ReactionGrid Inc.

Virtual Worlds Presentation for 2012 Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndŵr University

2012-02-28T10:54:00.001-08:00

The Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndŵr University brings together a diverse range of web entrepreneurs, students and academics to discuss the opportunities for e-entrepreneurship offered by virtual worlds and the social web. It's hosted each year by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University.

On Feb 23 at this year's conference, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Best Practices in Virtual Worlds. Here's the full video.

The Right Tool for the Right Job: Best Practices for Virtual Worlds from John Lester on Vimeo.

You can grab a copy of my slides on Google, and you can visit the Jibe world featured in my presentation by going here.

Thanks again to Matthew Draycott from the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University for inviting me to speak. It was a great opportunity!

- John "Pathfinder" Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.

Talking about Virtual Worlds on MetaReality

2012-02-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was a guest on MetaReality's weekly podcast about virtual worlds.

We chatted about my time at Linden Lab, cool stuff happening at ReactionGrid, virtual world platforms like Jibe and Opensim, the Hypergrid Adventurers Club, and the future evolution of virtual worlds.

Great people, great discussion and quite a few laughs. Kim, thank you again for having me on the show.

My favorite part was when all of us logged in to my Jibe world and ran around exploring while we were chatting live on the show. Lots of fun!

-John "Pathfinder" Lester
Chief Learning Officer, ReactionGrid Inc.

ReactionGrid Mobilizer Expands to Game Based Learning & Sim Studio

2012-02-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

ReactionGrid's "Mobilizer" group for Android publishing is expanding to become our division for start to finish rapid Game Based Learning & Simulation production and publishing for our Jibe platform. Like a video game producer that works with partners and contractors to create great titles but in this case focused on game based learning and simulations.

Our team paired with vetted Jibe/Unity3D industry titans and community newcomers and veterans are already in production of several 6 figure indie game based learning and simulation efforts based on Jibe. If you have a huge idea and need support quickly expressing the idea to grant committees or other decision makers we have the team.

Remember you can start proposing Android and iOS mobile concepts now to the NSF and others because we support that out of the box. We think mobile game based learning and simulations is an exciting new area of virtual worlds. When you need a supporting grant or proposal document that genuinely has thought put into your particular project's 3D multi-user needs contact us at www.reactiongrid.com .

We also have a path forward for our community to become a qualified partner for producing content for our projects. The following Jibe levels are to encourage the building of a community of developers for rapidly developing 3D applications.

Jiblet-Has a Jibe project kit and successfully completed our Chief Learning Officer's introduction Jibe/Unity3D course (free with Jibe order).
Jixxer-Achieved creating a new mesh object and adding it to their Jibe world.
Jinja-Has written or modified a C# or JavaScript script and published it to their Jibe world.
JiMax-Contributed a new core functionality to Jibe or changed how it works in a new way.
JiFleet-Part of our approved contractor fleet for Mobilizer by climbing the Jibe ladder or industry & Jibe/Unity3D experience.

The Mobilizer Core Team:

Kyle G Producer/QA/Art Direction
Robin G Project Manager/QA/Storyline/Avatars & Characters
Chris Hart Technical Writer/QA/Game Designer/A.I. Lead
Jeff Lowe Game Designer/QA/World Developer
John Lester Instructional Designer/QA/World Developer

All Mobilizer qualified projects are developed using a combination of our JIRA management tools, our ISO 9001 focused Production & QA procedures and our own virtual world environments & collaboration tools for maximum customer involvement and team building.

If you would like to find out how to move up the Jibe qualification ladder watch this blog as we're growing fast and will always look to our community first for partnerships. A list of JiFleet partners will be published soon as well. Let's succeed together!

Kyle G

ReactionGrid featured in the Virtual Education Journal

2012-02-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

The 3rd Issue of the Virtual Education Journal is out, and ReactionGrid is featured in several of the articles. Of particular interest is the article contributed by educator Scott Merrick of Metro Nashville Public Schools. In it, he explains his and other educator's use of Opensimulator, as well as his ongoing work with the Jibe platform. You can visit his Jibe world mentioned in the article by clicking HERE.

Open publication - Free publishing

Looking Forward: My New Role at ReactionGrid – Chief Learning Officer

2012-01-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since I started working at ReactionGrid, and my initial role with the company was Director of Community Development.

As of this month, I'm very excited to announce that I have been promoted to Chief Learning Officer.

As Chief Learning Officer, I'll be responsible for all aspects of knowledge management at ReactionGrid, both internal and external. My primary responsibility will be to help ReactionGrid identify, evaluate and effectively use a combination of the right knowledge management tools and best practices. Educating our customers is also critical, so I'll be focusing a great deal on ways to help our customers learn to successfully use our products and share their strategies for success. I want to make sure everyone has the necessary knowledge and confidence to succeed at their own goals.

I'll also be helping guide the company in feature prioritization and R&D efforts. By listening carefully to our customers and the community at large, we can make smarter decisions about how to evolve our virtual world platforms.

Lastly, I'll be working with new clients on large-scale virtual world projects, focusing on grant proposals, project management and plenty of hands-on Jibe development work. I've been using our Jibe platform for only a few months, but I've quickly learned how to do quite a bit with it. To be perfectly honest, this fact is less a testimony to my own skills and more an indication of just how simple our Jibe platform is to learn and use effectively.

Taking on this new leadership role brings with it a great deal of new responsibility. I am now part of the executive team directly responsible for helping ensure the future success of the company. It means a great deal to me that our CEO and the rest of the management team have the confidence in me to offer me this wonderful opportunity. Thank you.

I strongly feel that virtual world platforms are poised for broader adoption, providing new opportunities for learning and community development on a global scale. The team at ReactionGrid is simply the smartest and most driven group of people I've ever worked with in my life (and I've worked with some very smart people in the past). I consider it a privilege each day to be part of the ReactionGrid team.

And by working hand in hand with our community of innovative colleagues and pioneering customers, we're going to build those virtual world platforms of the future.

Together, we're going to change the world. I'm confident that we'll do it.

Do or do not. There is no "try."

-John "Pathfinder" Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.

Islands of Enlightenment at the Virtual Pioneer History Conference (Jan 20-21)

2012-01-20T11:34:00.000-08:00

The Virtual Pioneer History Conference is an online history conference for educators interested in using virtual worlds for immersive learning. It's being held today and tomorrow (Jan 20 - 21) in Second Life. For more information and a full schedule, see the conference website.

Andrew Wheelock is an innovative Technology Integrator who works with teachers and students in k-12 schools in Western New York. At 1pm EST tomorrow (Jan 21), Andrew will be giving a presentation in Second Life about his "Islands of Enlightenment" project using an Opensim environment from ReactionGrid.

Here are the details:

When: 10:00 am PST (1pm EST), Saturday January 21.
Where: Second Life - SLURL
Topic: "The Islands of Enlightenment" (project website)

"Andrew Wheelock (known as Spiff Whitfield in Second Life) will highlight his work using a ReactionGrid Opensim environment that gives students a glimpse into history as avatars. The Islands of Enlightenment consist of 2 islands that have been developed as historical sims. One of the islands has the Understanding the Holocaust Project whereby students are guided through a series of activities involving the 1942-44 streets of Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family lay in hiding. Students can interact with the secret annex and learn from source material from PBS, Masterpiece theater materials. We may get a sneak peek at the second island which is going to be used for a Medieval Roleplaying sim for 6th grade students to learn about the life and challenges of this age."

At ReactionGrid, we firmly believe in the power of immersive environments to create incredibly moving educational experiences. Which is why we're so excited about Andrew's work!

A group of us from ReactionGrid will be attending his presentation tomorrow, and I'll be at the opening keynote presentation for the conference tonight at 4pm PST (7pm EST).

Hope to see you there, and congratulations Andrew on your fantastic project.

UPDATED 1/21/12: If you missed the presentation, you can check out Andrew's slides or watch a recorded video stream of his presentation.

-John "Pathfinder" Lester

Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.

The time for Tablets is 2012

2012-01-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

This week I had to fly to Baltimore for a kickoff event with the University of Maryland, State of Maryland and the ADAA whereby we will use Jibe to develop counseling spaces for those struggling with addiction. When deciding how best to pass through the auspices of the TSA I decided to leave the laptop at home and take 2 of my Android tablets my Acer Iconia 10.1 inch and my Kindle Fire 7 inch.

Jibe will initially be integrated via our browser based system with medical records systems and other computer services but mobile will come into play once this foundation is completed.

In addition to lightening my load I was able to worry less about battery life and bothering those in the seats next to me with a large laptop. But would I be able to show off our virtual world platform Jibe without a traditional computer? The answer ended up being "yes"!

After the cake cutting ceremony (there was actually a cake with the project name "AVATaR" on it) I was able to pass around my Acer Iconia Honeycomb tablet with the 3D Jibe multi-user world running on it. I had to do no explanation of how to move your avatar around, it was just intuitive even to non-gamers and those when never logged into a virtual world before.

When discussing with counselors about the lowered barrier to entry for our web browser based deployment of Jibe and the mobile app version many heads shook in agreement that this was the easiest way to introduce this concept to new users. People just started using it!

When combined this year with our upcoming inworld mesh building tools and the touch interface Jibe will be a compelling platform for those wanting the easiest way to create and use a virtual world.

So in terms of general computing and our own virtual world platform my load has been lightened both in weight to carry around and in the need to teach users how to interact with 3D worlds. To me this litmus test proved that 2012 is truly going to be the year of mobile virtual worlds and mobile computing in general.

