Business Process Management Virtual Environments

Video: Talumis Airport Processes

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:51:00 +0000

Dutch firm Talumis has some interesting software for manufacturing simulations. Their Youtube videos include a demonstration of checkin processes at Airports.

System looks good, and offers a lot of discrete time simulation capabilities regarding passenger flow. They also use a similar format to my work, involving minimalist visualisations incorporating a floor plan and elegantly sufficient modelling of relevant process artifacts. However, their approach does not incorporate some of the BPM ideas that I have been pursuing.

Ross

Techtip: Avatar Creation with Your Image

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:18:00 +0000

Have finally got around to creating a recognisable avatar for myself in Open Simulator. The process is simple, just download a nice tool like AVMaker, which uses a simple webcam image to generate a texture that is mappable to your avatar's head. You should then carry out the following steps.

First step, is to take an appropriate passport style image with your webcam. See below.

Then use something like AVMaker to generate the texture image to be applied. See below.

The next step is to fire up the viewing client (in my case Hippo), login to the grid you want to upload your appearance to, and then modify the appearance of your account avatar. To do this, right click on the avatar and select Appearance, and then select Skin. To make your face appear on the avatar, you must upload the face texture as a "Head Tattoo." See the image below.

Once you get out of the appearance menu, you should then have an avatar with, ahem, something like your appearance. See below.

I will now work on my hairstyle and clothes, as at the moment my avatar looks like a cross between Groucho and Harpo Marx.

Ross

Link: BPMRedux Minority Report

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:47:00 +0000

Theo Priestly has a great article here about Minority Report style Process Modelling interfaces. Accenture even offers a product around this space. Such spaces are indeed, as Theo suggests, a good 21st Century replacement for Postit notes, scissors and glue.

However, these interfaces are limited due to the absence of a spatial juxtaposition of the users connected via networking. What is needed is the ability to give a view of the networked collaborators shown working on the process model. My impressions of the remote collaborative capabilities of these spaces are that they cannot handle such remote collaboration well, especially when dealing with concurrent collaborative modelling. We still need to do some work on giving people easy remote access to modelling spaces, that give people a real 3D sense of the other people working on the model concurrently.

This is where I think Augmented Reality systems will come into great effect, as it enables the merging of synthetic networked spaces, with real physical spaces for collaboration purposes.

Ross

Video: SSCRC Project Preliminary Video

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:24:00 +0000

This video shows an example of the latest version of our middleware linking the YAWL workflow engine to Open Simulator. We have created a simple example of an accident victim being brought into a Hospital to be processed.

The preliminary interface to the YAWL accident treatment workflow is shown as a worklist on the left of the image. The tasks are presented to the avatar via this interface, in a similar manner as done in web based workflow systems. Objects in the simulator are instrumented with a complex knowledge base, that enables the validation of actions within the world, to make sure that tasks are carried out correctly. This is particularly useful for process training.

NB: this movie is quite long in length - ~7 mins.

This project is supported by the Smart Services CRC. Publications will proceed from this preliminary work, and will be duly reported on in due course.

Ross

Report: ThinkBalm 3D Virtual World Vendor Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:39:00 +0000

ThinkBalm is well known in the Virtual World business for providing excellent business reports on this growing field. They have an excellent report here, that formalises the process of choosing 3D Virtual World vendor products.

Well worth the read, even if only to obtain an overview of vendor product functionality, especially in the conference, training and collaboration application domains.

Ross

Video: Auckland University Hospital Sim

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:49:00 +0000

Scott Diener, a Virtual Worlds researcher at University of Auckland, has a great Hospital Sim he and his team have developed on the Long White Cloud region in Second Life. The full version of the video is found here. He is also part of an Open Sim grid being operated by New Zealand Universities.

He has also assisted us in some of our research, with a demonstration of our process system being developed within the Auckland Sim for a book chapter we have had published. Details soon.

Ross

Opinion: Virtual Worlds Tipping Point?

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:51:00 +0000

Business analyst here, thinks virtual worlds is at technology tipping point. The argument is that we need to have lightweight technology to support low barrier to entry, via standards such as HTML 5, COLLADA, WebGL et al.

I think I have heard this before somehow from the VRML pundits, going way back to the Nineties. It still seems strange to me that installing a plugin is considered a barrier to entry, when we routinely install Twitter, Facebook and various other Games in order to engage with applications that are seen as fun and rewarding to our social interactions. Downloading and creating Second Life accounts is not such a different experience to me.

