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Second Life Book Club – Larry Niven

2020, September 2 - 20:00

Second Life Book Club – Larry Niven in Conversation with Draxtor
https://secondlife.com/destination/second-life-book-club
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 (12pm PST)


Ringworld Cast of Characters Discussion



Larry Niven reading Lucifer’s Hammer


Larry Niven in Conversation with Draxtor and Philip Rosedale

Larry Niven Avatar

Second Life avatar for Larry Niven designed by Silas Merlin… image from Draxtor…

Ringworld in Space Simulators

See http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2015/03/16/ringworld-in-celestia/

Ruth2 v4

2020, August 30 - 12:00

Ruth2 v4 Revision 2020-09-02
Based on Blender Mesh from https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2 (was Ada Radius Draft 11). Use a viewer which supports Bakes on Mesh, e.g. Firestorm.

Ruth2 is a low-poly mesh body specifically designed for OpenSimulator and which can also be used in Second Life. It is built to use standard Second Life UV maps using a scratch-built open source mesh by Shin Ingen, Ada Radius and other contributors from the RuthAndRoth Community. Ruth2 v4 is the fourth version of the mesh avatar updated to be built and rigged using Blender 2.8 and with improved documentation of the workflow to make it reliably repeatable and credits to all the asset creators involved.

AVAILABILITY

USER GUIDE

https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2/wiki/User-Guide

BAKES ON MESH

Ruth2 v4 is provided as a single mesh that is designed to work well with Bakes on Mesh. It has a simple alpha capability without needing separate mesh parts and alpha masks can be worn to give more control over hidden areas. rather than use Bakes on Mesh, skin textures may be applied, but you should then add a full body alpha mask to hide the underlying system avatar.

The “Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar” box contents are designed so that they form a complete initial avatar using Bakes on Mesh. You can switch to your own shape, skin, eyes and hair and/or use the HUD to change your appearance. Some example hair, underclothing, hair bases and a range of alpha masks are provided in the “Ruth2 v4 – Extras” box. Skins as used in the HUD and more can be found in a “R2 Skins – Female” box.

HUD

Ruth2 v4 uses a single combination HUD, created by Serie Sumei, for alpha masking, skin and eye texture application, finger and toe nail colour, and other features. The skins and eyes that are available are set via a notecard (!CONFIG) in the Contents of the HUD which can be edited to incorporate your own skins (11 slots are available) and/or eye textures (5 slots are available).

The Skin Alpha Mode can be changed between Alpha Masking with cutoff=128 (the initial setting) and Alpha Blending. Depending on the Alpha Mode that is used on hair, clothing or other attachments that use partial alpha it may be useful to be able to change the setting used on the mesh body to avoid some parts not displaying correctly.

BOX CONTENTS

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar – This is the normal distribution box and is designed so that once unpacked its contents can be “worn”. It contains basic “classic” avatar shape, skin, eyes or hair to form a complete outfit, but these can be replaced with the users own preferred content.

  • !README, !LICENSE and
    !CHANGES
  • Ruth2 v4 (Body+Hands+Head)
  • Ruth2 v4 Eyes
  • Ruth2 v4 Eyelashes
  • Ruth2 v4 (posable) Flat Feet, and Fixed Medium and Fixed High Feet
  • Ruth2 v4 Toenails for the feet options
  • Ruth2 v4 Five options for fingernails
  • Ruth2 v4 HUD
  • Initial skin, shape, basic eyes and basic hair
  • Basic underwear

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar Business – A special version of the Ruth2 v4 Mesh Avatar for G-Rated or Business usage is provided with a modified body shape and skins which have simple baked-on underwear.

Ruth2 v4 – Extras – This is a box of useful extra elements and options.

  • !README-EXTRAS and !LICENSE
  • Ruth2 v4 Body (only)
  • Ruth2 v4 Business (Body+Hands+Head)
  • Ruth2 v4 Business Headless (Body+Hands)
  • Ruth2 v4 Hands
  • Ruth2 v4 Head
  • Ruth2 v4 Headless (Body+Hands)
  • Ruth2 v4 Head+Vneck (section of body)
  • Ruth2 v4 Elf Ears
  • Alpha masks
  • Sample hair and hair bases

Ruth2 v4 – Resources – This box is not normally needed. It contains textures and other resources with original UUIDs as used within the other assets. This can be useful if moving the assets across grid, or to repair elements.