To try the simple beta demo of Jibe-Mobile click here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ReactionGrid.JibeAndroid&feature=order_history or search for Jibe on the official Android marketplace.

See you in 3D-anywhere!
Kyle G

Syd Mead interview in Jibe-sySTEMic

2012-01-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

Visual Futurist Syd Mead http://sydmead.com will be joining ReactionGrid in our virtual world of sySTEMic next month for an interview on technology, virtual worlds and the future. Syd is best known for his work on the visual and technological design of movies like Bladerunner, Aliens, Minority Report, Star Trek, Tron and others.

Syd has been a source of personal inspiration to me for decades in both design and concept of future technology. The image above shows his uncanny ability to paint with incredible detail even emulating chrome and reflections with nuance that seems impossible to do by hand.

My own design work has been heavily influenced by Syd as seen here http://reactiongrid.blogspot.com/2011/09/mesh-yourself-before-you-wreck-yourself.html with my Jibe "JiCycle" design for testing vehicle dynamics in our virtual world. The above image and his work on the Lightcycles in Tron were clearly factors in my own concepts for a futuristic vehicle in terms of technology and visuals.

ReactionGrid designed "JiCycle" above.

We look forward to chatting with Syd about his own work and what he thinks about virtual world technology. We hope to bring other technology and educational luminaries into sySTEMic this year and elicit their feedback on the growing metaverse.

You can attend this event on Mac or PC via any major browser or on your Android tablet or phone.

Details coming on when and where...

See you in 3D friends!

Kyle G

The Hypergrid Adventurers Club RELOADED

2012-01-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

I started the Hypergrid Adventurers Club (HGAC) over a year ago to create a venue for folks interested in exploring the Hypergrid together. While we were working on some major OpenSim upgrades here at ReactionGrid the past few months, I decided to pause our weekly HGAC meetings.

We're all very excited about rolling out OpenSim 0.7.2 to all our OpenSim clients. We're doing this major upgrade on a case by case basis, and one of the great new features of this newer version of Opensim is upgrading to version 1.5 of the Hypergrid. This version is supported by the majority of OpenSim grids currently online. Which means we're dramatically expanding the universe of interconnected OpenSim grids that our clients can explore during their hypergrid explorations.

And thanks to all the hard work of everyone at ReactionGrid, the Hypergrid Adventurers Club's home base on jokaydiaGRID is now running OpenSim 0.7.2.

Starting this week, I'll be resuming weekly meetings of the Hypergrid Adventurers Club. The first new meeting will be Thursday, January 5th 2012 at 4pm Eastern Time. We'll be meeting on the region "Scooter" on jokaydiaGRID. For more details, please see this event on our calendar.

And be sure to join our Google Group if you'd like information about upcoming meetings.

See you on the Hypergrid!

Take care,
-John "Pathfinder" Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

2012 Metaverse Happenings

2012-01-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

Hello metaverse builders and travelers! Being a new year I thought I would welcome it in with some quick, extemporaneous notes about ReactionGrid Inc. and our upcoming plans.

What's coming:

Jibe will expand rapidly into the mobile space on tablets and phones. We are consulting with several clients who want to be on mobile now in order to develop a platform that is able to be used in tandem with Jibe-Browser & Jibe-Desktop but that also offers unique features germane to the touch interface and built in augmented reality tools such as GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Cameras and more.
OpenSim 0.7.2 roll out will continue to clients on a case by case basis allowing for better Hypergridding, mesh upload and improved uptime.
Jibe inworld building tools will be introduced but with some unique twists such as utilizing procedural mesh deformation for real-time mesh editing and export. This means you can import a mesh, edit it and even export it for further manipulation. You will eventually also be able to create mesh objects inworld from scratch.
A grant task force is being established to help clients find and follow through on getting virtual world grants approved.
More partnerships are forming with industry leaders to develop vertical market applications for virtual worlds. If you have expertise we want to partner!
Improved communications and event planning will be implemented to help our community grow.
Robotics and sensor work will continue expanding beyond Mindstorms and simple USB devices to industrial SCADA and Telemetric applications merging the virtual and the real world.
Avatars in Jibe will get more customization options, inventory and easier integration with non-human avatars.
Efforts to link Jibe and OpenSim to other virtual world platforms will continue including our IEEE Stargate participation.
John "Pathfinder" Lester has been upgraded! He is now our Chief Learning Officer at ReactionGrid Inc. and will be focusing more on making sure our clients and visitors enjoy building and traversing the metaverse.
WebGL work will continue with some simple demonstrations and tools and will ramp up over time.
JiWay & Hypergrid efforts will continue to develop to link our worlds together.
Vehicles are coming to Jibe in a big way.

Those are but a few highlights. Each of our core team will be blogging about their own individual concepts and goals for 2012 in the next 2 weeks. Some team members may focus on Jibe, some on OpenSim, some on both. Others may talk about servers, training, support and more.

Between all of our team members and feedback from you, our friends, we will have a proper plan for 2012 and beyond hammered out this month. See you in 3D friends...

Kyle G
RG CEO & Co-Founder.

Happy New Year to All!

2012-01-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

As we welcome in the New Year of 2012 ReactionGrid staff would like to extend warm wishes to you all.

The ReactionGrid staff enjoyed a short holiday with limited hours last week and our now back in office to take on 2012 with fresh eyes and fresh hearts.

We hope everyone had a great holiday and that 2012 greets you with success!
Our success is measured by your success so we are determined to continue to provide great service and support throughout the year.
Our Success also rides on your feedback - so please provide us feedback on feature requests for Jibe - we do read everyone of those and use that feedback to shape our roadmap of our product for your uses.
We saw many different uses of Jibe in 2011 but 2012 we are sure we will see many more uses we have not even thought of.

Let's all make 2012 a fruitful year!

IndieMetaverse Closing Events 12/10/2011

2011-12-10T05:26:00.001-08:00

Today's Events:

9AM ET - Join via HyperGrid http://francogrid.org/evenements/francogrid/333 , Direct Login http://francogrid.org/user/register or video http://livestream.com/reactiongrid in about 30 minutes at FrancoGrid

10AM ET - Login to ReactionGrid OpenSim for a closing event on the World's Fair sims. http://grid.reactiongrid.com/register_rg_b.aspx

IndieMetaverse Events 12/9/2011

2011-12-09T05:08:00.001-08:00

9AM ET - Overview of Sculptris and Wings3D with Chris Hart ReactionGrid CTO/Co-Founder.
Sculptris and Wings3D are two free tools that are relatively simple to use and can be quite useful to have alongside your regular Jibe tool arsenal.

Simple rocks in Sculptris http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/
Sculptris is a free application from the creators of ZBrush, and offers simple clay modelling of 3d shapes. With little effort, you can create some great organic shapes for enhancing your Jibe worlds.

Mesh editing in Wings3D http://www.wings3d.com/
Wings3D is another free application for creating and editing meshes. It has a wide range of supported formats for import and export, though it has no support for textures. As such, it's a good tool for creating simplified meshes of existing objects for use as a collision mesh. Regular mesh colliders can be a little intensive if the mesh in question is particularly complex, so I'll show how to create a simple collider mesh for an existing model.

View this using our shared desktop link http://join.me/reactiongrid or video stream http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

9:30AM ET - Join RG CEO/Co-Founder Kyle G for a 3D content creation demo & John "Pathfinder" Lester RG Director of Community Development & Unity3D Dev for an animation creation demo. http://www.123dapp.com/catch get the photo capture to mesh app and follow along on how to create 3D objects from a series of 2D photos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0e8yVKqXv8&feature=related . http://unity3d.com for the free Unity3D editor where you can install the iTween scripts from the built in store.

Samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OFbFLKbMMk&feature=channel_video_title captured Robin's helmet with an inexpensive Sony camera.

View this using our shared desktop link http://join.me/reactiongrid or video stream http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

10AM ET - Virtual World pioneer in the online counseling space Dick Dillon will talk about his journey providing services to those in need using 3D multi-user worlds. View at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

11AM ET - Join Eric Hackathorn for a tour of his latest virtual world projects. http://livestream.com/reactiongrid http://fragileearthstudios.com

12PM ET - Join online 3D pro Bartek for a talk about the future of WebGL the built in browser 3D solution.

"I usually find technologies that interest me, experiment with them, publish demos I do and eventually use them in a commercial project. With WebGL it was different - my first contact with this technology was through a client project. I had to learn WebGL on the go. It took me a few months to actually start apperciating it, but once the project was over and I thought I know everything about it, I decided to write my own engine that I baptized simply J3D. After a good start, I realized I didn't know that much about WebGL after all... Since then I spent many day & nights (mostly nights) learning and creating what I believe is a good tool for other developers to start creating 3D applications in the browser. In my presentation I talk about specific challenges when working WebGL projects and how J3D addresses them. I will also take you on a short walk-through of it's features and present some demos."
http://everyday3d.com/

View at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid

1PM ET - Join ReactionGrid President and Co-Founder Robin Gomboy for a demonstration of how to edit Jibe avatar skins using www.unity3d.com .

View at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid

2PM ET - Tools and services from Chris Collins of Tipodean. View at http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/expo for inworld login or http://livestream.com/reactiongrid for streaming video.

3PM ET - Rick Anderson presenting about his work with virtual worlds at Rutgers University. View at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid or direct login here http://rutgers.jibemix.com/jibe .

