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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

Outworldz – Alexandria 30BC

2020, April 17 - 20:16

Another fine virtual world build from Fred Beckhusen/Ferd Frederix and his team (Debbie Edwards aka Nyira Machabelli, Joe Builder and Avia Bonne) to recreate Ancient Egypt, specifically Alexandria in 30BC. It is located on the OpenSimulator-based Outworldz grid’s Alexandria region (a 4×4 region, so just over 1km square).

hop://www.outworldz.com:9000/Alexandria/128/128/22

Hypergrid Safari Bog Post – Visit on May 11, 2018




Second Life – Voice Echo Canyon

2020, April 14 - 10:29

A common issue in teleconferencing is testing your headset and microphone to make sure its working, and not giving feedback to others (something often only YOU cannot hear). As more people engage in teleconferencing and virtual world systems voice testing is important to be ready for virtual world meetings. The Second Life virtual world platform provides a nice test area to set yourself up and check you headset is working without having a partner to assist… go to

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Voice%20Echo%20Canyon

A white dot appears over you avatar when voice is enabled. The microphone icons, usually in the bottom button bar unless you have moved it, can be pressed to speak. In small group or 1-1 voice situations you may lock that on with the little square checkbox in the top left of the mic button, but its best to leave you mic muted when not speaking.

Notice the bars that appear over your avatar’s head as you speak… if they are green and show three or four bars each side your levels are probably good. 5 bars is nearing maximum volume. If red bars show you are over attenuating and your voice is likely to be distorted when heard by others.

You can watch this YouTube – Video Guide to Voice Echo Canyon.

Supercar in Second Life – Anaglyph 3D

2020, April 13 - 14:51

Kirstens Viewer for Second Life can render the view in Anaglyph 3D for Red/Cyan 3D Glasses… for more details and download links see this blog post. So its a good excuse to take the 3D model of Supercar for another spin.

Click on any of the images below to see the full resolution version, make it full screen and view with Red/Cyan 3D glasses…



Virtual Conferences – A Guide to Best Practices

2020, April 11 - 18:00

https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences

A community resource from the ACM Presidential Task Force on What Conferences Can Do to Replace Face-to-Face Meetings – Version 1.1(rc) of April 11, 2020

[Current version] [Local Copy]

Discussion Forum (free account registration required): https://virtualconf.acm.org/

Kirstens Viewer Update with Anaglyph 3D

2020, April 11 - 13:49

Back in 2011, Kirstens Viewer for Second Life added an Anaglyph 3D view capability which could be seen with red/cyan 3D glasses. See this blog post. It was updated to the latest Second Life features in 2017. See this further blog post.

Kirstens Viewer has now been updated by Kirstenlee Cinquetti to include Second Life capabilities such as the enhanced “bento” mesh avatar skeleton and still includes the 3D anaglyph view capability.

She has now updated her Second Life viewer to use the very latest Linden Lab viewer code and includes experimental or =development features such as Legacy Profiles, Environmental Enhancements, etc.

Toggle the 3D anaglyph viewer on or off via Preferences – S22 Features…

Issues

Is it possible that after 3D anaglyph mode is toggled on and you stop and restart the viewer it does not enter Second Life? I tried a few times and it would not enter Second Life each time. I toggled 3D anaglyph off in Preferences – S22 Features before logging in and that then worked. May be just me? It looks like this when it sticks…

Kitely Organizations

2020, April 10 - 09:24

Kitely Organizations are a way to create a virtual grid inside the OpenSimulator-based Kitely grid. It allows groups to create and manage their own users, with control over which regions they can visit and what they can do in-world. A Kitely Organization provides administrative capabilities that enable the management of groups of users and worlds under the organization’s control. Kitely’s Organizations are designed for companies, educators, roleplaying groups, etc.

See https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-news/2019/01/11/introducing-organizations-virtual-grids/ for more details.

Organizations can have two types of users:

  1. Managed Users – users that are created by the Organization. The Organization Admins have full control over these users. Managed Users can’t login to the main Kitely website.
  2. Independent Users – regular Kitely users who have agreed to join the Organization. The Admins only control what Independent Users do when they’re visiting the Organization’s worlds. However, the Admins can’t control what Independent Users do outside the Organization.

When Managed users are invited to join in, they are given this link…
https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/600965183/Setup+Kitely

This allows the Firestorm viewer to be installed, if it is not already present, an initial avatar to be selected, and the Organization’s grid details and avatar username to be added to make entry easier for new users.

The grid LoginURI is of the form grid.organizationname.kitely.net:8002

RGU Neosome Kitely Organization


Kitely Virtual Worlds on Demand™

Kitely uses a mechanism of loading virtual world’s “on demand” so they use less server resources when not in use… if the world or region is not online when the first user arrives, their avatar appears at a Kitely Transfer Station” for a minute or so until the region is loaded, at which time the avatar is automatically teleported into that world.

RGU Neosome Oil Rig Immersive Training Environment



In VR

Using Firestorm VR Mod and Oculus Rift…

AIAI Virtual World Social Space

2020, April 1 - 12:57

A virtual world social space for AIAI use is available in the OpenSimulator-based OSGrid platform.