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Uploads – This box is not normally needed. It contains mesh for all Ruth2 v4 elements as originally uploaded and before attaching a root prim or any texturing.

R2 Skins – Female – Skins and related skin textures as used in the Ruth2 v4 HUD and alternatives from https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Skins.

APPEARANCE SLIDERS

See this Wiki page for information on Bento Mesh Bodies and Heads… http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Resources_and_Information

The following avatar appearance slider controls are not supported due to technical constraints as described in this Wiki page… http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide

  • Head Shape
  • Eyelash Length
  • Eye Pop
  • Ear Angle
  • Attached Earlobe
  • Jowls
  • Chin Cleft
  • Upper Chin Cleft

KNOWN ISSUES AND TROUBLESHOOTING

  • Ruth2 v4 with attached Bento head will work with most shapes. The headless body, to use with system head or other mesh head, will work well with the sliders except body fat, and extremes to neck length and thickness, because of the neck seam. There are a few head sliders that don’t work: Head Shape, Ear Angle, Jowls, Chin Cleft.
  • Texture Alpha Mode – Alpha Blending or Alpha Masking? Ruth2 v4 is set initially with mode Alpha Masking with a mid cutoff of 128 (the cutoff range can be 0 to 255) as this may work well with the addition of clothing and hair that use Alpha Blending as transparent edges can appear if too many overlapping items use the same alpha mode. But Alpha Blending can often look smoother. The Eyelashes are set to Alpha Blending mode for this reason since they act more like a hair attachment.
  • The Ruth2 v4 mesh near the toes is adjusted to avoid the toenail area of the skin, as many skins bake in toenails. Ruth2 v4 is designed to make use of separate mesh toenails. For best result, paint over the system toenails and remove as much detail as you can from your foot skin that is probably designed for the system avatar’s duck feet.
  • The HUD Options Tab allows for the posable flat foot pose to be altered and an “ankle lock” facility attempts to keep animations from moving a joint or two. The ankle lock is sometimes needed to counter-act an interaction between some poses/animations and non-flat feet that otherwise bends the foot back another 45-60 degrees. Not every raised foot needs it due to variations in rigging and if the feet were posed with animations already or not.
  • Multiple fingernail shapes are available. The HUD is not currently enabled to support selection between these. Just add and remove the option you wish to use.

  • Due to the scripting facilities used in the HUD, Ruth2 V4 scripts will not work on early versions of OpenSim such as 0.8.2.1 (now five years old). Please update.
    But to help, a box with unscripted versions of the main mesh avatar is available on OSGrid on the RuthAndRoth region. This version does not include the HUD, the body parts are unscripted except for relaxed hand pose activation in Ruth2 v4 (Body+Hands+Head). This version should work for BoM with an appropriate viewer, or apply skins and manually apply alphas where needed.

AVATAR COMPLEXITY

Ruth2 v4 is designed to have low “avatar complexity” when worn to reduce lag. Asset sharing of the meshes and textures has been encouraged wherever possible with all assets made freely available to allow for reuse.

RUTHANDROTH COMMUNITY

Please contribute via the GitHub Repository and send your feedback by posting to the Discord Channel.

CREDITS

LICENSE

See https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2 Documentation/Packaging/LICENSE.txt

The main Ruth2 v4 mesh components have an AGPL license and other components have Creative Commons or other open source licenses. Basically, you can use and distribute the materials as you wish, but any modifications to the AGPL meshes that are distributed or made available in a service must be made publicly available at no cost and released under the same terms granted in the LICENSE.

CONTRIBUTORS

Various Authors and contributors to the Git Repository in alphabetical order are:

  • Ada Radius
  • Ai Austin
  • Chimera Firecaster
  • Elenia Boucher
  • Fred Beckhusen
  • Fritigern Gothly
  • Joe Builder
  • Kayaker Magic
  • Lelani Carver
  • Leona Morro
  • Mike Dickson
  • Noxluna Nightfire
  • Sean Heavy
  • Serie Sumei
  • Shin Ingen
  • Sundance Haiku
  • Other contributions and testing by members of the OpenSimulator and RuthAndRoth Communities.