IndieMetaverse 12/8/2011

2011-12-08T04:37:00.001-08:00

Today's Events:

10AM ET - Join Adam Frisby in his virtual world "ResLive" focused on virtual streaming concerts and events. Use http://www.reslive.com/signup/enter to join inworld or stream at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

11AM ET - Recently my 3rd year design students completed a project in designing
virtual worlds to evoke a specific emotion - these would include:
"Uneasy not dread or angst", "Privacy not isolation", "Protection
(safe) not imprisonment" or "Happiness not Euphoria".

I would like to invite you to experience some of these worlds with me.

http://www.caa.uidaho.edu/vtd/htm/virtualWorlds/VTD355_EmotionalEnvironments.html for direct login or view at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid

Technologies used includes: 3DS Max, Unity and Jibe.

Brian Cleveley

Virtual Technology and Design, Program Coordinator
College of Art and Architecture, University of Idaho
208.310.1632, cbc@uidaho.edu
www.caa.uidaho.edu/vtd
Second Life: Eyem Beck

12PM ET - Steve Mahaley, Global Practice Lead, Learning Innovations Team, Duke Corporate Education will share his thinking on leadership simulations and gaming, and discuss the new Duke CE Go! Learning App for alternate reality games (with a live demo if possible!).

When: Dec 8, 9.00 am PT/noon ET/18.00 CET

Where: Train for Success island in Second Life http://tinyurl.com/288mc52
____________________________________
Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D.
President
The Gronstedt Group, Inc.
Office: + 1 303 469 9000, ext. 9
Cell: + 1 720 839 7303
www.gronstedtgroup.com
Twitter: AndersGronstedt
Skype: Anders_gr

1PM ET - Visit Robin Gomboy ReactionGrid Co-Founder & President in the virtual server room used to monitor our 100+ virtual and hardware machines that run our virtual worlds. http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/serverroom/ for direct login or JiWay link or view the stream at http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

2PM ET - Overview of Sculptris and Wings3D with Chris Hart ReactionGrid CTO/Co-Founder.
Sculptris and Wings3D are two free tools that are relatively simple to use and can be quite useful to have alongside your regular Jibe tool arsenal.

Simple rocks in Sculptris http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/
Sculptris is a free application from the creators of ZBrush, and offers simple clay modelling of 3d shapes. With little effort, you can create some great organic shapes for enhancing your Jibe worlds.

Mesh editing in Wings3D http://www.wings3d.com/
Wings3D is another free application for creating and editing meshes. It has a wide range of supported formats for import and export, though it has no support for textures. As such, it's a good tool for creating simplified meshes of existing objects for use as a collision mesh. Regular mesh colliders can be a little intensive if the mesh in question is particularly complex, so I'll show how to create a simple collider mesh for an existing model.

View this using our shared desktop link http://join.me/reactiongrid or video stream http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

3PM ET - Join RG CEO/Co-Founder Kyle G for a 3D content creation demo & John "Pathfinder" Lester RG Director of Community Development & Unity3D Dev for an animation creation demo. http://www.123dapp.com/catch get the photo capture to mesh app and follow along on how to create 3D objects from a series of 2D photos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0e8yVKqXv8&feature=related . http://unity3d.com for the free Unity3D editor where you can install the iTween scripts from the built in store.

Samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OFbFLKbMMk&feature=channel_video_title captured Robin's helmet with an inexpensive Sony camera.

View this using our shared desktop link http://join.me/reactiongrid or video stream http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

IndieMetaverse 12/7/2011

2011-12-07T04:49:00.001-08:00

Event Schedule:

10AM ET - See how RSU uses Jibe, with Administrator Pat Hughes, for continuing adult education. http://www.flickr.com/photos/reactiongrid/sets/72157625149327558/ by watching here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

11AM ET - Andrew Polito gives a tour of his online language course which uses Jibe as a visual component as a recreation of Chinese landmarks. Featuring dynamically created classrooms integrated with a learning management system. http://mylanguage360.com . Watch here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

12PM ET - Take a tour of OpenSim being used for educators with Marc Conrad http://sl.perisic.com/IndieMetaverse/ . Login to ReactionGrid (www.reactiongrid.com click "Join to register" ) and use this SLURL when inworld http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Bedfordia/128/128/24 or search for "New Bedfordia" or just "New" using the map or view here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid . http://perisic.com/marc/

1PM ET - Educational virtual world work with Matthew Worwood using OpenSim. Watch here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

2PM ET - The use of Jibe and Unity 3D in Cultural Heritage Simulations
Presenter: John Fillwalk
Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts [IDIA Lab}
Ball State University

This presentation will present a current simulation project from the Institute for DIgital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University, developed using Unity 3D and Jibe by Reaction Grid. John Fillwalk, Director of IDIA Lab will discuss a multi-user virtual environment interpreting Hadrian's Villa - an ancient Roman site in Tivoli, Italy. For this project IDIA Lab is developing a solar tracking interface connecting a NASA/JPL database to Jibe/Unity to control the position of sun in 130 CE, a custom avatar with motion captured gestures, dynamic weather systems, and native vegetation and terrain models. This project is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation through research of Dr. Bernard Frischer, Director of the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory at the University of Virginia.

Watch here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

3:30PM ET - See our integration with virtual worlds and robots. http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/systemic or watch here http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

IndieMetaverse Today

2011-12-05T09:12:00.001-08:00

Here is a summary of today's IndieMetaverse opening events:

1PM ET - Meeting in our browser based world "sySTEMic" to meet the ReactionGrid team. http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/systemic . Voice using Voice is via our Livestream channel http://livestream.com/reactiongrid . A decent 3D machine is needed to join this world.

2PM ET - View a TurboCAD beginner class with expert Robert Berry by logging into http://join.me/reactiongrid & Voice is via our Livestream channel http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

3PM ET - Learn how to integrate Jibe browser worlds with the internet by logging into http://join.me/reactiongrid with John "Pathfinder" Lester. Voice is via our Livestream channel http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

4PM ET - Check out Jibe on mobile worlds by installing it here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ReactionGrid.JibeAndroid&feature=order_history or searching for "Jibe" on the Android Marketplace or watch via our Livestream channel http://livestream.com/reactiongrid .

All sessions will be streamed via our Livestream channel http://livestream.com/reactiongrid for one way audio and video streaming in case you cannot login to the virtual world directly. There is a chat box on that page (does not show on Android only the stream and audio do) that allows for comments and questions we will try to relay to the presenter.

Livestream also has been tested on iPhone/iPad/iPod and offers video and chat on one webpage. Video will be recorded for those who miss certain sessions. For some additional information and calendar click here http://reactiongrid.blogspot.com/2011/11/indiemetaverse-next-week.html . Each day I will blog post about the next days events. "See" you there virtually friends!

IndieMetaverse Next Week

2011-11-29T10:20:00.001-08:00

Hello virtual world fans of any platform! Next week is our annual virtual world event "IndieMetaverse" in its second year. You can find the calendar here but note that it is still being updated and confirmed on presentation times and dates.

You can find early details here http://jibemix.com/downloads/indie011.pdf . We will have all details filled into the calendar and a supplemental "Presenters" PDF by weeks end.

This is a 100% virtual attendance event to show off positive, PG related projects found anywhere in the metaverse. To be considered as a presenter read the above PDF and contact us. See you in 3D!

Avoiding Virtual Couch Potato Syndrome: How to create a web-embedded video display that interfaces with your Jibe world

2011-11-17T12:51:00.001-08:00

With Jibe, you can create your own multiuser 3d virtual world and embed it on any webpage.

This means you can have your Jibe world living on a webpage along with any other web-based content you like.

Today we'll learn how to create an embedded video display on a webpage that works with a video channel switcher inside your Jibe world.

Virtual Couch Potato Syndrome

Whether it's a pre-recorded video or a live video stream, at some point you will probably want to show a video to people visiting your Jibe world. And the first idea that will pop into your head will most likely be "I've got to set up a screen in the virtual world and some chairs so avatars can sit down and watch."

I call this Virtual Couch Potato Syndrome.

Stop and think for a moment. You are inviting people into an immersive virtual world, full of interactive opportunities and rich with the potential of 3d exploration.

But by requiring your visitors to sit their avatars in front of a virtual screen in the 3d world, you are locking them down and preventing them from exploring the 3d environment that exists all around them.

Two Tools that Work Together: The Web and Jibe

You can embed your Jibe world in any webpage. And thanks to the awesomeness of the scripting language in Unity3d (the Jibe development environment), you can write scripts that allow events in your Jibe world to change the state of the webpage where your Jibe world lives.

In a previous tutorial, I described how different website content could be loaded in an iframe on a webpage based on where an avatar was located in your Jibe world. Today we're going to learn how to create a channel switching board in your Jibe world that avatars can click on to change the video playing in an iframe on your webpage.

This is a simple and powerful way to beat Virtual Couch Potato Syndrome. Avatars in your Jibe world will be able to walk around and explore your 3d space while simultaneously watching a video on the same webpage. So let's get started!

- Step 1: Build a Channel Switching Board

Launch your Unity3d editor and make a wall out of cubes and spheres.

All the pieces


Some assembly required

As you can see, it's pretty easy to create basic objects in your Jibe world using the Unity3d editor's built-in geometric shapes (Cube, Sphere, Capsule, Cylinder, Plane).

Be sure to name each piece of the wall in your Hierarchy so you can remember what they are for (e.g., spheres=buttons, stretched cubes=channel descriptions) and then create an Empty GameObject in your project Hierarchy.

This will create an object called "GameObject" in your Hierarchy. Rename it "Video Switching Board" and then drag all the pieces of your wall into it. Organize the Hierarchy something like this:

Hierarchy view

Now, make some textures and apply them to the different pieces of your Video Switching Board so it looks a bit nicer.

