4/11/2007 - Virtual Cities
OK, so creating video games is quite a popular pursuit. There are degrees for future designers, programmers, testers, reviewers, etc. Great promise for changing the way we learn. But, how do we push out a project to a community effort? Web 2.0 says the people have the power when it comes to content. I'm thinking the ultimate community project, just begging to be attempted, is the virtual city. Google Earth provides the globe for us to drop our city onto. Google provides a nice SketchUp application for beginners to quickly produce virtual buildings and other architectural structures. Could we get a whole town to quickly model all structures and have someone stitch it into a coherent whole? Certainly, the time has come, no? Twelve years have passed since the Virtual Reality Modeling Language suggested a road for us to follow in building virtual content. Planet 9 Studios has professionally built virtua] cities (San Francisco and New York kicking them off). I think someone ought to attempt to get a city to model itself from the ground up, grass roots and all. Hopefully, my Virtual Cities page will promote the idea well enough to find interest out there. If we build it, they will come (right?).
ninth entry link:
5/15/2005 - A Degree in Video Game Development
So what should a degree in video game development look like? Well, personally, I'd like it to look more like a simulation theory degree with more science and mathematics involved. Most of the associate degrees out there promote computer science skills that are more about understanding how computer languages and popular software interfaces work. As the RPI Web site mentions, 'Other institutions offering classes in video game studies include Princeton, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Irvine. There are also specialized schools, like DigiPen in Redmond, Washington, that teach nothing but game design'.
Seems to me courses on inputs (informatics and information theory), process (e.g. artificial intelligence, data assimilation, kinematics), and outputs (e.g. artistic rendering, data presentation, architecture) could expand to include a wealth of topics that have overlap with the general background education a liberal arts student would want to gain during undergraduate study. Seems using the computer as the center of course deliverables focus would be pretty interesting. We've been using paper as the focus for long enough. Just think more expansive on this theme of computer as learning delivery vehicle and then consider the potential of simulating those phenomena you learn in math and science (alongside the skills gained by requiring the deliverables be explained in clear wording) in order to prove to others you understand them. The degree then becomes more about creating an interactive cyberspace (hopefully with modular pieces) than creating a single video game using the popular methods of today.
eighth entry link:
keiser college: video game degree
5/10/2005 - Nine Years Later
Of course, yesterday I should have mentioned the heroic efforts of certain forebearers. The code bases whipped together to connect people worldwide in 3-D cyberspace were a blast to participate with. If only that same heroic effort could be applied to today's open source design patterns in our realm.
One seventh entry link:
digitalspace traveler: home page
5/9/2005 - Open Source Integration
After paying $19 a year to participate in a cyberspace building community experiment that took off in a nice critical-mass curve, I decided I'd wait for an open source graphics-engine to be incorporated into a platform I could help extend in a similar manner. Seems there is a common pattern out there for properly integrating other open source components into a scene-graph based graphics engine.
If only we could move ahead and get academic departments all over the world working on the same grand vision. We'd not only have a platform for connecting in cyberspace, we'd have a place to try out interesting algorithms, play interesting games, interact with interesting data, and do some important research as to how these cyberspace platforms could be used more effectively. Seems Rensselaer Polytechnic is building a video games major (I read it in the alumni magazine). Certainly part of such a degree should be spent developing the underlying environment on which games can be rolled out en masse. Who else is going to follow suit? How long is it going to take to get this going (and having the different students from different universities participate in one massive project?
Some sixth entry links:
activeworlds: home page
digital spaces: home page
ogre: home page
cegui: home page
openal: home page
5/8/2005 - Whole Earth Interfaces
After paying $79 for a whole earth interface application four years ago and forking over $49 a year later and $39 the year after that, I finally downloaded Google Earth for free and kicked my paying habit. Such a nice raging debate over whether the world will pay more attention to critical whole Earth system data sets now that they can map data visually to an interactive earth accessible over the Web.
The pale blue dot syndrome, as Carl Sagan calls it, comes to your home PC. Just look how vulnerable our sweet little planet looks floating out there all by its lonesome. Of course, the world disappears under the ocean on 2/3 of the surface. That's silly, eh? Ocean data sets will turn out to be the real important ones as they become more and more available. El Nino. La Nina. Driving forces that make winners and losers of communities on land. Thankfully, we have two competing products already. One starting with scientific data and the other with more recognizable data (aerial photography of city flyovers). How excellent they've covered all of Indiana! Now, if only you could launch other applications from these planetary starting points. Hmmmmmm. Now there's a lot of potential in *that*, for sure.