The ‘R2’ logo may be used to indicate projects or products that are either based on or compatible with the RuthAndRoth project mesh bodies.

GenCon – Online

2020, July 24 - 16:40

GenCon (https://www.gencon.com/) is a (normally physical) convention for tabletop gamers (like Duungeons & Dragons) with extensions to all sort of other role play games. It has been running since 1968 when it started in Lake Geneva, Winconsin, USA, and is usually held in Indianapolis. Due to CORVID-19 the even is being held virtually from July 30th to August 2nd, 2020. See https://www.gencon.com/online.

VRazeTheBar is organising a set of GenCon events on regions in Second Life. The Welcome Region is already open until July 30th at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Welworn/96/223/97 and will provided access to the multi-level gaming areas when the conference runs.

Inara Pey’s Blog Posts on GenCon in Second Life, 14-Jul-2020 and GenCon: Sneaking a Peek in Second Life, 23-Jul-2020.

RazeTheBar Opening Event – 30th July 2020 – Second Life




RazeTheBar Closing Event – 30rd August 2020 – Second Life



Simultaneous Event – Gen Con RazeTheBar Closing Event and Crew Dragon Return to Earth

YouTube – VRazeTheBar GenCon Online 2020 Highlights – 21-Aug-2020

Hubs by Mozilla

2020, July 7 - 20:00

Mozilla Hubs is a virtual collaboration platform that runs in a web browser on desktops, tablets and mobile devices. It can support wireless standalone VR headsets. Desktop VR setups like the Oculus Rift are supported via a WebVR compatible browser (e.g. Firefox). See list of supported devices.

Simple 3D spaces can be selected from an initial range, or created in a tool called Spoke. Other users can be invited to join in the room using a shared URL.

Firestorm VR Mod with GUI

2020, July 5 - 12:53

Humbeltim on the Firestorm VR Mod Discord channel has been working on an automated “GitHub Actions” (GHA) method to merge Peter Kappler’s VR Mod code into the standard Firestorm Viewer release code. He has done that for Firestorm 6.3.9. See https://github.com/humbletim/firestorm-gha/. Look under the Releases tab and the installer is under the “Assets” chevron.

Adding a GUI

Humbletim has now begun work on adding other usability features to Firestorm VR Mod including the ability to autoconfigure the VR headset specific settings, and VR Preferences and VR Mod toggle GUI buttons.

More to appear here as testing continues.

Blog Posts with Usage Information on Previous Firestorm VR Mod Releases

Lost Horizon – Music Festival in VR

2020, June 25 - 11:13

Lost Horizon has been created by the team behind Glastonbury’s Shangri-La festival within a festival, and in conjunction with VRJAM and Sansar to be “the world’s largest independent music and arts festival in virtual reality. Lost Horizon is a REAL festival in a virtual world. A fully interactive and multi-stage event to explore… raising money for The Big Issue and Amnesty International”.

VR Stages

Sansar

Alone Together – Jean-Michel Jarre

2020, June 21 - 14:21

Jean-Michel Jarr and his Avatar engaged in a Live VR performance using the VRChat platform to celebrate Fête de la Musique 2020, June 21st at 21h15 CET. The event took place in the “VRRoom” area of VRChat.

EdMOLT – Week Seven

2020, June 8 - 14:44

Week seven is the final week of the EdMOLT course.

I caught up on the various discussion forums which I had not been on for 6 days or so.

I also checked if anyone in my “Team” for the joint exercises had checked in on any of the modalities available and no one had except the course tutor. I suggested that a way to address lack of involvement by people in some teams might be to mid course ask other team if they were willing to invite across individuals who found themselves in inactive groups.

A useful resource in the week seven materials is a web site for “An Edinburgh Online Teaching Toolkit – Resources for teaching online”…

https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/onlinecourse-production/training-support/toolkit

End of Course “Gift”

A nice summary PDF with course participant inputs, images and course graphics was provided at the end of the course. Thanks.