More later.

Get started with OpenSim (using OSGrid)

Virtual World Best Practice in Education 2020

2020, March 26 - 15:54

The Virtual World Best Practice in Education 2020 conference took place in Second Life on 26th and 27th March 2020.







Supercar in OpenSim

2020, March 2 - 10:41

A recent check on the 3D models of Supercar and Black Rock Laboratory in OpenSim, on Black Rock region on OSGrid



Technical Limits on mesh that can be uploaded to Second Life/OpenSimulator
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Technical_Overview

Over 20 years ago Austin Tate worked with Shane Pickering in new Zealand to try to cerate the interior technical details for Supercar, consistent with the TV shows and annuals, etc. Shane had aerospace engineering knowledge and was a pilot…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-cutaway.html

The detailed internals are described in this PDF…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/CUTAWAYS/SC/sc-cw-21nov99.pdf

Austin Tate’s efforts to explain the Supercar “control plans” is here…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-control-plans.html

We also worked on a detailed dash texture using Mick Imrie’s Supercar model as a start and adding more controls as found in TV series and annuals…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/SC-MODEL/IMRIE/BP/bat-dash-bp4.jpg
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/SC-MODEL/IMRIE/BP/bat-dash-bp3.jpg

Supercar in Second Life

2020, February 24 - 12:32

After a few minor adjustments to the nose cone and vanes area, Supercar was out for another spin in Second Life on the Bellisseria Continent. Making use of the boat/vehicle rez zone near the lighthouse at Norse Auk and flying down the East coast to my Ai pas houseboat on the Damiano region.






And a shot with the 360 degree Snapshot viewer…

Dimension X – Supercar Display

2020, February 16 - 15:58

Supercar puppet scale model made by Andrew Grimshaw of Wigan and displayed in Dimension X Sci-Fi collectables shop in Hoylake in the Wirral near Liverpool, UK around 2016-2017 (shop opened in April 2016, now closed). Model whereabouts unknown (unless you know otherwise?).




Information and images thanks to @JIMBO_SOLAR. @JamesSkellyBandM tweeted about the store opening in April 2016.

SpeedLight – Resources

2020, February 3 - 10:00

SpeedLight is a Web-based Viewer for Second Life providing core features to stay in touch when not able to access a full viewer. SpeedLight does not require any downloads. It can be used both in desktop and mobile browsers, allowing switching between devices without logging out. SpeedLight supports multiple avatars (with a possibility to switch between them). It is tested to work in Windows, Linux, Apple Mac, Apple iOS and Google Android.

Third Third Party Viewer Directory – SpeedLight

Edinburgh AI Planners on GitHub

2020, January 24 - 11:18

A GitHub copy has been created of resources for the AI planners developed by Prof. Austin Tate and his Planning and Activity research group at the University of Edinburgh in the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute (AIAI) – previously the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (1984-2019).

https://github.com/aiaustin/planners
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/plan/

  • Traverser: (1971-72)
  • Interplan: (1972-74)
  • Nonlin: (1974-82)
  • O-Plan: (1983-99)
  • I-X: (2000-2012)

The planners have been released under the flexible open source Lesser GPL (library) licence to encourage widespread use. Up to now they have been available from University of Edinburgh servers. The core assets have now been made available on GitHub.

GitHub Arctic Code Vault

The GitHub Arctic Code VaultGitHub Arctic Code VaultGitHub Arctic Code Vault is a data repository preserved in the Arctic World Archive (AWA), a very-long-term archival facility 250 meters deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. The archive is located in a decommissioned coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, closer to the North Pole than the Arctic Circle. GitHub will capture a snapshot of every active public repository on 02/02/2020 and preserve that data in the Arctic Code Vault.

The 02/02/2020 snapshot archived in the GitHub Arctic Code Vault will sweep up every active public GitHub repository, in addition to significant dormant repos as determined by stars, dependencies, and an advisory panel. The snapshot will consist of the HEAD of the default branch of each repository, minus any binaries larger than 100KB in size. Each repository will be packaged as a single TAR file. For greater data density and integrity, most of the data will be stored QR-encoded. A human-readable index and guide will itemize the location of each repository and explain how to recover the data.

Git for Ruth and Roth Development

2019, December 30 - 17:00

This post is simply a record of some helpful advice given by Fred Beckhusen for RuthAndRoth Git “Organization” Members developing the Ruth 2.0 and Roth 2.0 open source avatar meshes.

I’ll try to explain a bit more about git and how to use it with Ruth and Roth.

First, read the very basics at https://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/

In our case, Github.com is a publicly available web site running git, along with a lot of custom web-facing stuff. We use it as a master “repo” or repository for all our public changes. You also run git, which mean you have all the same data as in the github. Anyone with a “git clone” has Everything We Have Ever Done. Unlike other source code control systems, all the data in git is distributed to every machine. Git is simple to use, but DEEP, as it was designed by Linus Torvalds, the genius behind Linux.