Video Switching Board with textures

- Step 2: Add Scripts and Sounds to your Video Board

You need to add a script to each red button. We're going to use Javascript for this, so create a new Javascript script.

Name this script "Click to Change Channel" and open it up. Paste in the following code.

var sound1 : AudioClip;
var URLtoLoad : String;
function OnMouseDown ()
{
audio.clip = sound1;
audio.Play ();
Application.ExternalCall("LoadExternalWebpage", URLtoLoad);
}
function Update () {
}

When an avatar clicks on an object that contains this script, the script will play a sound and then pass the contents of the variable "URLtoLoad" to the webpage where the Jibe world is embedded.

Now, drag a copy of the script into each of the 3 buttons on your Board. Look at each button in the Inspector window.

As you can see, you need to enter two things. The script needs an audio clip to play when it is clicked as well as a URL to load.

Here's a nice beeping sound on Freesound.org you can use. Drag it into your Project window in the Unity editor, then drag it from your Project window into each button object (a copy of the sound must be sitting in each button). Then drag the sound file again from your Project window into the "Sound 1" field in the Inspector window.

Lastly, you'll need to specify a URL to load when the button is clicked. The URLtoLoad will be loaded in the right iframe on the webpage where the Jibe world is embedded.

In this example, we'll use a couple of my favorite live video feeds on uStream.tv: NASA TV and Decorah Bald Eagles. You don't want to embed the entire uStream webpage in the iframe, so copy the URLs from the pop-out links.

Pro-tip: If you don't like watching video ads on uStream, just install Adblock Plus. Unfortunately, ABP currently cannot block video ads if you are using Chrome.

When you've finished adding the sounds and URLs to each button, it should look like this in the Inspector:

Remember to uncheck the Play on Awake option for the sound. You only want the beep sound to play when someone clicks on the button.For the Turn Off Video button, just use the URL of the webpage you want displayed by default in the right iframe of your webpage.

- Step 3: Edit the Webpage where you Jibe world lives

You’ve now got everything set up to send different URLs to a webpage depending on what buttons an avatar presses in your Jibe world. Now it’s time to edit your webpage to properly receive the data being sent from Jibe.

Open up the webpage where you have your Jibe world embedded. The default.html file we ship with Jibe has some Javascript already in there, so add the following bit of code at this location:

Add the highlighted code

Here’s the code so you can copy/paste it:

function LoadExternalWebpage(dataFromUnity) {document.getElementById("RightiFrame").src = dataFromUnity;
}

Next, add an iframe to your webpage. The URLs being sent from Jibe will be loading in this iframe.

An example of an iframe added to your Jibe webpage

In this example above, you’ll see that I’ve added a default URL in the src. That’s so the iframe isn’t empty when people first load your page.

Here’s the code so you can copy/paste it:

<iframe id="LeftiFrame" width="500" height="500" style="border:none" src="http://jibemicro.reactiongrid.com/pathfinderlester/defaultrightiframe.html"> </iframe>

- You're done! What's it look like in action?

You can see the Video Switching Board in action by visiting my own Jibe world. And if you want to grab a copy of the board, you can download it here.

Now you can help visitors to your Jibe world avoid becoming Virtual Couch Potatoes. Let them watch videos as they roam free, exploring and engaging with their surroundings.


My Jibe world with default content in right iframe

Tuning in to watch those crazy bald eagles

Exploring a model of the Space Shuttle while watching NASA TV

To learn more about Jibe and meet other people sharing ideas and questions, be sure to check out our Jibe-Unity3d Google Group. See you online!

-John "Pathfinder" Lester
Director of Community Development
ReactionGrid, Inc.

Upgrading ReactionGrid OpenSimulator Grids

2011-11-10T13:31:00.001-08:00

After a lot of coding and testing, we're ready to start rolling out upgrades to our OpenSimulator grid clients. Based on OpenSimulator 0.7.2 code, the combination of new grid services and an upgrade to our ROAR administration modules will bring us up to date with other grids based on 0.7.2, and open up the HyperGrid network between all major grids on compatible versions.

Customers who have tested out the Alpha grid and are happy with the experience and want to try the upgrade are invited to contact us at http://metaverseheroes.com and we'll schedule your upgrade. As with all releases of OpenSimulator to date, the core platform is still in Alpha and while there are some great improvements to the codebase, there are still some quirks. If you're happy on your current revision, you don't have to upgrade, though if you want to HyperGrid you will likely want the upgrade soon.

The ReactionGrid OpenSimulator grid will be upgraded in a few weeks, we'll notify our core grid clients as soon as we have set a specific date for our upgrade.

Thanks for your patience while we took the time to prepare the code. We battled some amusing bugs, some frustrating missing features, and rebuilt several of those features to ensure our grid clients could continue normal operation. Our new deployment system should also make future upgrades easier. As part of the process we submitted some key patches to core OpenSimulator for the MSSQL platform, and will continue to do so for anyone else using the Microsoft stack for their OpenSimulator grids.

-- Chris Hart, CTO, ReactionGrid Inc.

"Interfaces for the New Decade" - Join us Online at The Tech Test Zone 2011 Conference on Nov 15th

2011-10-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

The Tech Museum and The Tech Virtual are hosting a conference on "Interfaces for the New Decade," Tuesday, November 15, 2011 from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (PT). This event will bring together interactive technology researchers, developers, and users for a conference and opening of The Tech Museum's newest gallery.

The conference has a great lineup of speakers presenting about the future of interactive exhibits. And best of all, if you can't make it out to San Jose, you can virtually attend the event for free.

All of us at ReactionGrid have signed up to attend the conference online, and during the event we will also be in our Jibe virtual world Expo Demo where we'll be discussing the presentations.

So sign up to attend the conference for free and visit with us in Jibe during the conference if you'd like to chat with us about virtual world platforms. You can watch the Test Tech Zone video while exploring the 3d virtual world at the same time. Hope to see you there!

ReactionGrid's Expo Demo world in Jibe.

Animating Evolver Avatars for Jibe using Animeeple

2011-10-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

The Evolver website provides a great interface for creating avatars suitable for using with Jibe, but applying animations and importing them into the project takes some practice. A new video has just been posted to the JibeDownloads site with full instructions on how to take an Evolver avatar, and apply animations using Animeeple. Exporting an FBX model with animations from Animeeple requires a one-off licence purchase of $49 from the Animeeple store, after which you can export all the avatars you need ready for import into your Jibe project.

Animeeple Interface with an EvolverAvatar

Jibe customers should head to http://jibemix.com/jibedownloads and look in the Tutorials section for the new video.

ReactionGrid presenting at the "Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers" on Oct 27

2011-10-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

The folks at EduFinland are hosting a conference on October 27 called the "Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers."

Although the conference is being held in Second Life, the presentations will discuss a wide range of research across many different virtual world platforms.

John "Pathfinder" Lester (Director of Community Development at ReactionGrid) will be speaking on a panel at 8am EDT on "The Future of Learning in Virtual Worlds."

And at 10am EDT, John will be giving a keynote presentation titled "The Significance of Contextual Flow - Exploring Jibe and Critical Affordances of Web-Based Virtual Worlds."

You can participate in John's keynote by visiting his Jibe world on the web during the presentation.

For more details, check out the conference website. Here's a summary of the agenda:

"A 12 hour conference in Second Life for educators and researchers on education and virtual worlds with invited speakers from Europe and the US. The conference features presentations, panels, workshops, excursion and many other types of activitities.

Mark the date Thursday October 27, 2011 in your calendar now and join us in EduFinland archipelago on the lecture theatre on EduFinland III from midnight to noon (PDT)."

The researchers and educators at EduFinland have been doing outstanding work over the years, and this conference should be highly informative. Hope to see you there!

John "Pathfinder" Lester and his favorite mug, courtesy of Finland.

ReactionGrid invited to present at the U.S. Coast Guard's "Innovation Expo 2011" in Tampa, FL

2011-10-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Coast Guard holds an Innovation Expo each year, and ReactionGrid has been invited to attend and present at this year's Innovation Expo 2011 in Tampa, Florida on October 25th.

If you're attending the Expo, or if you'll be in the area and would like to meet with us, please drop us a line at create@reactiongrid.com.

The USCG Innovation Expo creates an environment for Coast Guard Innovators to resolve organizational challenges by showcasing their initiatives in a rich collaborative learning environment alongside other innovators throughout DHS and across Government, industry and academia.

One area of interest is 3d simulations and virtual worlds as platforms for immersive learning. John Lester (Director of Community Development at ReactionGrid), will be giving two presentations on Tuesday, October 25th:

Keynote Speaker #2
11:30am - 12:00pm (Oct 25)
"Learning Through Three Dimensional Simulation and Virtual Worlds"

In this presentation, John will share his experiences using virtual world technology to enhance education and his current work at ReactionGrid to create web and mobile-based virtual word platforms for learning. He will describe best practices for creating effective alternative reality learning scenarios, common pitfalls when exploring immersive learning technologies, and ways to effect cultural change within an organization by using online collaborative environments.

Breakout Session #1
2:00pm - 3:00pm (Oct 25)
"Alternative Reality Learning: The Potential of Virtual World Platforms"

In this breakout session, John will lead a group discussion and hands-on demonstration of the potential of virtual world platforms for immersive learning. Specific examples of virtual learning environments using ReactionGrid’s Jibe platform will be presented, running on both the web and mobile devices, and attendees will be walked through a typical virtual world development workflow using the Unity3d editor and 3d mesh models. Attendees will also learn about the unique affordances of virtual worlds when they are integrated with existing social media (e.g., Facebook) and web-based educational content.