Firestorm VR Mod 6.3.9

2020, June 4 - 09:45

Peter Kappler maintains the Firestorm VR Mod Viewer and his source code changes to allow the standard Firestorm Viewer to work with VR headsets at https://gsgrid.de/firestorm-vr-mod/ – go there to download his latest version and for usage information, source, advice on trouble shooting, etc. For community support use the Discord Discussion Channel: P373R-WORKSHOP by p373r_kappler [ Invite ].

On that channel @humbltim has created an automated scripted build system which merges Peter Kappler’s VR code additions into stock Firestorm and can autobuild a release executable version.

See https://github.com/humbletim/firestorm-gha/. Look under the Releases tab and the installer is under the “Assets” chevron.

Note that if you want to import existing Firestorm accounts/settings you have to manually copy them over between AppData/Roaming/Firestorm_x64 and AppData/Roaming/FirestormVR_x64 folders. @humbetim says that he is still figuring out how to get the release number working, so it currently identifies itself as 6.3.9.1 which means you might get pop up warnings from the Firestorm home page about updating.

On the Discord channel @humbletim on 28-May-2020 wrote:

For anyone wanting to compile from source I was able to get a combined Firestorm stock + VR Mod built using Github Actions (much thanks to @thoys for helping figure it out!).

Still tweaking the build script but latest windows version is here:
https://github.com/humbletim/firestorm-gha/blob/gha/Firestorm_master_VR/.github/workflows/CompileWindows.yml

And here are the minimum source changes that seem necessary on top of stock Firestorm_6.3.9_Release to merge in the 6.3.3 VR Mod source, fetch OpenVR as a submodule dependency, and then automatically bundle as part of the generated installer.
https://github.com/humbletim/firestorm-gha/compare/Firestorm_6.3.9…humbletim:Firestorm_6.3.9_VR

For more details and advice on running Firestorm VR Mod see http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2019/11/28/firestorm-vr-mod-6-3-3/.

EdMOLT – Week Six

2020, June 1 - 14:17

Checking out the materials for week six on Feedback and Assessment.

Checked out whether the group I am part of had made any contact on all channels, Teams area, Group Discussion Board and Group Padlet. Looks like I am the only member of the group, besides Micheal Gallagher the course instructor, that has tried any of the channels.

Protected: Roth2 v2

2020, May 24 - 12:00

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EdMOLT – Week Four

2020, May 20 - 14:43

4.3 Design Brief Action Plan – Edinburgh Model Group 15

A task to explore collaborative development of a course plan to present to a board of studies to show how the team would involve students…

You are part of a new course team developing a course to be delivered online at the start of the next academic year. Due to student feedback and high online attrition at other universities, your Programme Board are particularly keen to support online courses that students becoming active participants of the University of Edinburgh community. You have to prepare an action plan for your Programme Board. The action plan will outline how teaching staff will ensure that students on the new online course feel part of the University of Edinburgh community and a part of their course and programme cohort.

Trying Microsoft Teams for coordination between the 4 team members and a course leader. Observation AT: Microsoft Teams is not a great tool for making team members aware of activity or fostering a sense of community or team spirit. I never turn on notifications from any tool as I am involved in so many online communities, so tools that are poor at summarising the status and progress of discussions or work items when you return possibly after some time away don’t work very well for me.

Some Inputs and thoughts… Our Community Orientated Online Course

1. a (brief) summary of the cohort demographics and geographical locations of the cohort as you understand them to be. This needn’t be precise, just a sketch.

Idea AT: Shall we assume international, multi-time zone, multi-cultural, multi-age?

2. a (brief) overview of community specific activity that you will design into this new course, and the virtual spaces where this activity will take place. You can focus on the community (University of Edinburgh), the cohort (the fellow students within this specific course or more broadly on your programme) or both.

Idea AT: How about getting them all to create their own digital artifact related to how the subject matter of the course relates to their own personal interests. Any format, any media. To briefly explain their personal interest and then how the subject matter or readings in the area might apply to or be used in their area of interest. When (or if) ready they can invite classmates to look at their artifact and give constructive inputs and ideas. A weekly virtual get together that runs over a 48 hour period across all time zones in a persistent meeting space with poster boards round the walls will allow anyone willing and ready to put up a poster with a URL to their artifact and this will indicate they are open to inputs from classmates. Classmates can make asynchronous inputs about posters to help their classmates. Some encouragement inputs and gentle persuasion from class leaders will be made as appropriate to keep up some momentum. Occasional video made to allow those without easy access to platform chosen to see what is happening. Ask for community volunteers to act as a bridge into the platform and posters for those without suitable access or skill.