I have argued before that I cannot see the value of purely socialising in a virtual world, unless it adds something to the experience. Moving around in a 3D environment is time consuming. Keeping track of people in world is a little painful, if all you need to do is talk. I am still of the opinion that Twitter and Facebook are more effective in this area, due to simple interfaces, and ease of incorporating media content into the socialising. Games as Virtual Worlds succeed here, because the tasks given to you in-world are entertaining, engaging, and competitive (which has social constructs attached via teams).

IMHO, the only barrier to entry is simply the lack of a need to use such worlds for social applications, at this stage. Maybe something will come along and change this, but I have yet to see anything reducing my skepticism in this respect.

Education, training, collaborative design, and work-based communication/conferencing are, I believe, the major drivers for Virtual Worlds at the moment, as they are application domains that reap a measurable business benefit from the technology. Many non-ICT workers use complex IT for work because it brings perceived benefits. I believe there is no difference with Virtual Worlds. As soon as it becomes something useful to the socialising masses, then it will take the place of other socialising tools, maybe. Otherwise, it remain a very useful business tool in specific application domains, used alongside of other ICT technology.

Ross

GET 2010 Date Extension

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:47:00 +0000

Deadline for submissions (new date): 29 March 2010 --

IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE GAME AND ENTERTAINMENT TECHNOLOGIES (GET2010)
Freiburg, Germany, 26 - 28 July 2010
(http://www.gaming-conf.org/)
part of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems(MCCSIS 2010)
Freiburg, Germany 26 - 31 July 2010
(http://www.mccsis.org)

* Conference background and goals
This conference aims to bring together research and practice from creative, social and business practitioners and researchers in this challenging field. The focus of this conference is on design, development and evaluation of games, entertainment technologies and the nature of play.

* Format of the Conference
The conference will comprise of invited talks and oral presentations. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the form of a book and CD-ROM with ISBN, and will be available also in the IADIS Digital Library (accessible on-line).

* Best Papers
Selected authors of best papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to selected journals (i.e. IADIS International Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems - ISSN: 1646-3692) including journals from INDERSCIENCE Publishers.

* Types of submissions
Full and Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.

* Topics related to Game and Entertainment Technologies are of interest. These include, but are not limited to the following topics:

- Development methodologies
- Design issues
- Controversial issues - we welcome debate and dissension, for example; games as art, entertainment as purely for monetary returns etc
- Special Effects
- Animation
- Mobile and ubiquitous games and entertainment
- Serious Games and entertainment -applications, critiques
- Philosophical issues
- Prototypes
- Social and cultural uses of/for Play
- Tools and technologies
- Skills, strategy, rules and chance
- Genre
- Immersiveness and engagement
- Research methodologies in creative practice

- Usability and playability
- User/player centered design
- Psychological, social, and cultural differences in perception and participation
- Communities, networks, social interaction and social capital
- Cross-cultural and intercultural approaches
- Assessment of exploratory learning approaches
- Emerging practices

* Important Dates:
- Submission Deadline (new date): 29 March 2010
- Notification to Authors (new date): 30 April 2010
- Final Camera-Ready Submission and Early Registration (new date): Until 24 May 2010
- Late Registration (new date): After 24 May 2010
- Conference: Freiburg, Germany, 26 - 28 July 2010

* Conference Location
The conference will be held in Freiburg, Germany.

* Secretariat
IADIS Secretariat - IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE GAME AND ENTERTAINMENT TECHNOLOGIES 2010
Rua Sao Sebastiao da Pedreira, 100, 3
1050-209 Lisbon, Portugal
E-mail: secretariat@gaming-conf.org
Web site: http://www.gaming-conf.org/

* Program Committee
Game and Entertainment Technologies 2010 Conference Program Chair:
Katherine Blashki, University of Sydney, Australia

General MCCSIS 2010 Conference Co-Chairs:
Piet Kommers, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Pedro Isaías, Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University), Portugal
Dirk Ifenthaler, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
Nian-Shing Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan

Committee Members: *
* for committee list please refer to http://www.gaming-conf.org/committees.asp

Video: Collaborative Second Life BPMN Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:09:00 +0000

Stephen West, a Masters student I am supervising, has created a BPMN editor in Second Life as an assignment for one of our BPM units at QUT. Full size video here.

