Empress Minerva in OpenSim #opensim #gdwtraveller

OK, with my new found Traveller enthusiasm I've brought my in-progress work on an Empress Minerva Far Trader across from Second Life to OpenSim. Now just in he process of re-texturing it and then complete the build. What I really want to then do is see how I can use it as the hub of Traveller adventuring in OpenSim - for instance changing the cockpit view to represent travel through space, and rezzing new environments when you land - all with the spaceship staying still!

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MicroTraveller #gdwtraveller

Traveller thoughts been all over the place as I've started to re-engage. First thought was a revival of idea for making a more realistic Traveller - 3D space maps, realistic solar systems, AI etc, but its just too big a jump (although its a "powered by Traveller" setting I might do some time, and for my latest work on 3D star maps see http://www.daden.co.uk/blog/2011/02/its-all-full-of-stars-25-light.html.

I then thought of finishing my Port2Jump application, but thought it too big (although I may soon get back to it), and moving my Minerva model to OpenSim will be a big job (although watching Dune I'm drawn to the idea of just creating some environment sims in OpenSim).

So I finally hit upon the idea of creating a Referee's Screen on the web that I could use from the iPad. Had a great time over the last few days pulling bits together from IMTU rules and MT (my favourite OTU rules) and Snapshot/AHL. What's now dawned on me though is that what I really want is microTraveller - a version of the Traveller rules that's so simple and easy to use that not only will they fit on a few screens of the iPad but I can actually play it more or less from memory (the task system of course being key here). The other part to the Referee's Screen/Companion is of course the software, automating all those parts of the rules that are needed that are just too complex to remember for data reasons (eg encounter tables etc), so that you can create encounters, map a world, jump to orbit etc just in a single mouse-click. So that's the aim, lets see where it goes to.

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Traveller Referees Companion - #gdwtraveller

The time just isn't there to do an app like Port2Jump at the moment (and my Empress Minerva model in SL is half built and awaiting transfer to OpenSim. So thought I might try something simpler - turning the iPad into a C21 Referees Screen. Browser based first.

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World Of Mysteries: Abandoned Remains of the Russian Space Shuttle Project Buran

http://www.themysteryworld.com/2010/12/abandoned-remains-of-russian-space.html

Lovely set of pics of the old Buran launch site, now rusting and overgrown. Even interior pics of the cockpit.

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Plans for 2011

With the iPad to hand there really is no excuse for not updating this blog more often! (scratch that - using the Movable Type screens on an iPad are a real pain)

Back in September I put together a list of 5 big projects to occupy my spare time (such as it is) alongside growing Daden. They were:

• Creating environment spaces on OpenSim - with no more limits on number of sims then nice spacious builds in an SL like space are possible
• Working more on Halo's AI - I'm disappointed that 2 years after the Machine Intelligence competition I've spent hardly any time pushing Halo forward. Particular areas of interest are increasing her situatedness in SL, making more use of semantic triples, and working on the next generation chat engine
• Widening the scope of my wargaming, and in particular finishing off my MechWar and Napoleonic rules
• Doing something with my Future History ideas - wiki, novel, book?
• Growing a second "pocket money" income stream - possibly around selling PDF copies of rules or my old Traveller writings

So 3 months later where am I?

• OpenSim - go off to a good start with porting the Tranquility Base sim we did in SL to OpenSim, and started work on a Mars base. Then an afternoon out to Packwood House had me start on a model of that C17 building and its grounds. That then got overtaken by events but I did work out how to get island/continent outlines into OpenSim, and am currently looking at terrain data import. Hopefully progress Packwood House, Mars and the terrain import over the next few months.
• Halo's AI - Read a load about adjacency pairs and spruced up some of Halo's open smalltalk stubs. Working slowly through some semantic triples databases and just started a triples editor to make the whole triples thing easier. Still not as much time on this as I'd like.
• Wargaming - into the closing stretch of the ECW army, photo's coming, and then can concentrate on rules set. Also found the Napoleon200 project - and will hopefully get my first game in March, and the Wargame Developments Group and their annual Conference of Wargamers which I'll hopefully get to.
• Future History ideas - bottom of the pile, no progress
• Second Stream - real progress. Had been playing around with some ideas to solve an on-going problem I have related to one of the above when I not only found a workable solution, but also a real business opportunity. Teamed up with my mate Nick (the last joint venture we had was a short-wave fanzine in school!) and we're now working to develop the project - codenamed C60 for now (and nothing to do with home-taping).

I'll try and post on developments on each of these as they happen.

Promise.

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2010: When Virtual and Augmented Worlds Collide?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has an interesting blog post comparing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, based primarily on a Google Trends plot of both search terms in Google.

His conclusions:

• Augmented Reality has now over taken Virtual Reality, and
• "You can take your virtual reality and get lost on Second Life. I'll take augmented reality any day. It's just more real."

As Mark Kingdon's New Year post says though virtual worlds such as Second Life are likely to become even more real (Second Life HD - SLHD Mark calls it), and anyway:

• The current killer apps for virtual worlds and augmented reality are different - the VW strength is in training and learning, collaboration and whole building and data visualisation, AR is currently in navigation and interpretation
• Increasingly the two will blur - we will have more AR with VW, and be able to our VW on as a AR overlay on real-life (see Halting State by Charles Stross)

So in most respects while the "tension" between AR and VW is interesting to me it is ultimately pointless as the future involves both.

But then I looked at Erick's graph again. He plotted virtual reality against AR - which apart from being a poetic balance is actually the wrong thing. All my (and most other people's talk) is about virtual worlds. VR is very much the 70s/80s term - no wonder its declining on his graph - and the VW "bubble" was in 2006 well after his graph shows VR declining.

So I did my own Google Trends - plotting AR against not only VR but also "virtual worlds" - having checked of course that my AR/VR graph was the same as his. The result:

That looks a truer picture. VW steading growing with something of a step change around 2006 and then growing steady til it was overhualed bythe AR hype of mid 2009, but then actually taking AR back over (just) at the end of 2009!.

As ever lies, damn lies and statistics!

As I said earlier this isn't to say that VW is better than AR or more important - they are both going to be important and vital to the future - all we need to know is which to use for which application, and how to get them to work together.

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Hubble Advent Calendar

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent_1.html

Stunning collection of 25 Hubble images.

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