News: Unity Powered Web SL/OpenSim Viewer

Tipodean technologies has just released a web-based browser called Canvas, for OpenSim and Second Life.

Tipodean is run by an Australian, Chris Collins, ex Linden Labs.

November 29, 2010 - Tipodean Technologies is pleased to announce the preview launch of Canvas, a web-based viewer for both Second Life and Opensim. Licensed from IBM, Canvas is unique in that it is highly scalable and easily customizable. Built with Unity3D and open web technologies, the web development community will be able to create unique and branded immersive virtual world experiences without having to know/learn new or complex code. The viewer can run as a hosted solution for individual use or be deployed to be hosted by others. "Canvas gives you the ability to have a light weight web-based virtual world solution that can configured to whatever your needs may be. Combing Canvas with OpenSim allows for an out-of the-box scalable virtual world deployable in the web", said Chris Collins, CEO of Tipodean Technologies.

Tipodean will be distributing and supporting Canvas. It will be offered in two forms: on a per user basis and as a completely customized deployment. Distribution of Canvas will start the week of December 6th, 2010. For more information, please contact Tipodean at +1 (415) 669-4028 or canvas@tipodean.com.

Tipodean Technologies is a company focused on virtual world technology that is easily accessible to all.

Ross

Links: QUT Game Students' Work

My students at QUT have just completed their final year projects. Some of them are absolute crackers; I'm VERY proud of their work.

I have included a list of the URLs for their projects that they set up as part of the deliverables required in the project unit. They all contain movies, download links for executables and team contact details.

BTW, they will be looking for work now. So feel free to contact them if you are looking for virtual world programming and content creation talent. :-)

Ross

Links to student work follow:

www.eternalduskgame.com

www.rockinmoses.com/cloud9

screwtapestudios.com/golfwar

www.pineapplefishstudios.com/

www.elementalistgame.com/

www.indiedb.com/games/bear-story

www.badsciencegame.com/index.html

www.indiedb.com/games/spai

sites.google.com/site/fungiochi2010/home

www.kungfuteachergame.com/

www.moddb.com/games/cannonball-clash

www.noahsjungle.com/

www.moddb.com/mods/silvercurls

www.acoenvi.com/

Humour: Synergon is a BLARP

Great article via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing:

"Synergon is a BLARP: a business live-action role-playing game. Players create fantasy characters who start out as low-level corporate drones and then perform boring, soul-destroying repetitive tasks set by a game-master (called "The Boss") until they level up. Players also fight one another for the chance to do more boring, soul-destroying tasks."

Now all we have to do is add a process model system to it, and we'll have a real money maker ;-)

Ross

CFP: International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and its Applications (DICTAP2011)

The International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and its Applications (DICTAP2011)

University de Bourgogne, France

http://www.sdiwc.net/fr

The DICTAP2011 proceedings will be published in the " Communications in Computer and Information Science " (CCIS) Series of Springer LNCS

You are invited to participate in The International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and its Applications that will be held in Dijon, France, on June 21-23, 2011. The event will be held over three days, with presentations delivered by researchers from the international community, including presentations from keynote speakers and state-of-the-art lectures.

Best selected papers will be published in the following special issue journals

1. Journal of Computer Systems, Networks, and Communications.
2. International Journal of Green Computing.
3. International Journal of Knowledge and Web Intelligence.
4. International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems
5. International Journal of Web Based Communities (IJWBC)

Important Dates

Submission Date	Feb. 20, 2011
Notification of acceptance	April 1, 2011
Camera Ready submission	April 10, 2011
Registration	April 10, 2011
Conference dates	June 21-23, 2011

Location

DICTAP will be organized by University de Bourgogne, Dijon, France in cooperation with The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC). All the activities of the conference will take place in France.

Would you like to organize a workshop or a special session or a tutorial?

If you are interested in organizing any workshop or special session, please send us email to di@sdiwc.netwith the title of the session

Would you like to be a reviewer?

All the reviewing are online. Please visit http://www.sdiwc.net/fr then select link be a reviewer. More details are listed there.

Submission

Submission instructions are listed at this link Submission of Papers

Contact

Send E-Mail to : di@sdiwc.net See for further details: http://www.sdiwc.net/fr

Crytek Architectural Visualisation

Video of a Ukrainian architect's experiments with the Crytek 2 game engine. Shows very intricate and highly realistic visualisations of a suburban landscape. Improves the speed of visualisation, as all of this detail can be generated within a level editor that comes with the engine. This is one of the things I keep telling people who query the effort involved in modelling a business simulation. Level editing systems in Games allow low-skilled programmers to develop quite sophisticated environments with simple event-based scripting systems. Skills well within the reach of a typical Business Analyst.

Ross

Good News Visualisation

Hans Roslin presents some great news about the decline in infant mortality. While this is great news full stop, I do love the way he presented the information. He uses impacting dynamic graphs to illustrate the downward trends. It also succinctly illustrates the relationship between infant mortality, family sizes and the education of women in society. These are key factors in future sustainability and quality of life issues for the human race as a whole, and I believe he uses visualisations to communicate this well.

Ross

Link: The Wilderness Downtown

From the Yesha VW Blog, a machinma generation software page for an Arcade Fire song.

It is pure emotional manipulation, using images of your home town as a way to engage with the song in a deeper manner. Found it quite wistful to see the large St Killian's Clapboard Church from my hometown of Bendigo, Victoria, Australia.

However, putting aside my cynical attitude to being manipulated by an Emo band, this approach could be used in an exceedingly powerful manner for visualisation and communication. Imagine a Green Party political campaign with images of YOUR home town damaged by global warming.

Another example of Minority Report style location aware advertising I guess. :-)

Ross