His idea is to create a BPMN pool on the ground, upon which tiles are laid to create a process model. This form of representation is very amenable to collaborative modelling, due to its use of a flat shared space in the Virtual Environment. We are writing this work up as a conference paper, that will appear on this site shortly. We will follow up with a teamwork example in this space, to explicate the collaborative capabilities of such an editor.

Ross

Techtip: Messages and Events in OpenSim

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:13:00 +0000

The colleagues I work with in the BPMVE group have been finding that the configuration OpenSim.ini file settings have solved a few problems with our in world scripting in Open Simulator. I thought it would be good to share these on the blog.

Firstly, we have found a few problems can occur with script events when a large number of objects are in the region. This is caused by too small an event queue, causing script events to disappear for no obvious reason. The line below is the default setup for OpenSim.

; Maximum number of (LSL) events that can be queued before new events are ignored.

EventExecutionMaxQueueSize=300

We find setting the value to something in the order of 10000 often solves script event problems.

Secondly, messages can only be sent over a certain distance in OpenSim. This is a problem when you want to create scripts that rez objects over a large area via messaging mechanisms. Frequently, the location to place the new objects is out of range of the default distances specified, so messages never get to the objects. Setting the following parameters in the .ini file to more sensible distances often fixes these problems as well.

; Distance in meters that whispers should travel. Default is 10m

whisper_distance = 10

; Distance in meters that ordinary chat should travel. Default is 30m

say_distance = 30

; Distance in meters that shouts should travel. Default is 100m

shout_distance = 100

Thanks to Rune Rasmussen and Nathan Steenstra for these tips.

Ross

Keep Calm and Carry On

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:37:00 +0000

Received an email today from Forterra regarding its acquisition by SAIC, a large scientific software company. Coupled with Sun dropping its support of Wonderland, and this is looking a like a shake down of the industry.

A number of pundits in the virtual world industry have commented on this happening in 2010. In fact any industry, car, IT, airline et al. , has an early bloom of start ups, and then the cold hard processes of business kick in, reducing the population to those that have the resources and business models to survive. This is a given.

As for me, it is business as usual with my research. My group will be meeting this afternoon, and we will get on with developing our virtual world business process technology. We will exploit the new opportunities that will emerge in the future.

Ross

Paper: Measuring Visual Consistency in 3D Rendering Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:04:00 +0000

My PhD student, Alfredo Nantes, has published and presented a paper at ACSW 2010 in Brisbane last week - Measuring Visual Consistency in 3D Rendering Systems

It covers his approach to using reverse projections of pixels in 3D computer graphics images in order to create a ground truth sample cloud that can be queried to confirm the geometric correctness of the objects in a 3D scene.

Nice work Alfredo!

Ross

Paper: APCCM 2010 Modelling in 3D Virtual Worlds

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:38:00 +0000

I have uploaded to QUT eprints the paper I presented at APCCM 2010 this week - Conceptual Modelling in 3D Virtual Worlds for Process Communication.

In this paper, I go into a little more detail about the 3D BPMN Editor I am developing in Open Simulator. I also discuss how to annotate a Virtual World with a Business Process Model (BPMN) in order to provide a place for a business analyst and a domain expert to combine their information to develop the conceptual process model for the business.

One comment from the audience was quite profound. In my approach, the Business Analyst brings the conceptual process model, and the domain expert brings the model of reality - buildings, layout and other artifacts representing the business. Together, these can be used to validate the correctness of the presented process model. Indeed this is done every time a consultant talks to a domain specialist and builds a model. However, when using the virtual world as a modelling space, the domain specialist provides (virtually) tangible information about the Enterprise.

Ross

CFP: 6th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC10)

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:33:00 +0000

CALL FOR PAPERS and SPECIAL TRACKS

6th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC10)

Monte Carlo Resort & Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
Nov 29 - Dec 1, 2010
http://www.isvc.net

The purpose of the International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) is to
provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners
throughout the world to present their latest research findings, ideas,
developments and applications in the broader area of visual computing. ISCV
seeks papers describing contributions to the state of the art and state of the
practice in the four central areas of visual computing: (1) computer vision,
(2) computer graphics, (3) virtual reality, and (4) visualization. For a list
of specific topics, please visit the ISVC website. ISVC10 will consist of
invited and contributed presentations dealing with all aspects of visual
computing. In addition to the main technical program, the symposium will
include several keynote speakers, posters sessions, and special tracks.