3. a (brief) overview of how you might know the activity was working in was fostering a sense of community. Again, no need to be elaborate here but rather just a few metrics you might be looking for.

Idea AT: Look at how many people get to the stage of making their artifact accessible via a URL. Then how many take it to the stage or making a poster in the persistent meeting space for weekly sessions. And how many people actually comment and give feedback.

4. an indication of how your plan caters for inclusivity and accessibility.

Multiple time zones support, dip in access, any level of involvement, no need to go public with the artifact.

4.4 The 3 C’s – community, campus, cohort

Support for Communities of Practice. Notes…

We supported a community of several hundred people (a volunteer sub-group of a world wide community of some 1,300 experts in academic, government and industry) involved in supporting government agencies and multi-national efforts in emergency response situations. We explored and conducted usability and effectiveness evaluations of a set of tools for distributed collaboration suitable for supporting their inputs and activity in both training and live emergency contexts…

Whole of Society Crisis Response Community exercises e.g. with USJFCOM, Army Research Labs, Virginia State, Hampton City and others…

EADS Astrium (Airbus) Homeland Security and Non-combatant Evacuation Scenarios

EdMOLT – Week Two

2020, May 7 - 16:30

The blog post said it had timed out when I was updating it after adding three or four paragraphs. That’s is very bad. I find its really difficult to get the motivation to repeat a lot of comments after they have been made once.

It is Thursday of week 2 and I have just carved out some time to look at Week Two course materials I am engaged on an international collaborative project to produce open source educational resources for collaboration in OpenSimulator and Second Life. I am acting as a coordinator, editor and tester and this week a lot of the materials have started to come together.

2.2: Into the Unknown: On the “Unknowns” Padlet activity I noted the “unknown” as I see it of having little sense of who else is engaged with the study group or class. Maybe I need to dip again into the Discussion Forums.

Discssion Forums: Just dipped back into the discussion forums. It nice and clearly marks replies or comments you have had on previous posts. So you can go an read or comment back on the inputs. But I don’t at the moment see a simple way to get back to my own previous inputs or comments. I am sure that functionality must be there somewhere.

Claudia commented that Second LifeSecond LifeSecond Life was not up to much.. so I pointed her at a blog post written for a Head of School in the University who wanted to know how we used virtual world in the University…

http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2018/04/27/virtual-worlds-technology-for-university-of-edinburgh/

2.3 and 2.4: Disengagement Cases: Having to retype and remember what I said since my previous updates were lost when post editing “timed out” and no history of the changes were in the revisions list. I thought WordPress occasionally saved in progress versions there. Maybe not.

Essentially my thoughts were that student self help and off course communication channels were good, but some way to ask for friendly students to bridge the gap and raise issues they see in a way that does not name individuals would be good. Drop in sessions timed so that they work for those with home and social responsibilities, or perhaps travelling (in the past!) would be helpful.

2.7: Mitigating Transactional Distance: s you know I am keen on persistent shared social and interaction spaces. So for the “Padlet” activity I suggested a “virtual coffee room” (our American colleagues might call it the “Water Cooler” area) – Have a shared persistent space where folks can feet, chat, post notes and provide some sense of community and continuity. Links from this out to the online resources by giving them a “physical” point of reference.

Our research work on I-Rooms; virtual spaces for intelligent interaction” relate to this… see http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2011/09/15/i-room-a-virtual-space-for-intelligent-interaction/

2.8: Teacher Presence: is important. The comments on blog posts is a great way to have the student feel they are involved and that the teacher is interested and present.

2.9: I actually did not get to this until the beginning of week three comments on teacher presence in 2.9 were interesting, as I found that we spent a lot of time interacting with students and the weekly guest feature lecturers on the Coursera AI Planning MOOC we ran.

Fortnite – Party Royale – Social Space

2020, May 2 - 20:00

Fortnite normally involves player-versus-player combat modes. But a new “Party Royale” mode provides a social space that is being used for hangouts, parties, concerts and lightweight games.


