Seapegasus Blog

Thursday February 05, 2009

NetBeans in Wonderland (Part 2)

In part one, I talked about what project Wonderland is and where you can try out a live demo of version 0.4. Much like SecondLife, Wonderland is a 3D world with avatars and audio/text chat. But unlike SecondLife, Wonderland is open-source and more business-oriented, for instance there's live application sharing. You can use it to collaborate on projects with your team of developers in a private 3D world.

Part two is about how to set up your own Wonderland server and client. I will share an instance of NetBeans in this example, but of course you can share any Xwindows application, including the Terminal.

Prerequisites: Solaris/Linux

Windows and Mac versions of the Wonderland 0.4 server don't seem to be available yet, so presently Solaris or Linux are a prerequisite. Note that Wonderland clients (including a webstartable one) are available for all operating systems. In this example I use OpenSolaris, and the instructions should be identical for Linux.

Prerequisites: Java

Before running Wonderland, make sure you have JDK 6 installed. (Use the terminal commands javac -version to check). If you don't have javac, install the JDK 6. On Solaris, go to the main menu, choose System > Administration > Package Manager, and install the java-dev package from the Development category.

Prerequisites: Installing the Shared Application

Obviously the application that you want to share must be correctly installed and on your PATH. In this example I downloaded and installed NetBeans. Check whether NetBeans is in your PATH by typing which netbeans at a fresh Terminal prompt. If the command returns empty, you need to add NetBeans to your PATH before proceeding. Find out where the NetBeans binaries were installed -- in my system, it's in the /opt/netbeans-6.5/bin/ directory. Remember this path and add it to your config file (I use the bash shell, so for me the file is .bashrc).

ruth@sonnig:~$ gedit ~/.bashrc

Add your netbeans binary path in the following way and save the file.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/netbeans-6.5/bin/

Reload the .bashrc configuration (in every open Terminal window).

ruth@sonnig:~$ source .bashrc

Test whether NetBeans was successfully included in your PATH.

ruth@sonnig:~$ which netbeans
/opt/netbeans-6.5/bin/netbeans

Installing Wonderland

Now it's time to install Wonderland. Go to lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net and download the binary build (for example wonderland-0-4-0-solaris-i86pc.zip), and extract the archive.

ruth@sonnig:~$ unzip wonderland-0-4-0-solaris-i86pc.zip

Change into the wonderland directory and edit the settings.

ruth@sonnig:~$ cd lg3d-wonderland/bin/
ruth@sonnig:~$ gedit  ../my.run.properties

Modify the following lines to include your host name and IP address, and save the file. (You will have to redo that if you use DHCP and are assigned a new IP address.)

wonderland.local.hostAddress=123.454.32.1
sgs.server=sonnig
sgs.port=1139

Starting the Wonderland Server

OK, you're all set! Now it's time to start the server. According to the instructions, you run the binaries as follows:

ruth@sonnig:~$ ./wonderland-bridge.sh
ruth@sonnig:~$ ./wonderland-server.sh
ruth@sonnig:~$ ./wonderland-smc.sh

Starting the Wonderland Client

Finally, start a Wonderland client and connect to your server. The client can run on any operating system, on the same host or on a different one, webstart or desktop app, it's up to you. The only requirement is that the host must support 3D graphics. (Since my OpenSolaris runs in a virtual machine and VirtualBox cannot handle 3D graphics, I use the Mac client.) When the login dialog appears, enter the IP address that you specified above, pick any username, and connect.

Welcome to your very own Wonderland. :-) You walk around using the arrow keys. Select Netbeans from the Shared Apps submenu and find the window floating in the room. Gain/release control of an application by Shift-Left_clicking the window title. Tip: I don't know what Solaris thinks ctrl-space is, but it didn't trigger code-completion; so I'm using ctrl-\ instead.

 
A shared application (here NetBeans) in 3rd-person view and in Best View (Shift-Right_click)

Now it's time to invite some friends over: Ask them to webstart the client, give them the Wonderland server's IP address, and have a little chat around the campfi-- um, around the IDE. Hmm. Around the IDE...? Well, it is a 3D world... What if I walk around the IDE and look at it from behind?

Behold. The far side of NetBeans! :D

The next step is to load custom 3D models (more documentation is here). But I'll wait until I migrated my stuff to a Linux machine -- VirtualBox is nice, but seeing that it takes up way over 50% of my RAM gives me fits of claustropobia. ;)