You can learn more about the Expo here and here.

ReactionGrid Support Ticket System Upgrade Friday Sept 30th

2011-09-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

The ReactionGrid MetaverseHeroes.com Online Support System will be offline while it is upgraded Friday Sept 30th starting at 10am - 7pm Eastern Daylight Time (East Coast US time).

If you require support during those downtime hours you may still access http://metaverseheroes.com but you will see a form to submit an email with your issue.
The entire ReactionGrid team will receive this message and someone will attend to your issue right away.

When the upgrade is complete all services will be restored.
Thank you for your patience while the ReactionGrid Online Support System receives an upgrade.

Bryce Advanced Class Today

2011-09-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today at 4PM ET we will be doing an advanced Bryce 3D class covering:

Metaballs
Importing Objects
Importing Textures
Unity3D/Jibe Import

There is a free non-commercial version here http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/bryce/download? using this serial BDZPLED-070-0000000-NBA-001-HBUVMLF .

Please add my to your Skype "pcmash" or email me create@reactiongrid.com your phone number to join the call. We will be using http://join.me/reactiongrid for the desktop sharing. The class will be approximately 30 to 45 minutes. Please review the video here http://vimeo.com/29427856 for basic controls of Bryce though we will quickly run through them at the class as well.

Testing ReactionGrid's Opensim 0.7.2 Alpha Grid with the Hypergrid Adventurers Club

2011-09-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today, the Hypergrid Adventurers Club tested ReactionGrid's Opensim 0.7.2 Alpha Grid. It was quite an adventure, spanning 4 different Opensim grids running 4 different versions of Opensim.

We gathered on the region HGBridge on ReactionGrid’s 0.7.2 Alpha Test Grid, and from there we began a series of Hypergrid jumps.

About 10 of us joined in on the Adventure. Here's where we went if you'd like to follow in our footsteps:

1) START: ReactionGrid Alpha Test Grid
HG Coordinates: secondlife://alpha.reactiongrid.net:8002:HGBridge/139/156/22
Grid Location: (4000,4000)
Grid Software: OpenSim 0.7.2 ReactionGrid.

2) NewWorldGrid
HG Coordinates: secondlife://grid.newworldgrid.com:8002:BioZone/
Grid Location: (6991,6995)
Grid Software: OpenSim 0.7.1.1 Release

3) GermanGrid
HG Coordinates: secondlife://login.germangrid.de:8002/
Grid Location: (8000,8000)
Grid Software: OpenSim 0.7.2 Dev

4) END: FleepGrid
HG Coordinates: secondlife://fleepgrid.com:8002/
Grid Location: (9013,9013)
Grid Software: OpenSim 0.7.2 RC2

I chose these locations because they represented 4 different versions of Opensim which, theoretically, are all Hypergrid-compatible with each other. It's always good to test theory by putting it into practice.Some folks initially had difficulty logging in to our Alpha Grid. This caused some chat and movement lag/freezing. But despite this initial glitch, the region and grid recovered all on its own. Then we were able to start jumping.

Starting out on the region HGBridge in ReactionGrid's Alpha Grid"

A few of us made it to GermanGrid when it suddenly stopped accepting connections. This might have been caused by a region crash due to the load of our visit. Our apologies to the GermanGrid admins if we caused any problems.

Those of us who couldn't make it to GermanGrid simply hopped from NewWorldGrid to FleepGrid, since both grids are within the 4096 region limit for Hypergrid jumps.

We arrive in FleepGrid

Fleep Tuque, the owner of FleepGrid, joined us on our Adventure. She welcomed us all when we all finally arrived on her grid, and grid performance was excellent.

Chris Hart, ReactionGrid's CTO, attended the test. Here's what she had to say about the event.

"Overall the event was pretty successful. While we had some issues with teleports between regions, the server stayed up and running for the whole time. We had a wide variety of clients logging in to the grid at the same time which seemed to cause a few lockups, but after a little perseverence most made it inworld and were able to HyperGrid teleport out successfully. Those that had difficulty logging in, and even those that didn't, we welcome feedback on your experiences, please let us know which clients you were using to connect and whether you were logging in locally or were visiting from another grid."

As always, the best way to give us feedback is to submit a ticket on our Metaverseheroes support site. If you were part of our adventure today, please let us know all the details about any glitches you experienced. We want to make sure ReactionGrid's version of Opensim 0.7.2 is as stable as possible before we officially release it.

This upgrade to Opensim 0.7.2 will be a big step with many new features and additional stability. And once it is finalized, ReactionGrid will be part of a much bigger universe of Opensim grids interconnected by the Hypergrid.

Thank you all again for helping test things out today. I hope you had a fun time, too!

Take care,
-John "Pathfinder" Lester

Amf concert planned in Jibe Android/Browser

2011-09-28T08:37:00.001-07:00

Prolific virtual world singer songwriter Amf OrTe will showcase the worlds first live streaming mobile & web based virtual concert next Wednesday October 12 2PM ET.

While we work to add audio features internally to Jibe-Android for live streams & Vivox we suggest installing free audio streaming app XiiaLive Lite which lets you add any Shoutcast or compatible streams and will stay streaming while minimized and you switch to Jibe Android's app.

You will also be able to attend via Mac or PC web browser.

Links:
Xiia
http://www.xiialive.com/how_to/
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.android.DroidLiveLite&hl=en
Jibe-Android Concert
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ReactionGrid.JibeAndroid&feature=order_history
Jibe-Browser Concert
Coming soon

Let's make some virtual world history together!

ReactionGrid Android Publishing Service

2011-09-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

ReactionGrid Inc. is officially launching an Android (and soon iOS) publishing service today. Named "Mobilizer" this service will take your existing Jibe project and process it for mobile devices providing you with an app you can submit to the various marketplaces or distribute on your own.

We also offer consulting services for those who purchase the Unity3D iOS and Android publishing applications. See here for a demo app on Android you can test for free.

To try the service out submit your project to us for download for an estimate. We will create a version that works smoothly on mobile phones and tablets for prices starting at $150 per platform and increasing depending on the complexity of your project.

We are refining our own Jibe Android app this month but you can take advantage of some early adopter special pricing now by contacting us at create@reactiongrid.com or call us at +1 407 992 8284. To get your own Jibe kit see here http://reactiongrid.myshopify.com/collections/virtual-worlds .

The service will take a bit more time in this early phase than it will when we have refined the process. A time estimate and price estimate will be given after a full review of your Jibe project kit files.

OpenSim 0.7.2 Alpha Test Grid Open to Public

2011-09-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

ReactionGrid is now testing 0.7.2 Opensim code on a private test grid before rollout. Please help us test the code for bugs and glitches.
Head over to:
http://alpha.reactiongrid.net/register to register a user account.
Then add a grid to your grid list in your preferred viewer to:
http://alpha.reactiongrid.net:8002 and head in!

This space will be open 24/7 over the next week but we really need immediate testing to be able to rectify any issues in the next week so we can get this on your grids.

We are leaving build rights open like this were a sandbox so please use the tools - script - build - test the daylights out of this system.
We need you to test everything including the new web on a prim feature, groups, friends and hypergrid.
We are leaving hypergrid boxes on the Hypergrid Bridge for testing to known grids running either 0.7.1 or 0.7.2 so you can test that as well.
The public HyperGrid address of the HGBridge region (located around 4000,4000) is secondlife://alpha.reactiongrid.net:8002:HGBridge/139/156/22

Also with the 0.7.2 code you are now able to use the SecondLife Viewer2 which I believe is needed for the web on a prim functionality. Please help us test this!
We are aware of some features that do no work in Viewer2 including but not limited to:
Map does not populate - map tiles are handled differently in Viewer2 than older viewers such as Hippo or Imprudence.
Searches do not function properly they will lead to SL.
Please do not report these issues as we already know they exist. Thanks.

Upon finding any bugs or areas that are not functioning properly please submit a support ticket with your findings to http://metaverseheroes.com so we may look into the issue and see if we can repair. We have not yet implemented the user profiles feature, so you will not be able to edit your profile "About" section, interests or similar until this has been completed.

Thank you for your assistance in testing this alpha code for 0.7.2 - we appreciate your help!

Jibe-Android Demo Live

2011-09-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today ReactionGrid hit a milestone in virtual world development. The first true mobile virtual world platform is available on the Android Marketplace in demo form. After we get feedback and refine the interface we will be scheduling some live concerts, brainstorming sessions and more. While it is a demo it is the full Jibe kit minus voice (for now).

We are also launching a publishing division of RG this month which can take your standard Jibe project kit and publish an Android and soon iOS version. We can also guide you through the process if you buy the Unity3D publishing application for Android and soon iOS.

This demo is a work in progress but running nicely enough to get some expanded feedback beyond our staff of testers. Some icons need to be enlarged for smaller screens along with numerous other tweaks we can already see. Please comment here or email us at create@reactiongrid.com with your feedback and ideas.

Use the banner above to get to the store or this QR code:

IndieMetaverse 2011 planning begins in October.

2011-09-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

IndieMetaverse 2011 is coming the first week of December 2011. 4 days of streaming video, 3D world attendance and more. We're looking submissions now for PG projects in virtual worlds on any platform you have been working on. Email me at create@reactiongrid.com to get involved or for more details.