*** Keynote Speakers ***
Ioannis Kakadiaris, Univ of Houston, USA
Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Steve Seitz, Univ of Washington, USA
John Stasko, Georgia Tech., USA
Tobias Hollerer, Univ of California at Santa Barbara, USA
Narendra Ahuja, Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (to be
confirmed)

(Area 1) Computer Vision Chairs
Ronald Chung, The Univ of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Riad Hammoud, DynaVox Systems, USA

(Area 2) Computer Graphics Chairs
Muhammad Hussain, KSU, Saudi Arabia
Kar-Han Tan, Hewlett Packard Labs, USA

(Area 3) Virtual Reality Chairs
Roger Crawfis, Ohio State University, USA
Daniel Thalman, EPFL, Switzerland

(Area 4) Visualization Chairs
David Kao, NASA Ames, USA
Lisa Avila, Kitware, USA

*** Important Dates ***

. Special track proposals: March 15, 2010
. Paper submissions July 12, 2010
. Notification of acceptance August 31, 2009
. Final camera ready paper September 15, 2010
. Advance Registration September 15, 2010
. ISVC10 Symposium Nov 29 - Dec 1, 2010

*** Submission Procedure ***

Papers submitted to ISVC10 must not have been previously published and must not
be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. A complete paper
should be submitted in camera-ready format. The length should match that
intended for final publication. The page limit is 12 pages. In submitting a
paper the author(s) agree that, upon acceptance, they will prepare the final
manuscript in time for inclusion into the proceedings and will present the
paper at the symposium.

*** Paper Publication ***

This is a fully refereed symposium. Papers will be reviewed with an emphasis on
potential to contribute to the state of the art in the field. Each paper will
receive two-three blind reviews and should not contain names or other
information revealing authors' identity. Selection criteria include accuracy
and originality of ideas, clarity and significance of results, and presentation
quality. All papers accepted will appear in the symposium proceedings which
will be published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science
(LNCS) series (pending approval).

*** Special Tracks ***

Proposals are invited for special tracks on any topic relevant to the
symposium. Special tracks are intended to stimulate in-depth discussions in
special areas relevant to the symposium theme. A special track may span
multiple sessions, depending on the quantity and quality of the papers
submitted. All papers accepted in a special track will be published in the
symposium proceedings. If you are interested in organizing a special track,
please email a special track proposal to admin@isvc.net by March 15, 2010. Each
special track proposal should include the following information:

1.Title
2. Scope and Topics
3. Names of organizers and contact information
4. Initial special track committee
5. Anticipated number of papers

BPM Redux Predictions 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:31:00 +0000

BPM Evangelist/Critique Theo Priestley has fired up a website called BPM Redux. He has a strong interest in my research regarding the use of Virtual Environments for BPM, and has mentioned my work in previous blog entries. His latest article is an interesting set of predictions for 2010. Well worth a read, and I sincerely hope his predictions for the uptake of 3D Virtual Worlds for BPM comes to pass. Though I have to laugh at his statement about AR for BPM as "We're still ironing out the kinks on this one…..," as I hope to run an Honours project on AR for BPM this year. Should get some kinks out real soon. :-)

I'll keep you all posted on the results as usual.

Ross

BPM Book: Modern Business Process Automation

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:26:00 +0000

My colleagues in the YAWL project at QUT have released a new book entitled, "Modern Business Process Automation: YAWL and its Support Environment" via Springer Verlag. YAWL is the workflow tool I have been using in my research in Open Simulator. The book web site information now follows.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the field of Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on Business Process Automation. It achieves this by covering a wide range of topics, both introductory and advanced, illustrated through and grounded in the YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) language and corresponding open-source support environment. In doing so it provides the reader with a deep, timeless, and vendor-independent understanding of the essential ingredients of business process automation.

The BPM field is in a continual state of flux and is subject to both the ongoing proposal of new standards and the introduction of new tools and technology. Its fundamentals however are relatively stable and this book aims to equip the reader with both a thorough understanding of them and the ability to apply them to better understand, assess and utilize new developments in the BPM field.

As a consequence of its topic-based format and the inclusion of a broad range of exercises, the book is eminently suitable for use in tertiary education, both at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level, for students of computer science and information systems. BPM researchers and practitioners will also find it a valuable resource. The book serves as a unique reference to a varied and comprehensive collection of topics that are relevant to the business process life-cycle.

