The Amputee Virtual Support System in Second Life

The Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center has an interesting new rehabilitation project in Second Life’s virtual world called “AVESS” (Amputee Virtual Environment Support Space). Soldiers abroad who find themselves an amputee typically spend weeks or months in rehab afterwards, away from their friends and family back home. Then when they do return home, they find themselves isolated from their support system of therapists, psychologists, and friends. The in-world AVESS attempts to allow these soldiers to interact with their family Virtually, and then attend presentations and group activities inworld once they return home.

When wounded warriors return home, they face long term care and recovery, often isolated from their family.

TATRC is now developing the Amputee Virtual Environment Support Space on the Second Life Enterprise platform as a virtual clinic where amputees, their families and healthcare providers connect to supplement care and improve the quality of life of patients.

Currently available inworld as a test proof-of-concept, DOD requirements will put the official version in the SL Enterprise space (behind DOD firewalls and security controls). Overall, it looks amazing and powerful, if it catches on.

via YouTube – Sneak Peek: The Amputee Virtual Support System [coming soon to SL Enterprise].

via:http://www.vizworld.com/2010/05/amputee-virtual-support-system-life/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=amputee-virtual-support-system-life

CGschool “Free Week” - Five Free Visualization Webinars

If you want to brush up on VRay, 3dsMax, or Mental Ray then check out these free 1-hour webinars being offered by CGSchool next month. The classes are overviews of their longer, more exhaustive classes, so you’ll get a taste of what you might see in the full (paid) class and maybe learn something for free in the process.

June 7 – Internet Marketing for Arch. Visualization (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Brian Zajac

June 8 – V-Ray Advanced (live from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria) – Brian Smith

June 9 – 3ds Max Advanced Modeling (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Alex Gorbunov

June 10 – mental ray Beginner (live from India) – Pete Draper

June 11 – PF Track (live from U.K.) – Mike Merron

Registration details are on their site.

via CGschool | Register.

3Di - OpenSim in the Browser

Google TV

It is not new technology, but the market is now ready.

Jonathan Himoff still has Hope - Watch His Video

rezzable — May 18, 2010 — Rezzable Productions CEO Jonathan Himoff talks about the concept of 3D Web and how the advent of 3D is changing media, and how it will change the future of the internet.

Reaction to a New Interface - SL 2.0 versis Solidworks 2009

Here is a quote from:
SolidWorks 2009 preview from DEVELOP3D blog
Compare this to reviews of SL 2.0, Note: Soldiworks is for Creatives, not Consumers

Interface

Grab a cup of coffee and let’s talk about User Interfaces. If the SolidWorks 2008 “new and improved” interface gave you tremors and night frights, SolidWorks 2009 will, in all honesty, have you sleeping through the night a little better, although you legs might start jerking when you find out… the Command Manager is now movable. I don’t use the Command Manager, but I know this was a fit for a lot of people. The same goes for the Property Manager. You can now move them to the left, move them to the right, move them all about your desktop, and even….
...onto multiple monitors. Yes, you multiple monitor mavens now have support to spread SolidWorks into the far reaches of pure pixel happiness. Fill one screen with the work area and the other screen with commands and properties. If you’ve used dual monitors before, you know the desire that has overcome you for this feature. As long as your graphics card supports dual monitors, you’ll be ready to stretch.

SolidWorks has listened to how people enjoy moving in and around their model. When you’re floating ubiquitously amongst the geometry. It’s easier to orient and zoom. Double-click that middle mouse button to zoom to fit the model on the screen and click the reference triad right on the screen to orient the model. If you need to get in close, hit the ‘G’ button and you’re suddenly magnified 2X within the lens and have the ability to zoom in further, select, measure and even section the model. At first, it’s a bit like rubbing your belly and extruding to a surface at the same time, but when you get used to it, you’re no longer destroying that finger cartilage by zooming with the scroll wheel.

The interface enhancements overall are a huge improvement, and are the first example of how SolidWorks is not flippant about responding to the resounding requests of the users..

Conclusion:
That is pure 3D involvement with the entire design process. Then SolidWorks takes it one step further by making sketches and geometry easier to create and manipulate. This lets the user control the data and keep a tight rein on how it’s defined while opening up more possibilities to create variation. This, in design and engineering is the tightly wound knot every CAD company is teething to untie. It’s an entirely different world of working in 3D. One that many CAD companies have not grasped and one that SolidWorks is showing it understands with every new version.

PCoIP

AMDUnprocessed — April 16, 2010 — The ATI FirePro™ RG220 graphics card delivers a wide-ranging compute experience from the datacenter without compromise, and is designed to help IT managers reduce power and cooling costs per user while limiting the amount of physical hardware at users desks.

Coming Soon - Havoc 7.0 Physics

Server 1.40 will roll out the Havok 7 Physics Engine. The Havok 7 engine will provide some performance enhancements. The Lab says "The work is foundational as we look ahead into later in 2010 and 2011" & anticipates deploying "shipping?" Server 1.40 by summer.


Video by OpensourceObscure — Posted to Youtube April 03, 2010
Quick demo showing fast rezzing of physical objects and collisions, plus some eye-candy / shadow effect.

Second Life is currently using Havok physics engine, version 4. On a few regions on the Preview grid, they're now testing Havok version 7: http://bit.ly/a8AxiV
Video taken with GLC using current official SL Viewer 2 on Linux Ubuntu 10.04 alpha.