Building your 3D skill set using Bryce3D

2011-09-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Bryce 3D is a low cost modeling application that has been around for many years but only recently got proper mesh export tools. There is also now a free non-commercial version http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/bryce/download? . This Wednesday I will be offering a free intro class on Bryce 3D using shared desktop.

To attend install the Bryce software and email me at create@reactiongrid.com with Bryce3D in the subject line.

Topics we will be covering:

Boolean Operations
Grouping
Alignment Tools
Group Color Codes
Mesh Export
Image Rendering
Materials Lab
Lighting
Sky Lab
Navigation/Camera Controls
Labeling Pieces
Selecting Objects

A second class will be in October covering:

Metaballs
Importing Objects
Importing Textures
Unity3D/Jibe Import

You need no prior experience to take this class. I will make sure everyone moves along together and at the end of the class you will be conquering mesh design and more with confidence.

Some examples of what you can make with Bryce 3D can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/reactiongrid/sets/72157627691823660/show/ . Take advantage of this free dry run and add Mesh to your virtual world toolkit!

Mesh yourself before you wreck yourself

2011-09-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Mesh is coming to SL & OpenSimulator and is already fully implemented in Jibe/Unity3D. Now is the time to get yourself retooled! If you worked with sculpties in SL/OpenSimulator you are already ready to go but what if you only used the prim based building tools in the SL client? Not to worry I have a solution. But first a little fun.

From concept to virtual realization to the real world. What if you are the next great architect or vehicle designer or otherwise creative innovator but nobody gets your description of what will be? 3D is a great visualization tool for such things. For example I have some concepts on what the ultimate motorcycle would look like but describing it verbally would be daunting.

Presenting the JiCycle. As a way to illustrate how you can visualize and even to a degree test innovative engineering concepts you can use 3D & animations to great effect. I got my start using these techniques to explain how to design, assemble, test and critique aerospace cable and connector designs. Let's use the JiCycle to show the process and how anyone can do the same.

JiCycle Specifications:

Borrowing technology from today and extrapolating how that technology might be expanded in the future I present the most environmentally friendly cycle design possible.

Horsepower @ all 3 wheels 650 bhp.
Braking in 10 feet from 100 mph.
Top speed 350 mph.
Wet weight 155 lbs.

Engine-High Discharge Capacitve Electricity Cell. Using capacitive technology to store electrical energy this type of "fuel cell" provides high power with low weight. Instantly rechargable and with no moving parts this power unit can drive the magnetic propulsion, steering and onboard computers.

Suspension/Braking/Drivetrain/Steering-MagLev will levitate the cycle through biasing of electromagnetic lines of flux between components and provide forward, reverse, steering and braking similar to today's trains. Other than the rubber & nylon electromagnetic tires hitting the road there are zero friction points on this cycle. Wireless Bluetooth provides all intra-vehicle communications.

Frame-A mix of carbon fiber & titanium monocoque allows for the lightest possible frame without sacrificing integrity. The components of this cycle are all held together via electromagnetic attraction & propulsion meaning disassembly is as easy as turning off the system power.

Navigation System-Utilizing organic electroluminescent OLED display technology the front fairing is reinforced by transparent aluminum and capable of illumination, turn signals, rear-view display and heads up display of critical engine and GPS navigation data.

Recharge-Capacitors can be instantly recharged unlike lithium ion batteries. Using wireless energy transfer technologies the JiCycle can be recharged via inductors embedded in the road, roadside RF transmission towers, solar cells or even on the fly transfers from other vehicles.

So there it is. Technology for everything described is in place today but not yet at a feasible level to create such a vehicle. As you can tell from the static renderings in this post my job of describing this ultimate design (IMHO) of a cycle is much more easily explained with such images.

What about taking these models and allowing users to simulate how the above systems would work? That is the subject matter of today's next blog post along with information on how you can do the exact same thing for your concepts with 100% free tools. Stay tuned!

sySTEMic event 1

2011-09-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

sySTEMic event notification...

Hello all Jiblets. You are called to the sySTEMic hive for processing.

sySTEMic, a virtual world focused on liberating knowledge for all, will be holding mind meld session 1 on Wednesday September 14th at 2:00 PM EST to 3PM EST nominal.

We will be discussing avatar generation and modification on a polygonal and texturizational level in addition to animation basics.

Only those with an open mind and zero gravity navigational skills should attend. Just kidding anyone can attend...

Speakers:
Kyle G-introductions

Chris Hart-Programmer of Jibe and code Ninja will speak on the avatar framework today and roadmapped and on how to work with animations and networking of them.

Robin G-Deployer of Jibe worlds and keeper of avatar layered image files will pass out links to get critical art files.

Special Guest:
Roger Nelson
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rogernelson

Roger has motion capture hardware and software targeted at Unity3D and will be showing off how this works and taking questions. Roger believes we are all mushy forms of life just waiting to crawl into one of his exoskeletons. See the LinkedIn hyperlink above for more information.

That's it Jiblets! Oh right where to go? You should hyperlink to http://reactiongrid.com/unity3d/systemic and should have a moderately powerful computer. Please test out loading the world early and email Kyle create@reactiongrid.com if you have any trouble or questions.

See you soon Jiblets...

Peru and the Future of Virtual Worlds

2011-09-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) is the #1 ranked university in the country of Peru.

It is also home to a wonderful research project called Grupo Avatar.

Grupo Avatar PUCP is a multidisciplinary research project whose goal is to develop and promote the use of video games and virtual worlds for education. Their group consists of students, graduates, professors and administrators.

As a keynote speaker at their Virtual Worlds and Video Games Seminar, I was invited to share my experiences and research findings on why virtual worlds are a powerful tool for both formal and informal education in schools, universities and businesses. It was a real honor to participate in the seminar, and over 200 people attended.

I was particularly impressed by Grupo Avatar's investigations of the many different affordances and applications of virtual worlds across a broad spectrum of learning possibilities. They were interested in everything ranging from classroom education to informal learning and even business applications. I kept meeting people with wide range of expertise (e.g., artists, programmers and psychologists), and the term multidisciplinary kept coming up in conversations.

Virtual Worlds provide tools for creating immersive learning environments that encourage multidisciplinary collaboration. Likewise, the effective study of virtual worlds requires a multidisciplinary approach. The folks at PUCP and Grupo Avatar understand this, and it was thrilling to see it all come together at the seminar.

Grupo Avatar recently set up their own Jibe virtual world server to allow students to create their own virtual worlds embedded on the web and linked to each other. We discussed future projects ranging from immersive language training environments to recreating archeology sites. It will be great to see what they accomplish, and I'm looking forward to ReactionGrid's support of their efforts into the future.

I'd like to thank everyone at PUCP and Grupo Avatar who made this seminar possible. Ines Evaristo Chiyong, Isabel González Roa and Claudia Cecilia Lam, thank you so much for all your help coordinating my visit to Peru. José Domingo Elías Arcelles, your leadership of Grupo Avatar is inspiring. And Carlos Fosca, your administrative vision and support is creating something amazing at your university.

One of the goals of PUCP is to become a center of excellence for virtual worlds research and development. Keep an eye on them, as I think they're well on their way to accomplishing that goal.

Grupo Avatar PUCP

-John "Pathfinder" Lester

ADDENDUM 13/9/2011: Here's an interview I did while in Peru on the future of virtual worlds. "Technology alone will not save us." If you want an English translation, try this link.

Jibe 1.4.2 Update Released

2011-08-29T11:22:00.001-07:00

A small update released for Jibe today for the benefit of those customers who use the Photon server backend for Jibe. This 1.4.2 patch will make it possible to use multiple scenes with the Photon network server for Jibe, and implements custom data functionality.

The patch and accompanying notes are, as usual, on the main JibeDownloads site. I recommend anyone using Jibe 1.4.1, particularly those using the Photon server, should grab this patch and apply according to the upgrade notes included in the zip.

Any problems or questions, please drop us a note at http://metaverseheroes.com and we'll do our best to help.

Chris

Jibe 1.4.1 Update Released

2011-08-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Jibe 1.4.1 update is now available to all Jibe 1.4 customers. This update is a patch to fix some issues identified with custom data events in Jibe, and also to fix a camera script to pick up on Unity layers correctly.

Thanks go to John Lester for testing the custom data code and providing essential feedback that lead to the fix. Thanks also Neil Zehr for the camera script fix, and Doug Danforth for finding a single typo in the Jibe manual (fixed in the 1.4.1 release of the manual!)

The patch and accompanying notes are on the main JibeDownloads site. I recommend anyone using Jibe 1.4 grab this patch and apply according to the upgrade notes included in the zip.

Any further bugs, please report in to MetaverseHeroes and we'll track them and get fixes applied in future releases. Your feedback improves the platform!

Chris

Interlinking Jibe Worlds

2011-08-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Some high level napkin drawings showing how you can expand and interlink Jibe worlds. The orange triangles indicate a unique Jibe world. The linked blue circles indicate a local "teleport" connected scene. Scenes can be thought of like levels in video games. When you land in the initial Jibe world landing scene "A" or "B" (yellow triangles) you can then locally teleport within that world to other scenes (blue circles).

Traveling to a JiWay portal (the green circles) you can "transport" to a completely new Jibe world. We are working on things like user profiles as web services (blue cloud) so JiWay transports user name, avatar description, inventory items & more. JiWay can also connect to stuff like Facebook Connect, real world sensors and even accept travel one day from other virtual world platform users via web services (blue cloud).