Ross

Think Balm Immersive Software Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:36:00 +0000

Interesting article at ThinkBalm on some predictions for Immersive Software in 2010.

It is a worthwhile read with some good insights. However, the article seems to focus in on the collaboration and meeting capabilities of such spaces. While this is a rational argument, due to the quick return on investment, and the ability to easily use the spaces for communication work, I can't help thinking that there needs to be more exploitation of the design and prototyping capabilities of such immersive environments.

The same modelling capabilities that give you rooms, avatars and other devices in world, can give you very powerful tools for actual prototyping of products, both at the artifact and service level. My research seeks to leverage such environments for process modelling, in order to aid the process of validating the "prototype processes" with clients, via as-is and to-be model visualisation. Again, the tools will have to approach high levels of maturity in order to be useful to analysts, and to give a good return on investment.

My prediction is that such collaborative environments will be more and more used for product development, by geographically distant teams. Maybe not this year, but I expect that the ability to remotely develop artifacts collaboratively, in addition to remote conferencing, will be very useful to companies wanting to cut down on travel expenses, and to effectively utilise distributed expertise in their businesses.

Ross

Conference: GameDays 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:26:00 +0000

Serious Games for Sports and Health
GameDays 2010

March 25/26 2010, TU Darmstadt, Germany

************************************************
Call for papers
************************************************

We invite you to participate in the GameDays 2010. The GameDays,
established in 2005 as annual "Science meets Business" event series,
aim to provide an information and cooperation platform bringing
together academia and industry and discussing latest trends,
challenges and potentials of serious games. Research papers, case
studies and demonstrations are invited that present novel scientific
results, best practice showcases, or improvements to existing
technology, methods, concepts and approaches in the multidisciplinary
field of serious games, applied in a broad spectrum of application
domains.

Suggested research topics include, but are not limited to:

- Theory: Scientific models, methods and concepts for game-based
prevention and rehabilitation
- Game Design: Sustainable concepts and methods for cooperative and
competitive application scenarios
- Technology: Interfaces, Sensors, Authoring Tools, Information and
Communication, AI
- Business: Sustainable Business Models and Market Studies
- Practice: Field Reports and Evaluation Studies, Demonstrations,
Commercial Games and Research Prototypes

************************************************
Important Dates (Deadline Extended)
************************************************

February 1st, 2010: Submission Deadline
- Full papers: 8 - 12 pages
- Short and demonstration papers: 4 - 6 pages

February 10th, 2010: Notification of Acceptance
- February 28th, 2010: Camera Ready Version
- March 25-26th, 2010: GameDays 2010

************************************************
Paper Submission
************************************************

All submissions should use the format of the International Journal of
Computer Science in Sport (IJCSS template: available at
http://www.iacss.org/index.php?id=39). Please submit your papers via
email to GameDays2010@kom.tu-darmstadt.de

Template File:
http://www.iacss.org/uploads/media/ijcss_template.doc

Paper submissions will be accepted via email only and should be both
in Word and Adobe pdf format. All papers will be reviewed by the
scientific committee. Accepted papers will be published as a Special
Issue "Serious Games for Sports and Health" in the International
Journal of Computer Science in Sport.

************************************************
Contact
************************************************

GameDays2010@kom.tu-darmstadt.de

Prof. Dr. Josef Wiemeyer
TU Darmstadt, Institute for Sport Science
Phone +49 (0) 6151 16-2861

Dr. Stefan Göbel
TU Darmstadt, Multimedia Communications
Lab – KOM, Serious Gaming
Phone +49 (0) 6151 16-6149

Further information (e.g., registration, program and conference venue)
is available at the GameDays website:
http://www.innogames-forum.de/gamedays
****************************************************

(Semi) Virtual Goods

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:40:00 +0000

Have just read this set of slides on the Asian economy in Virtual Goods by Benjamin Joffe. It seems there is a $7 Billion business in the area of selling things via virtual environments, ranging from Online Game Gold, to Mobile Apps. and all Avatars in between. The US market is hitting $1 billion, so this is a world wide phenomenon reputedly at $52 Billion in value.

This gets me thinking about the nature of virtual goods, and their value to a consumer. I buy virtual goods in a form, they are iPhone apps., iTune songs and movies. In my research, I also buy the odd virtual product in Second Life, as I am not prepared to spend time modelling chairs and desks for my business process demonstrations.