Some fifth entry links:
keyhole nv: earth viewer
google earth: home page
NASA: world wind
5/6/2005 - Grid-enablement Software
Three days in San Diego attending a Globus 4 Toolkit Tutorial and Workshop got me thinking more about the potential of grid commuting emerging on the scene sooner rather than later. Sure, I've run a few multi-participant sessions on the Access Grid to attend conferences or connect with lab collaborators, but I hadn't thought much about how a certificate-based access point might be my key to the all the worlds computers some day. We've been developing some SOAP-based Web services to connect disparate systems by binding to various programming languages. We've been using WSDL and WSDD to identify and deploy them. But, I hadn't thought through how every programming task on every computer in the world could be accessed through a unified front based on those specifications. Nor did I expect the Globus 4 Toolkit to be based on such underlying components.
No doubt sitting at command central of such a grid-enabled empire could be quite a rush. What a potential for visualization... virtual communities, virtual organizations, virtual identities, load balancing statistics, and job control procedures lighting up one step then the next. No wonder why so much of the workshop revolved around security methods for protecting one's assets while connecting them for others to use. Some fourth entry links:
globus 4 toolkit: news page
access grid: home page
soap primer: version 1.2
wsdl:web services description language
wsdd:web services deployment descriptor
4/28/2005 - A 3-D Operating System
One of the most intriguing first few lines of a Web site I'd seen in a while starts off, "If we were to create a new operating system and user interface knowing what we know today, how far could we go? What if we had the robustness of a 3-D immersive technology, the diversity of the Internet, and the degree of social interaction we have in the real world?"
Seems to me the XBox could fill that niche, but probably only if there were demonstrated return on investment during an incremental approach that got there eventually. That trajectory seems to already be on its way, but led by a product team that is bound by a particular corporate culture that demands XX% return on investment. What if we could come together and create a new operating system from the ground up in a way that let us play with unique ideas irrespective of a demonstratable market? The open source vehicle suggests the possibility. Could we actually create a market along the way while teaching a new generation of gamers and learners how to use that paradigm to redefine the computer away from the personal business productivity box that gave us its first investors and implementations? Seems we could use a new way of engaging our imaginations. Is a project like the Croquet Project the way to go about it? A third entry link:
croquet project: http://www.opencroquet.org/
4/26/2005 - Visualization Toolkit
After attending PyCon 2005, the Python Convention, I became convinced that the Python community was worthy of supporting, just as I had given my heart and soul to the VRML and Java 3D communities in years past. I realized that the VRML community was a little too .com bulge for me (one too many extravagant parties instead of putting energy into making VRML successful on the Web). I felt like I was part of a great Java 3D community, but I then realized it was because I had access to the first alpha release and was only one of fifteen or so people really kicking the tires on a mission-critical project. The community was small and very easy to work with. But, alas, the project manager at Sun wasn't too interested in the community or the casual home user. Java 3D was all about middleware for high-performance computers that would crunch polygon integration for visualization of millions of polygon data sets worth megabucks to Sun in potential revenues. Fair enough, but a lost opportunity. I see there is finally an organized community around Java 3D but I don't get that passionate feeling of making a difference on the Web through the use of it. Enter the Visualization Toolkit. Python-wrapped and ready to be driven by all the well used Web protocols. Time to dive in and see what that means regarding Web integration potential. Some second entry links:
vtk site: vtk
pycon 2005 site: pycon talks
web 3D site: vrml`s evolution
java 3D community site: java.net
4/25/2005 - So this is blogging?
After setting up blogware twice before, I finally decided to bite the bullet, get myself my own domain, and set up the blog link off the home page front and center. I'll be blogging about things that are related to my dissertation such as the process and utility of generating scientific visualizations for consumption on the Web. Supposedly, up to seventy-some percent of brain activity is focused on processing the photons of light that enter our eyes. Seems there is an opportunity to make that a better experience than staring at a blank wall or reading the same forty or so keyboard characters over and over and over. Not that reading isn't the coolest opportunity afforded our brains since we get to invent our own imagery to connect to the words we read, but there is an opportunity to investigate certain phenomena more literally through our visual cortex and hopefully inspire us with experiences we aren't apt to run into in our daily existence. Photography is wonderful and I am sure some blog entries will be about a cool photo I've come across on the Web. But, I am more interested in seeing stuff that is abstract and yet inspired by nature. Supposedly, we need tools to help us experience those beauties. Visualization toolkits, for example. I hope to tie together some thoughts I've been having in a way that others might just want to follow along. Hence the blog. Some first entry links:
a site: Earth Science Picture of the Day
a book: Mapping the Next Millenium
(more to come)