If you are a school teaching a class using Jibe each student can get the free Unity3D editor & create a scene (models, scripts, media and more) & then export it for import into the main Jibe world as a new blue circle teleport ready scene. In this way each student has their own unique area connected to the main Jibe world.

When I get the first sySTEMic world presentation finalized we will see this structure in action as we teleport locally within sySTEMic and universally via JiWay transports to visit other worlds on other domains.

Jibe Android

2011-07-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited to announce our first successful tests of Jibe on the Android platform! Using Unity 3.4 and Jibe 1.4 and only minor tweaks to the Jibe codebase, a nearly-full Jibe kit was built into an Android package. We have tested this on a couple of devices so far, the Samsung Epic 4G running Froyo, and a couple of Honeycomb tablets, and it works great on both!

Take a look at this video for a demo of it in action.

We'll be working on a mobile-friendly UI for Jibe to accommodate finger touch controls, and offering more support for device hardware (tilt sensors, etc) over the next month.

sySTEMic showcases Jibe 1.4

2011-07-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

sySTEMic, our new portal world using Jibe 1.4 world linking technology "JiWay", will begin collaboration sessions and presentations next week. An early peek can be found here today http://jibemix.com/liquidhydrogen.aspx for machines with good 3D graphics capabilities. Next month our lower spec versions will follow.

Some of the things available to try in sySTEMic enabled by Jibe 1.4 are:

UniSky weather integration http://www.sixtimesnothing.com/unisky (requires the UniSky prefab to be purchased)
Pathfinding integration for simple A.I.
iTween examples
JiWay portal integration to enable travel to other Jibe based virtual worlds
Deeper Vivox voice integration
CSS/Ajax web templates

Coming next month to sySTEMic:

Mindstorm/Robotics interactions
Inworld event tracking
Deeper BIDI robot tutorials
Networked iTween events
Web Services driven networked weather effects
More JiWay linked worlds
Non-Human avatars

When you login to sySTEMic there is a small kiosk with some weather symbols. When close enough to it you will see buttons appear to the left of your view to change the weather from sunny to light rain, heavy rain and storms. If you stay in long enough you will notice when sunny is set that day/night cycles happen even changing the real-time shadow effects.

Today we will post the preliminary presentations and brainstorming sessions on the calendar you can bring up within the same browser tab as Jibe. We look forward to chatting with you regardless of what virtual world you use in sySTEMic starting next week.

Jibe 1.4 Released

2011-07-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

We're proud to announce that Jibe 1.4 is released today! Our latest update to the core platform includes several new features, and a handful of bugfixes, specifically:

New Features

HTML template file for publishing to web - the produced WebPlayer.html will contain all required Jibe supporting code by default.
Push-to-talk button included in the GUI for any scene with Vivox voice (compatability may still vary from browser to browser and cross operating system).
Ground-sit option added for sitting on terrain
New JiWay prefab swirling blue gas gate object with pre-configured options to some Jibe worlds
Teleport on Click script that enables an object to be a clickable teleport point
Attach object to avatar code is the beginning of full attachment support for hats, jewelry, skirts, and more. This code is still in an early stage of development, but attachments are networked events, and will be seen by all avatars currently connected to a space
Network event support improved significantly - no changes required to Network Controller for future messages over the network, now you can do all calls from a separate script - see the AttachObjectToAvatar.cs code for an example

Bugfixes

Javascript errors removed
Some movement / animation bugs tweaked
Code enhancements for easier interaction with the core UI base

For details on purchasing Jibe 1.4, upgrades and support credit bundles, please head to our shop for more information. For all other enquiries please head to our support site at http://metaverseheroes.com and we'll gladly assist.

How to spread the word about your Jibe world with Social Media Buttons

2011-07-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Jibe is a multiuser virtual world you create and share with people on the web. All you need to do is give people a URL and bingo, they are visting your world.

This means you can also leverage all the handy web-based social media buttons out there to let your visitors easily share your Jibe world with a wide audience.

There's a huge selection of such buttons you can use. For my own Jibe world, I decided to add the following:

If you click on the links above, you'll find instruction pages on how to add each of them.

Here's what they look like at the top of my own Jibe webpage.

Know of other useful social media buttons? Share your suggestions in the comments!

-John "Pathfinder" Lester

Poll # 3-Platform of Choice

2011-07-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

For our 3rd weekly poll we asked:
"For development of virtual worlds which platform is most critical to be on in 2011/2012?"

The choices being:

Browser Mac and PC
Desktop Mac and PC
iOS/Android Mobile and Tablet
Console Wii, PS3, Xbox 360

We had 50 responses:

Comments:

1-Browser Mac and PC:

"Because then there is no need to install additonal software to go into a virtual world"
"Browser based 3D worlds and 3D internet is the future for accessibility"

2-Desktop Mac and PC:

"Although, laptops and other platforms are improving, The desktops have an edge in the ability to handle the graphics load and heat issues. The gaming platforms do offer better graphics but, not everyone has a game platform"
"Need large screen size"
"A desktop app gives you all the real estate you can get for the screen...doing 3D landscaping, etc, is better fascilitated by a screen that can show the detail and the flow of the landscaping...you'll not get that on a small screen"
"I think standalone applications will still be the default for quite a while yet. People are used to it with games, SL like virtual worlds, etc. It seems less ephemeral than merely clicking on a web link"
"I use both"
"Desktop program is the root process YOU can control. Trying to develop for a wide variety of browsers and still run consistently with out a bug-a-baloo going on is wishful thinking. Developing for iPhone/Droid/Pads/Tablet is not cost effective as they are not dominant in the market and many don't have the computing power/graphics ability to truly show off the virtual world the the end user. (IMO)"
"I feel that the most productive work in regards to actually building it is best to use it on PC vs mobile/tablet. The browser and tablet option is good only if you plan on attending a short meeting"

3-iOS/Android Mobile and Tablet:

"Horizontal vs. vertical viewing"
'"Mobile platforms are becoming more ubiquitous to the average employee/student"
"Tablet market especially ripe for showcasing use of virtual environment for something other than traditional gaming"
"Portability"
"The mobile computing world is where everything is headed"
"I'm looking to develop an mobile app for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Most people use tablets/mobile phones vs. laptops when travelling in 2014"
"PC's are becoming obsolete. Mobile (of various sizes) is the future"
"Driving user mobility & cloud interaction"

4-Console Wii, PS3, Xbox 360:

"Got one myself"

Note-This survey is slanted, in terms of questions, to ReactionGrid Inc.'s needs to develop a roadmap.

Note 2-Some responses were seemingly incomplete or not understandable perhaps due to language challenges or similar. If you do not see your response feel free to add it below as a comment.

Self Interview on ReactionGrid Inc. Roadmap

2011-07-06T10:03:00.003-07:00

I have decided to self interview today to talk about our companies overall roadmap. Since CNN nor even MSNBC called me back I figured this was the next best thing, err, the only thing.

Kyle1: Hello Kyle ready for the interview?

Kyle2: Obviously I am yes.

Kyle1: No need to be sarcastic.

Kyle2: Let's move forward shall we?

Kyle1: Ok but take a chill pill. What is the plan for ReactionGrid Inc. over the next year?

Kyle2: We will build the best virtual world platform for desktop & browser Mac and PC and beat everyone to having the first full fledged virtual world on Android & iOS. It will not be a silly streaming video thing it will be the real deal.

Kyle1: Pretty big plans, who spiked your Wheaties this morning?

Kyle2: Just stating the facts, expect mobile coolness in a few months. You know you could have dressed better for this interview is that a Superman t-shirt?

Kyle1: Yep, same one you're wearing. How do you rate against SecondLife & their new CEO Rod Humble?

Kyle2: SecondLife doesn't do what we do. We are strictly platform builders. They manage a virtual world. The closest we come to that is our demo/portal worlds which are there to show off the worlds of others and our technology. Rod gets the same challenge from me as M Linden, let's debate, let's see you speak out on social media, let's see you build something in SL and show you get it like your residents do. We want SL to grow and be profitable right along with us. There is plenty of room for choice.

Kyle1: It has been said you are Jibe/Unity3D focused, does this mean Opensimulator isn't a favorite at RG?

Kyle2: It is true we are investing in Jibe in a big way. However it does not do what Opensimulator does and in most ways it will never match all the features Opensimulator provides. We will support both platforms moving forward.

Kyle1: Getting back to the Superman t-shirt, are you serious?

Kyle2: Don't make me break out my Thundercats t-shirt. Snarf snarf.

Kyle1: You mention mobile devices, why do you care? Why should I, errr you care, wait I asked that, this is confusing?

Kyle2: Mobile devices allow us to focus on particular hardware features, knowing most tablets have a accelerometer, GPS, camera, light sensor, gyroscope in addition to portability and touch UI means augmented reality is coming fast and virtual worlds will become pervasive when smartly applied.

Kyle1: What is your companies business model?

Kyle2: Developing a virtual world platform, hosting virtual worlds, selling virtual goods and services. Possibly getting into the RG t-shirt business.

Kyle1: Jibe clearly seems to be a big part of your business, how can we feel confident this bootstrapped, tiny company will be around next year to complete Jibe?

Kyle2: The owners of the company are true virtual world advocates. Also we are developers at heart and we know how to listen, adjust and deliver. We are currently adopting an Agile development process that is being integrated with our virtual world platform Jibe. This will soon be a product as well as a way to keep us lean, developing fast and delivering quality on time.

Kyle1: Last question for today, what is the biggest challenge you face moving forward?

Kyle2: People thinking the CEO is crazy because he asks himself questions. And wears cartoon t-shirts. Despite this I have a handle on what users want in virtual worlds because I ask them for critical feedback and our team reacts accordingly. We have much to do developing our product but things look very promising.

