Avatar" AvatarAccount_Neutral="Neutral Avatar" ;; Preselection for default avatar in new account registration AvatarPreselection="Neutral"
5. When you Create a new avatar via the Wifi web interface based on these predefined avatars the items worn will appear in the newly create avatar’s inventory under Clothes -> Default Avatar <AvatarType>.

Artemis I – Website – https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1
Artemis I – Tracker – https://www.nasa.gov/specials/trackartemis/

Mastodon is a micro blogging social network similar to Twitter. But it is based on open source code and a distributed network of servers. You find a suitable server to register an account on and have a handle such as @username@site. You can then follow people on that site locally or on other sites via a federated setup.

Find a suitable and available server via https://joinmastodon.org/

@atate@mastodon.world
@aiaustin@mastodon.world

The Network on Air free streaming evening on 28th October 2022, the 60th Anniversary of the first broadcast of Fireball XL5’s Planet 46 opening episode, included colourised episodes of Four Feather Falls (First Train Through) and Fireball XL5 (The Sun Temple).

Trailer

The Hypergrid Safari Group met on 19th October 2022 to visit the grid.vibel.eu grid’s “WesLorien ElvenWood” themed region by Roland Francis.

https://www.vibel.eu/regions/weslorien (Diary Blog Post of a Visit by Elbereth Elentari)
hop://grid.vibel.eu:8002/WesLorien/71/172/31