Meshes

The model of Ronchamp is from TurboSquid for $290 US
3D Studio ( .3ds )
1.9 MB
Cinema 4D ( .c4d )
2.6 MB
SketchUp (.skp)
11 MB

















Mesh Public Beta

We're happy to announce that we anticipate launching a beta test of mesh imports in Q2 2010. While we've publicly announced that bringing files into Second Life from standard authoring tools like Maya, 3D Studio Max, and others is on our roadmap for 2010, we're pleased to be able to put it in Residents' hands sooner rather than later. The beta will likely be limited to the Beta Grid, and to a special beta version of the viewer, but this is a very exciting development. This capability is a dramatic advance for Second Life content creators, as it opens up the door to more tools, more content, and more builders. We are very conscious of the potential issues around this capability, such as its impact on performance, the impact on current inworld businesses, and the large amount of content outside of Second Life that will be making its way into Second Life, and we're working hard to make sure that none of those issues will be showstoppers. Mesh has been in private beta since the beginning of the year, which has provided us with a great deal of valuable feedback, and we're super excited to take this next step. Stay tuned for more details from the Content Tools team in the next few weeks.

via: SL Blog - Q2 Coming Soon: What's Ahead For Second Life

Updates: from the blog discussion:

T. Linden

We are working hard to develop a plan to manage the introduction of mesh to the SL grid. The challenges around IP, performance, and impact to the inworld economy are front and center as we consider how to manage this. Suffice to say that we will need to have controls around Mesh - some may be limits or caps, some maybe complexity, some may require assertions on the part of the uploader about IP rights with consequences if they are violated, some may be pricing.

As our plans become firmer, we'll share the plans around the strategies to manage the risk. Tell us your ideas on how you might do it...

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About the IP issues though, I think as long as Joe Blow newb with no traceable information can't upload meshes, it'll be fine. People tend to break the law less often when they know they can be found and charged easily.

This is a really interesting comment. Knowing who is behind a particular upload (if it's IP infringing) *is* a deterrent. Another deterrent is that Mesh probably shouldn't be a feature available to "Joe Blow Newb" - at least with the capabilities to upload hundreds of arbitary files five seconds after creating a new, anonymous account.

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Living Earth Simulator

Friday, April 30, 2010

Europe's Plan to Simulate the Entire Planet

The 'Living Earth Simulator' will mine economic, environmental and health data to create a model of the entire planet in real time.

When it comes to global crises, we're not short of complex systems that look close to the edge: the climate, the food supply, energy security, the banking system and so on. Add to this the threat of war in many parts of the world and the possibility of global pandemics and it's a wonder that anybody gets out of bed in the morning.

Science has certainly played an important role in understanding aspects of these systems but could it do more?

Today, Dirk Helbing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich outlines an ambitious project to go further, much further.

Helbing's idea is to create a kind of Manahattan project to study, understand and tackle these techno-socio-economic-environmental issues. His plan is to gather data about the planet in unheard of detail, use it to simulate the behaviour of entire economies and then to predict and prevent crises from emerging.

Think of it as a kind of Google Earth for society. We've all played with Google's 3D map of the Earth that uses real data to reveal not only the town where you live and work but your home and back garden too.

Imagine a similar model that uses in real time things like financial transactions, health records, travel details, carbon dioxide emissions and so on to build a model of not just the planet but the entire society that populates it. Helbing calls it 'reality mining'.

This model will be capable not only modelling the planet in real time but of simulating the future, rather in the manner of weather forecasters.

via: MIT Review

Immersive Education Initiative has Issued an Open Call for Expert Legal Opinions

Immersive Education Initiative Issues Call For Expert Legal Opinions On Second Life

Media Grid standards, technologies and initiatives (such as Immersive Education) are developed by an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies. Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Media Grid, which is growing at the rate of approximately 2 new members every day

BOSTON, MA - April 30, 2010 - The Immersive Education Initiative today issued an open call for expert legal opinions on content ownership, terms of service, and potential legal liabilities for teaching in the virtual world of Second Life. The Initiative issued its call to the international legal community in response to new Second Life terms of service that went into effect today and a growing concern for legal liabilities for educators and schools that require students to enter and reside in a public virtual world populated with anonymous users and potentially offensive content.

"We need clarity, authoritative clarity, on these issues immediately," stated Aaron E. Walsh, Director of the non-profit Immersive Education Initiative. "Our global community of nearly 3,000 educators, responsible for millions of students worldwide, is uncertain as to the short- and long-term impact that the new Second Life terms of service actually have on content ownership and rights. Furthermore, we do not know to what extent our teachers and their schools are legally liable when bringing students into Second Life where they may be exposed to individuals and content that may be considered inappropriate in an educational environment. These are significant and far-reaching concerns that require the coordinated efforts of the international legal community to address. Until we are in a position to issue authoritative guidelines that are informed by the international legal community we recommend that educators stop building and teaching in Second Life. In cases where teaching in Second Life must continue we recommend that schools first obtain signed legal release forms from their students and the parents of those students," continued Walsh.

Formal guidelines for educators and schools working in Second Life, informed by expert legal opinions submitted in response to this call, will be published by the Immersive Education Initiative's Legal Working Group (IED.LWG) by or before July 4th 2010. Members of the international legal community with relevant experience are invited to submit opinions directly to the Director of the Initiative and participate in related Legal Working Group meetings and deliberations.

via: http://mediagrid.org