I am going to use the command line syntax here, as it is universal in terminology. Almost all these commands and workflow is found in the various Gui’s.

Ways to work in git:

git init‘ makes a hidden .git folder in any blank folder, which makes that folder into a ‘git’. You can also do a ‘git clone’ to get a premade git put into that folder, like in Ruth and Roth. All gits have a .git folder, which is typically hidden. You now add stuff to your original folder, delete stuff, rename stuff, (Eg. work on it), and then git add ( git -a) those changes to a temporary work area, and git commit (git -m) the work area to you LOCAL .git. This change is tracked in the .git by a hash. A Hash is a long series of alpha-numeric data that is like a check sum of all the digits, or a CRC, that uniquely identifies all those changes.

You can see any changes in Git with ‘gitk’. gitk can also drill down to the changes in any file.

In the git command line, you can see what is happening with ‘git status’. GUI tools do this for you when you refresh the GUI.

Your Ruth copy started with ‘git clone‘, which brings in the entire .git from Github to your local harddrive. There is the data, and also there is the ‘metadata’ in a hidden folder named .git, which is not human readable without tools. There are many git tools – the command line, git desktop, the git gui, gitk, which shows the history of a git, and so on.

I use the git found by right-clicking any empty area in the ruth repo and selecting Git Gui Here

I pretty much only use git on the command line to do a *git pull*.

A ‘git fetch‘ goes to github and fetches the latest changes to your local .git folder. It does not check out those changes to your working area. Useful if you want to see what’s going on without changing anything in your working folder.

A ‘git pull‘ will fetch the changes to the .git, and also check them out into your working folder.

Good habits: If using the command line, do a ‘git status‘ often. I leave my git gui open at all times, and click refresh often, which is the same thing.

Make commits often. As in Very Often. If you save a Blender file, that is a good time to also commit it so you can get back to that specific blender file if need be. Its a good idea to keep several copies of a blender file as it is easy to go back a step. But this is entirely optional in git workflow. You never need more than one copy of a file. Git does not enforce any rules about what you do to your data. If you want to make a Ruth Rev 1,2,3,4,5 and so on, git does not care. It will track them all. If you make a blend, and commit Rev 1, commit Rev 2, commit rev 3, then git will track every one of those too. Even better, it can track any commits you made while making Rev 3, so long as you saved the blender file, and made commit for it.

My advice is make each commit about one thing. As one example, in Dreamgrid, I have one text file that has a list of all changes. I edit the the document and commit it every time I change something major. I also use ‘gitk’ to see what all I have done everywhere, and update the document for any missing things, typos, and such. This final draft gets committed too, and this text file gets published in the code, as well as on social media. I used to try to maintain a web site to match copies of my code. But they were never in sync. Help is always behind the latest code, the code someone is running is always older than what I am working on, and the web site then rarely matches what they are getting. So I now publish the help in my git, and update it constantly, so any rev closely matches the documents. If I need to clean up some comments in my code, I will ONLY clean up comments, then commit that as “cleaned up comments’. Let’s assume I don’t like the names of two functions. I change those names and commit that one change. The nice thing about the git GUI if I forget to make a commit, I can stage just one or more files with the small change I want to commit, then repeat for another change. Granted, none of this applies to Ruth and Roth mesh bodies, but they do have many steps in their creation, so once you get used to git, you can simply name a file “Ruth.blend” and never have to use another file name for her. Any commit is available to you at any time.

The ‘git checkout‘ command will change the entire repository to whatever it was the moment that particular Hash was committed. It branches off my local copy of the data from the .git onto a new path that it will track, a path that I can just drop after examining the old code/blender, or continue on with, and eventually merge back in with the main trunk. This will probably be rare in Ruth and Roth, though.

Useful Commands:

git stash‘ – save all my changes away on a stack. Useful when I have ‘touched’ a file that I do not want to save back to the git, and that local change is preventing me from going a git pull. git stash will save it away. I can get back the change, if I want, or just ignore that stack after doing a git pull. git stash clear will empty the stash.

git reset –hard‘ – A command that throws away everything I have done and forces my working copy to be an exact match of the .git. I use this much less often now. Handy for those times you get frustrated with git not accepting changes, and when you do not understand how to untangle it. I just save my blender or code somewhere else. Then do a hard reset, and copy the file back, commit it, and then it will take a git push. Tread with caution here, as there be dragons!

Ruth 2.0 LuvMyBod – Resources

2019, December 29 - 16:49

Hyacinth Jewell, a content creator in OpenSimulator, has provided a revised higher definition version of the open source Ruth 2.0 avatar mesh. This post provides some resources and links for this.

hop://grid.hgluv.com:8302/Luv Plaza/78/138/28

OpenSimulator Community Conference 2019 – OSCC19

2019, December 14 - 15:01

The OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC19) ran again this year on December 14th to 15th, 2019 and was once again organised and run by Avacon.


OpenSimulator Core Dev Panel

Second Life – Houseboat – Winter 2019

2019, December 5 - 15:56

My Houseboat on the Belliserria continent in Second Life now has its Winter decorations in place…


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