Vive Sync – VR Meeting Spaces

2020, April 30 - 19:35

Launched today (30-Apr-2020) is HTC Vive Sync (https://sync.vive.com/) – which the web site states is an “all-in-one meeting and collaboration solution for VR. With VIVE Sync, it’s easy to customize your avatar, create a private meeting room, and begin working face-to-face with colleagues around the world. And with our suite of 3D interactive meeting tools, you can review 3D interactive content in ways that have never been possible”.

Vive Sync Avatar Creator




VR Headset Support

Currently, Sync only supports the Vive ecosystem of headsets – the HTC Vive, Vive Pro, Vive Focus and Vive Cosmos. HTC says it plans for future upgrades to the tool to include support for Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, Valve Index and Windows Mixedf-Reality headsets.

EdMOLT – Week One – 1.8 Onwards

2020, April 30 - 11:20

1.8: I am an enthusiastic supporter of avatar-based virtual worlds (such as Second Life and the open-source OpenSim platforms) as shared collaborative spaces and they work well in a lot of educational contexts… and have used them for class meeting and discussion spaces, for seminars, rain storming sessions, etc.

These spaces can be set up so there are many separate isolated spaces, and can even allow student subgroups, say those speaking a specific language or those from some specific region to have their own space with isolated text chat and voice facilities. These can be themed to be fun spaces for those who like that.. say a coffee area, campfire setting, a beach with a lovely sunset view, or perhaps out on a yacht in the bay.

Students can hang out in these spaces, drop in, etc. the sense of presence and ways to share information can increase (see Tate et al., 2014). Some may find the abstraction of an avatar odd, especially at first and if they have not been used to playing with a character in online and computer games. But this level of abstraction and spatial separation can also be of benefit especially in some cultures that may not support some forms of social interaction.

1.9: Too many folks who have not used online platforms and been involved in collaborative community orientated courses and activities think online is a poor alternative to “face-to-face” teaching. They assume sole learners in isolated contexts working alone with lists of videos, some even simply recorded from the back of lecture theatres! This is FAR from my own experiences. I believe online community orientated learning in a mix of synchronous activities and asynchronous study is a preferable alternative to typical lecture theatre and group tutorial style activities which suit some but not all learners.

1.10: See above… and why not have a virtual worlds “Edinburgh” location to anchor the experience of “being at Edinburgh” for our students… see Virtual University of Edinburgh.

1.11: Blogging… and here we are… the end of week one. I am already a blogger and often use blog posts to bring together resources, links I want to recall later, notes, screenshots of software and tools I try, hints to help use those tools, etc.

My reflection on the week is that I have no sense at all yet of the other people involved… beyond a few scattered entries I have seen on the Padlet activities in week one, many of which give me no idea of who is I the community, what their interests are, or even the size of the community. The discussion forums and commented upon there is so busy I have not (yet) got a sense of how to use it wisely or quickly catch up. I think having a large number of threads and topics is unhelpful in this respect. We have found that also when using Discord for some online communities too. Some people have just a few threads that people can see and catch up with or skip. Other Discord communities have massive numbers of super fine topics and its too much to get an overview of what is happening.

Blackboard Collaborate Drop In Session

On 1-May-2020, the first of a planned weekly “drop in” teleconference session took place in Blackboard Collaborate. I used Firefox on Windows 10 to run this, as I have previously found that Internet Explorer and Internet edge have issues accessing my microphone.

2.x Peek Ahead

I see that week 2 and 3 materials are already in place. I am not sure if that is a good idea and would like to see discussion on the value or otherwise of this. It means some students may be racing ahead and commenting on forums, etc out of sync with others in the community. I appreciate e want a high degree of asynchrony to accommodate individual participants time and availability… and its good to have catch up periods to get the community in sync at certain points. When the course description said there would be 4 weeks of study over 7 weeks, that is what I thought might happen.

Reference

Tate, A., Hansberger, J.T., Potter, S. and Wickler, G. (2014) Virtual Collaboration Spaces: Bringing Presence to Distributed Collaboration, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Assembled Issue 2014, Volume 7, Number 2, May 2014. [PDF Format]

EdMOLT – Week One – 1.1 to 1.7

2020, April 27 - 16:00

Started the course on Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching – henceforth shortened to EdMOLT.