While this virtual goods economy is growing, it is also bounded somewhat by the usage of such goods in virtual environments, and a lot of people don't spend that much time in such spaces. What will be interesting is the merging of such worlds via forms of augmented reality and newer display systems that are emerging, including forms of paper-like electronic displays. Thus virtual goods become more and more integrated with actual physical environments. I would then upgrade the walls of my home with a downloaded purchase.

The logical extreme is the extension to 3D printers. Thus you will buy the virtual product (eg. a cup) and print it out for use in the real world. In fact, I wonder if such integration might indeed decrease the popularity of pure virtual worlds, as the integration of real and virtual opens up much more exciting possibilities.

New iPhone/Android Augmented Reality applications, such as Layor, are appearing in a viable commercial form, and so I expect to see a maturation of the integration between real and virtual both in representation, and economies.

Ross

TechTip: CutyCapt for Rendering Web Pages in OpenSim

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:49:00 +0000

Our projects are about visualising the operation of Information Systems within a 3D virtual model of a business. Part of this is integrating workflow systems, like YAWL, into the virtual environment.

YAWL runs using web services to render its custom workflow forms, which means if we wish to display the data perspective in-world, then we need a webpage rendering tool, to be able to generate a texture to be placed on a prim.

One currently used method is to use a web service like pici.picidae.net to render the page, and then retrieve it for placing on a primitive. Unfortunately, this is prohibitively slow. Erik Poppe, our research assistant, has come across a command line web rendering tool called CutyCapt. A related Internet Explorer version is available as well.

It uses webkit to render the pages, and looks like being a useful solution for efficiently making web page snapshots available on OpenSim primitives for our purposes - ie. PC Terminals in world with web apps. shown on the screen.

Ross

A Political Statement from the BPMVE

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:08:00 +0000

I have a really big problem with Internet Censorship, or censorship of any kind full stop. Government control of information sources is a feature of Autocracy in my mind, and sets off my paranoia detectors.

A colleague of mine at QUT, Axel Bruns, has placed on his blog some pertinent research performed by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation in Australia. This presents, in my opinion, a balanced view providing appropriate regulation measures as a part of public policy formation by government.

Of course, some Internet content is socially offensive and inappropriate, that is regarded as a given by educated members of society. Regulation is thus a part of a complex society such as ours. However, the amount of control, and how it is implemented, should not be via a knee-jerk political response to certain sectors of the community, who wish to prohibit informed public discourse on such subjects.

As Axel suggests, feel free to link, embed etc. through appropriate channels.

Ross

Avatar, the Program

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:55:00 +0000

Graphics is about as sexy as IT can get; and that is saying something, because IT is NOT a sexy area. Even a geek like me can pick-up at a club if I mention that I do 3D graphics like those in games and motion pictures. Maybe.

Back on topic. Some serious technology is coming around the corner which will influence the realism of games and simulations by an order of magnitude.

First of all, Mach Studio Pro, a cinematic rendering system that utilises a GPU to generate high-quality, anti-aliased graphics in interactive time-frames. Typically, cinematic graphics has meant render times of days at a time for high quality scenes, such as those used in movies like Avatar. Now it only takes seconds or minutes at most using this GPU assisted technology. Previously, the high quality rendering systems have not used the GPU to such good effect, until now. So we are at the point that cinematic graphics will soon appear in games and simulations, not just the blocky "cinematic" work that we see presently, but REAL cinematic graphics. By this I mean graphics that uses millions of polygons (not low res normal mapped objects), large resolutions (HD is small by cinema standards), high quality lighting models (photon mapping, ray tracing) and texture maps large enough to prevent any distortion via magnification or minification.

Have a look at the quality of the images in the above Mach Studio Pro web site, and see how these images are a jump ahead in quality. While Crysis/Metal Gear Solid/Gears of War 2 et al have all been major moves forward, this next phase could seriously improve the sense of immersion in these games, bringing about clear, crisp artifact free graphics in real time.

This new approach is going to be powered by into the future by GPU/CPU hybrids with 40+ cores on the chips, all providing Terraflops of performance (Intel, AMD results listed), and all with the power requirements of a standard desktop - am a little skeptical here on the power needs, but we will see what happens. Intel, nVidia and AMD are going head to head with their GPU/CPU approaches to processor construction, and this is now bringing about huge competition in this arena, with large amounts of capital invested in what is perceived as disruptive GPU processing technology.

