kevin roebuck's blog

Wonderland Challenge 2009

Here are some cool YouTube videos from the Wonderland 2009 Developers Challenge held at Kasetsart University in Bangkok

Posted at 08:35AM May 22, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[0]

Success at Saint Paul

The new page on Sun.com dedicated to the success story at Saint Paul College is posted. Thanks to Chuck for helping get the message out and to Warren and team for all their great work along with Robert too.

Posted at 10:56AM May 21, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[0]

New Logo

My favorite version of the new logo ideas for Wonderland

Posted at 07:37PM May 18, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[0]

Project Wonderland 0.5 Preview

Nicole has posted the latest preview video and details for the Wonderland 0.5 dev release on the Wonderblog. The team has done an amazing job with the new graphics and avatar systems, collada support and even federation for jumping from world-to-world safely and securely. Too cool to qualify.

Posted at 03:30PM May 14, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[0]

AGENDA: Open File Formats Technology Working Group Meeting Agenda, 2009-05-15

Meeting details for this friday's Immersive Education meeting of the Open File Format Working Group. Project Wonderland will be announced as fully compatible with COLLADA for Create Once, Experience everywhere initiative.

WHAT: OFF.TWG UPDATE AND PROJECT OVERVIEW MEETING IN-WORLD
WHEN: Friday May 15th at 11am ET (Boston time; 9-10am Pacific / SL time)
WHERE: Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Smithers%20Bluff/45/204/92
AGENDA:

1 hour meeting where Open File Formats Technology Working Group (OFF.TWG)
co-chairs will provide an overview of the current status of OFF.TWG off-list
activity and progress, along with an overview of the "OFF.TWG MESH RENDERING
PROJECT" that has been under development for the past five months.

During this meeting OFF.TWG members will see screenshots of the same 3D mesh
objects in both Wonderland and realXtend, and also in the OGRE rendering engine.
The ability to render the same 3D mesh objects (models) across all three
Immersive Education virtual worlds platforms is the overarching objective
of the "OFF.TWG MESH RENDERING PROJECT" that will be discussed next Friday.

Below is the meeting agenda:

+ Welcome and meeting overview

+ Gather attendee roster [meeting roll call]

+ Brief review of OFF.TWG "3D/VR File Format Requirements" and corresponding
   "Request for Information (RFI)"

   - OFF.TWG 3D/VR File Format Requirements
     http://MediaGrid.org/groups/technology/OFF.TWG/public/out/3DVR_Requirements

   - OFF.TWG 3D/VR Request for Information (RFI)
     http://MediaGrid.org/groups/technology/OFF.TWG/public/out/3DVR_RFI


+ Responses to OFF.TWG 3D/VR Request for Information (RFI)
    - Khronos Group: COLLADA RFI response
    - Web3D Consortium: eXtensible 3D (X3D) RFI response
    - ECMA International: Universal 3D (ECMA-363) RFI response

+ Justification for proceeding with COLLADA
    - OFF.TWG members overwhelming voted for COLLADA in informal (straw) vote
    - Widespread authoring tool support
    - Already supported by one Immersive Education platform (Wonderland 0.5)
    - Ease of implementation and transformation
    - Various related projects underway for OGRE and realXtend

+ OFF.TWG MESH RENDERING PROJECT overview and status report
    - Requirement for 2 distinct implementations
    - COLLADA project overview
       + See figures in charter http://mediagrid.org/groups/technology/OFF.TWG/
       + Reference implementation via COLLADA transformation to OGRE & realXtend
       + COLLADA conformance content suite
    - Funding sources for COLLADA mesh rendering project
    - COLLADA mesh rendering project status

+ Timelines for Official Adoption and Standardization
    - COLLADA source code and related materials available to public (May/June)
    - Immersive Education OFF.TWG 3D/VR format vote and announcement (June)
    - Immersive Education file format profiles and levels [subsets] (June/July)
    - Wonderland, realXtend full support and pass conformance suite (July)
    - Croquet/Cobalt full support and pass conformance suite [TBA]

+ $10,000 COLLADA Immersive Education content creation contest
    - http://colladacontest.com
    - Contest input into OFF.TWG standardization process


+ Q/A and open discussion

+ Adjourn

Posted at 03:10PM May 13, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[1]

Learning Math via Video Games

Tell these kids or their parents that they aren't learning math or that video games just aren't as effective, if not more so, than a textbook. Kudos to DimensionM for helping show the way. Oh, The Times they are a Changin'.

Posted at 07:47AM May 13, 2009 by kevinr in Immersion  |  Comments[0]