WordPress blog for course observations established at https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/bat_an-edinburgh-model-for-online-teaching/, though my main blog is usually at http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/

I added a couple of entries onto the “Padlet” of a world map showing where people have been, are and are going. Its the first time I have used padlet.. my initial observation was that clicking on any pin to see what popped up without any context other than its geolocation was not very helpful. A short label of the contents or each pin, and a popup of the contents when you hover over it rather than having to click and dismiss the contents of every pin… there are hundreds… was unhelpful.

I like to get a sense of the community involved right at the outset and this activity did not really help me do that. I turned to the discussion forums to see who was involved and what their inputs were.

Its been only one day since the course started and there are already way too many separate forums, threads in forums and entries. It is difficult to get any sense of how to approach this. Its got so much material that the status of “unread” posts is already not very helpful. There are many questions there and its unclear how they relate to the course week 1 items and questions and whether they are supplementary or the same. Being at Activity 1.3 means I don’t yet know if those questions are worth looking at or if I will find them in 1.3 to 1.12 for week 1.

The discussion forums were more useful once I clear the backlog of activity in the last 24 hours. Volume in these sorts of forums is an issue, and too many concurrent multiple threads. A focus on a thread or two would work.

Padlet was also used for the activity in module 1.7, and this made sense to share the ideas participants had about various online teaching spaces they might use or envisage…

Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching Course (EdMOLT)

2020, April 27 - 12:36


Welcome to my blog for the Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching Course – which I will abbreviate to EdMOLT). I am a Professor in the School of Informatics and have an interest in teamwork and remote collaboration. I have been involved in distance education for a while and have run a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

Course Resources and Links (publicly accessible at present)

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Outworldz – DreamGrid – Hobbiton

2020, April 19 - 15:02

Fred Beckhusen of Outworldz and his team have done wonders again with another fine OpenSimulator-based region, released as an OpenSim Archive (OAR) licensed only for use on the DreamGrid distribution. Fred’s post on the MeWe – Outworldz Projects group on 28-Mar-2020 gives more details and the download link (not posted here so people should go to the MeWe post to understand the restrictions on usage).

The Hobbiton region and OAR is based on “The Hobbiton Collection” originally created by David Denny. This is an exclusive sim just for DreamGridders to use. David sells sims, so anyone wants this to run on their own grid can contact him. The description below is adapted from the region’s notecard and includes credits for elements used.

Fred Beckhusen, Debbie Edwards, Joe Builder, and David Monday worked to make the sim work smoothly, be totally free and also very beautiful. David Denny did a wonderful job on the layout and the plantings, which the team tweaked only a little bit. Fred redid a lot of the physics for smooth riding of horses and carts.

This is a 3×3 region (768m x 769m) with lots of places to go. There are Hobbits, Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Ents, Caves, Dragons and some surprises done in Animesh and NPC format. David Monday re-built the original Satyr Farm to where it mostly runs itself. The team tested most of the plants and there is even a candle making shoppe that is custom built. Fred replaced the Green Dragon Inn and the windmill with custom mesh buildings. The Green Dragon Inn is based on the current restaurant at the original set, and having been there in real life (in New Zealand near Matamata, see image below) I can say its a fine replica (it was extended for the Hobbit filming).


Walk the trails, look for the signs that say Photo Spot, and post some pics on MeWe or Twitter. Try not to get run over by the Ent, or eaten by the wolves, and watch out for Gandalf’s pony cart. There are teleporters for those who want to cheat and not explore on foot. Hint: Take the boat to the cave going North on the second waterway to the west. Once an hour or so, Smaug will swoop down and toast your cows, which is worth waiting and watching for! If you don’t see him, TP to him via one of the teleporters and click his box to boot him up.

Fred left a lot of NPC boxes visibly out as this is a Beta to test how it works. Provide feedback on MeWe Outworldz projects Group.



Credits
Project Leader: Fred Beckhsn, Outworldz, LLC.