So, you will get Avatar quality graphics in real time, all ready to role on a standard desktop. For a simulation engineer like me, I can't wait. Any hospital, emergency service and environmental process simulations will have much more emotional import due to the CPU/GPU power to give immersive graphics, and then have the power besides for quality Physics, AI and Motion Capture Animation. All the nuances of a scene can be captured and simulated, ready for education and communication purposes, giving much more engaging and rigorous training exercises for students and business stakeholders alike.

Problems will occur with content production being even more difficult with the extra capabilities of the hardware and software combinations, but that will keep researchers like me in the business of providing tools to support the use of such environments by non-IT domain specialists. :-)

In the end, movies like Avatar will become programs that you download and run on your PC. To an extent this is already happening, with game tie-ins to major movies. Only in the future, the games will become more important than the movies. In effect, the movie will be the trailer to the interactive game environment they are actually trying to sell to you.

Ross

New(ish) Web-based Open Sim Viewer

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:13:00 +0000

Have just checked out the new 3Di Open Source web-based simulator viewer.

Bother is that they only have windows builds, due to the use of the Irrlicht games engine as underlying software. Works in Firefox and IE 7.0, and source has a BSD licence.

Looks good on the outside, will be testing and reporting on its usefulness as we play with its capabilities. Such web-based solutions can only help the business use of virtual worlds, as it opens up SAAS, web deliverable solutions. While I have commented about the need to also have dowloadable document-like worlds, there is nothing wrong with a slick well produced web-delivered piece of software.

BTW, a QUT graduate, Johan Berntsson is on the development team.

Ross

Virtual Worlds Shakeout

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:36:00 +0000

Forterra systems, a major player in the Virtual World space, is now having some troubles, layoffs included.

It has been commented by some that these companies burnt up loads of venture capital, and then proceeded to struggle, with their business models struggling in these times of economic difficulties.

For my two cents worth, this has been expected anyway. Second Life is still a major leader in this space (discounting the WoW and Eve online games and others), as it seems to have an economic critical mass to survive the effects of the GFC, for the moment.

So, what will be the business models of the future that will survive? Aside from pure business factors, my gut instinct tells me that maybe it is to do with the server client model and the clunky nature of some of the content creation tools. In my research, the first thing that tends to be shot back at me by skeptics (of my BPM VE ideas) is the level of work required to set these simulations up. Server systems are laggy, containing complex 3D interfaces that are clunky and hard to learn, and it all just seems too complex to engage with as a business person with little background in 3D environments or games.

My usual response back to these points are the following:

1. We need to create tools that work more like a word processor, and less like 3DS Max. People are used to word processing simple documents, not detailed work. Word processors years ago were beasts to use, drawn from document formatting systems like TeX. Now we routinely use word processors with much better interfaces, to easily create documents for our own business and personal needs.

2. We need to treat worlds as a document, not as a cloud service per se. Sure, run the world in a cloud when you need to, but allow the world to be down loadable for localised interaction and secure/lag free collaboration, just like I do with a word processed document when I work with my colleagues. This is that way we all tend to collaborate, at the moment.

3. We need to implement the levels of quality control that the games companies use. Remember, if the world stutters at all, then the immersive experience is broken, and will put people off using the environment. The iPhone is popular, in part, due to its smooth interface. People's aggression to software is roughly proportional to K x Lag in the user interface, where K is a very large integer.

Possibly, when the user experience of such tools is much better, we will see greater uptake of such systems, and a better business climate for them.

Ross

Visualisations of the Ultimate Processes

noreply@blogger.com (Ross Brown) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Fascinating video of the known universe available here. An amazing journey through a large and complex universal space, and a great visualisation by the American Museum of Natural History.

Viewing this video made me think of some of the older maps that had indistinct regions. Australia in such maps was often simply marked as "Terra Icognita"

I wonder if these universe maps will be looked at in the future, and considered just as inaccurate, and incomplete, and makes me think of what level of detail we will have in the future.

Simply put, this shows that any leading edge, large scale visualisation evolves over time, and will hopefully gain in accuracy. While this is a fairly obvious concept, one should always keep in mind that any visualisation or representation of data has inherent inaccuracies, whatever the underlying data.

It's Christmas Eve, I am now going to have a Scotch before I go to bed. :-)

Merry Xmas

Ross