The Hobbiton Collection is Copyright 2019 by Outworldz, LLC. and is licensed for free use only in the DreamGrid software. If you wish to use it outside the Outworldz system, please contact David S. Denny, daviddenny@live.co.uk, who created the original collection about purchasing it. Many Thanks to Clarice Alelaria, David Monday, and Joe Builder for their contributions.

The farm scripts are licensed by Satyr Farm under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. You are free to modify / create your own items for non-commercial reasons.

To the team’s knowledge all the objects and meshes are Freebies and they thank the makers for their work.

Mordor Troll CC-BY by Ole Gunnar Isager
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/mordor-troll-olog-hai-lord-of-the-rings-7b6000538d9843a69d9b98fb32e4d62b

Elven Guard Statue: stu92:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/elven-guard-statue-2b38e108667348ad935b6a6843719763

Grebo Orc: CC-BY Freddy drabble
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/greebo-75714494cf7e4ea9b1a5bca9c77f02ce#download

Ent: CC-BY by 3DMaesen
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/treeman-e3a094316a8c4820a94d271afffe497c

Amon Hen is CC-by by berti_120
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/amon-hen-from-lotr-fc10963ab156407e9f7d416fe6b12cd3

Rusted metal texture pack: GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, CC-BY 3.0 by p0ss
https://opengameart.org/content/rusted-metal-texture-pack

Teleporter: CC-BY 3.0 Clint Bellanger
URL: https://opengameart.org/content/teleporter-circle

Wizard: CC-BY 3.0 Anthony Myers
https://opengameart.org/content/wizard-4

Wood Panels: CC-BY 3.0
https://opengameart.org/content/more-wood-panels-batch-of-16-seamless-textures-with-normalmaps

More Wood Panels – Batch of 16 Seamless Textures with normalmaps by Keith333

Windows: CC-BY 3.0 by Keith333
Repeating Mini Windows – Largish – Seamless texture with normalmap
https://opengameart.org/content/repeating-mini-windows-largish-seamless-texture-with-normalmap

Ropes: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic by Rocsilas Moscas
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Closeup_ropes.jpg

Dwarf: CC-BY-SA 3.0 by Beast
https://opengameart.org/content/dwarf-fixed

Forest Monster: CC0
URL: https://opengameart.org/content/forest-monster

Troll: CC-BY 3.0 by piacenti
https://opengameart.org/content/troll-mauler

Damaged Dock: by Ufuk Orbey (shadedancer619)
Made in: Cinema 4 D R16

Boar: Repainted and Animated by Ferd Frederix
https://rigmodels.com/model.php?view=Boar-3d-model__PNFHZLGW7CN60DV7KZ506C50E&searchkeyword=boar

Issues

By way of feedback, I spotted the following things…

  1. Satyr farm and the plants and things… just left to themselves a lot died. Is there a simple way to reset things to a “healthy” state?
  2. NPCs: a number of the NPCs (or maybe they are Animeshes) appeared to have parts not properly attached where they should be like heads or legs out of position.

NoLimits2 – Space Mountain Paris

2020, April 17 - 20:59

Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon)
NoLimit2 – Steam – Workshop
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1269373814
By Giftaddict (overall) and Pieter Hutapea (scripting)

Space Mountain, inaugurated at Disneyland Paris on June 1, 1995, is a ride based on Jules Verne’s novel ‘From the Earth to the Moon’. Passengers board a moontrain and are loaded into the Columbiad Canon which propels them into space. After avoiding meteorite showers and went throught a giant asteroid, they reach the Moon, inspired by a movie by Georges Méliès. They are attracted briefly by it before plunging back into a series of tight turns. Slowed down by a contraption called “Electro de Velocitor”, they smoothly regain Earth.

More details: http://www.space-mountain.fr/files/SM_dltall_NL2_presentation.pdf

Credits:

  • Original creator, general modelisation, trains, texturing, partial scipting: Benjamin Floch – Giftaddict
  • Ride script, trains special effets, panels script: Pieter Hutapea
  • Documents, plans, audios: Stephane krawczyk – Androland ( Space-Mountain.fr )
  • Testers, bug feedback: Orel Leroy, Hadrien Thareau
  • Texturing, early collaboration: Adrien Magras
  • Lightset Pack: Bestdani
  • CCC2 – Custom Car Creator : TheCodeMaster

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