Kyle1: Fair enough thank you for taking the time to talk to you today.

Kyle2: This is the weirdest interview I have ever had but I enjoyed it.

Kyle1: Never ask me to do this again.

Kyle3: Did I miss lunch?

ReactionGrid Inc. Virtual World Poll #2.

2011-07-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

Our last roadmap poll, yes you are a huge factor in deciding what we do and when, we asked "Why do you use 3D virtual worlds?".

The 4 options were:

Socializing with friends
Creating 3D items and environments
Meeting and Brainstorming with colleagues
Other

Here are the results (96 responses):

Here are some of the comments...

Socializing with friends:

"Creative"
"To make friends"
"To meet my friends there and have fun"
"Lately, just for catching up with friends and relaxing by exploring different lands (islands, sims, etc)"

Creating 3D items and environments:

"I create and script little things that might be of use to educators"
"Student modeling of conceptual understanding"
"Fun and Games. Create, Build, Roam, Interaction"

"Entertainment. Self fulfillment. Setting and completing goals. Acquiring virtual wealth and property. Making friends that can help me achieve my goals"

"Just build things for fun"
"I make interactive art installations"
"Create educational and training environments"
"I am interested in all aspects of VWs, from business development to creative application. However, to date "I have mostly used them to creative interactive narratives and film. I am deeply interested in the future of creative media for entertainment, journalism and business. VWs are one future-media element, and I would like to mash them up with other emerging elements"
"Building simulations for teaching; exploring the possibilities of vw for teaching"

Meeting and Brainstorming with colleagues:
"Meet with other teachers"
"Education"
"I attend events with speakers, I build, socialize and collaborate! I also teach in Second Life (graduate seminars)"
"Connecting with other nonprofit and educator colleagues, organizing virtual trainings, workshops and mixed- reality events"
"I use 3D virtual worlds to learn & to admire those who use creativity to create"

Other:
"Education"
"Study"
"I use it for my virtual school"
"Educating and organizing community"

"To COLLABORATE in creating 3D objects"

"All of the above and more"

Note-This survey is slanted, in terms of questions, to ReactionGrid Inc.'s needs to develop a roadmap.
Note 2-Some responses were seemingly incomplete or not understandable perhaps due to language challenges or similar. If you do not see your response feel free to add it below as a comment.

How to become an Expert at Jibe and Unity3d

2011-06-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's exciting to start developing your own multiuser virtual world with Jibe and Unity3d. And when learning anything new, it's always useful to have a list of online resources to help you hit the ground running.

Here are a few:

Jibe-Unity3d Google Group
A great place to start meeting other people who are exploring Jibe and Unity3d. Introduce yourself and start asking questions!
Unity Official Forum and Q/A
Helpful community resources from Unity Technologies.
ReactionGrid Wiki
Lots of educational articles about Jibe and Unity3d.
ReactionGrid Classes
We've started offering formal classes on how to learn key skills. More coming soon!
Jibe Tutorials on Be Cunning and Full of Tricks
My personal blog where I frequently publish detailed tutorials.

If you investigate these helpful resources, you'll quickly be on your way to becoming a Unity3d and Jibe expert!

Jibe Roadmap

2011-06-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

Our Jibe platform is currently at release version 1.3.1, and version 1.4 is about to arrive. We have many features and tools currently in development, so here's an overview of where we are, and what's coming up next!

Available now in Jibe 1.3.1

Simple multiplayer project kit for Unity editor, turn your 3D scenes into virtual worlds and invite your friends!
Chat, walk, run, fly, sit, private chat, teleport, Vivox voice chat (web platform only)
14 avatars with several clothing options - a total of 91 different outfits to choose from, plus some of the ladies have hair you can re-color!
Presentation system
Drag & Drop data visualization kit

Coming in July - Jibe 1.4

Improved voice integration - mute controls in the GUI (web builds)
Sit on the ground
Avatar attachments
JiWay System: Jump onto the JiWay and easily visit a network of publically available jibe worlds.
Platform improvements - minor bug fixes and functionality tweaks behind the scenes

September

Improved networking with HTTP tunneling for traffic - much more firewall friendly!
Jibe Mobile - launch your world on Android or iOS!
Jibe on the Unity Asset Store - grab the core pieces needed for simple multiplayer environments and hit the ground running!

January

Live building tools and object persistence
Create on the fly with your colleagues and save your current progress to resume later!

The future

Live object import and persistence, enabling users to create external models, import into a scene that is currently live, and save the changes
Shared inventory of common building components

Expect to see these advancements in future releases of Jibe

JiWay System web interface: Community members can add their own jibe worlds to the public list, enabling people to access their world through the Jiways. Users will be able to comment on, rate, and visit the worlds.
JiDraw: A whiteboard for your Jibe world, allowing users to freehand draw.

This roadmap is subject to change - notably, we have heard some very exciting plans from Unity about their own upcoming releases that may give us some new features that we can work on, so we're staying on our toes and will keep you posted.

Chris Hart

CTO, ReactionGrid Inc.

ReactionGrid Inc. Virtual World Poll.

2011-06-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

This week our CTO & Co-Founder Chris Hart will deliver a roadmap for Jibe, our in-house developed virtual world, for the next few point releases. In order to prepare for this initial roadmap we have begun polling our community.

Poll #1 asked which of 4 basic features are most important to you. See below for the results of this poll which 69 people participated in.

Note-Option 1 (green bar) was "Easy to login to & use"

SCADA Demo for Jibe

2011-06-23T13:48:00.001-07:00

For those of you who are looking into data visualization in Jibe, we have produced a sample package that you may find useful! Now available to download from our Jibe Downloads site for our Jibe customers, log in and scroll down to get hold of your copy!

To install the package, just unpack the zip file into a folder and read the instructions. In Unity, you need to open your Jibe project and select Assets - Import Package - Custom Package...

Import all the assets in the bundle - there are three prefabs and one script to add to your project. Once you have imported them, from your Project tab in Unity, go to the Objects folder and drag a Machine Controller prefab into your scene. It's an invisible object, so position it in the scene where you want to start your data visuals:

And now you're ready to run with the simple demo! If you hit the Play button in the editor, you will see five cubes appear, likely with different colors, each showing a random value between 0 and 10, and some of them potentially on fire! These five values are randomly produced from a little web page http://reactiongrid.com/gridworx/scada/sampledata.aspx that can have a couple of parameters to modify the quantity (n) and maximum (max) values produced, for example http://reactiongrid.com/gridworx/scada/sampledata.aspx?n=6&max=100.

The demo script has a number of properties on it that you can edit to change how the visuals work, and you have all the full source code from the script itself that you are free to edit and change as you like to fit your purposes! If you want to make simple changes, head to the Machine Controller game object in your Scene hierarchy and make changes to the properties. These represent the following:

Poll Interval: how often to refresh data
Number of values: how many machines to show, up to a max of 10
Maximum value: if you want to simulate larger or smaller numbers, change this number
Particle threshold: for particles to display, set this number to be lower than maximum value, at some value that makes sense for an overload visualization
Low / Medium / High / Critical Condition Values: set these numbers in order from lowest to highest up to a number that is less than the max to show full range of states
Machine Prefab: replace this with any object of your choice that has a mesh renderer component - the standard one supplied with the demo is a simple cube object with no special attributes
Data Vis Particles: replace this with any prefab of your choice that has a particle emitter
Skin: for the GUI numbers over the boxes
Heat colors: set up a minimum of five colors for each condition to visualise to change the color of your machines according to the values

This demo is provided as is for evaluation purposes and contains only pretend data... but the idea here is to give you an idea of how you could make a cool space and visualize machine values, or perhaps a live rendered scene of how many emails you have received that you haven't yet read, etc. The data you pull from your web service could be passed in as simple csv values, it could be JSON, it could be XML, and the fun of working with C# for your scripting is that you can use standard code techniques to unravel that data. Then combine that with some Unity concepts and you have a 3D scene that you can walk through with your peers and see what is currently happening together.

We use this technique for our own purposes to provide us with real-time monitoring of server activity of all the servers, physical and virtual, that we host for our clients. We gather metrics on server uptime, processor utilization, hard drive space and more, and we view it all together in our server room. Together, in the virtual space, we can see at a glance if a server needs some attention, or we can see whether a server is currently being worked on by a member of the team. Check out the video overview or head inworld to see a live demo!

Comments or questions, ping me any time via http://metaverseheroes.com

Chris Hart

CTO, ReactionGrid Inc.

Jibe 1.3 Released

2011-05-26T05:06:00.000-07:00

Jibe 1.3 is now available! This release includes many new features and improvements, and you can see a demo of a simple Jibe 1.3 environment on our website, if you click on the Cityscape link, or you can view it directly here. Changes in 1.3 are pretty extensive, including:

Jibe avatars can now fly! this has resulted in significant changes to avatar model files, animation and movement scripts, and scripts that interact with avatars. While you are not chatting, press e to fly up, c to descend
Non-Jibe avatars can be used in a single-scene configuration (Jibe customers see the video tutorial for details on http://jibemix.com/jibedownloads) - this has resulted in changes to animation and movement scripts, and scripts that interact with avatars.
New menu option to simplify Jibe configuration if you head to Window - Jibe - Welcome
Chat history can be saved to a web-based database (available to Jibe owners with their own server)
Cursor now shows as regular arrow on web player builds (and editor builds), with hover helpers for sit and chat. This should fix the problem of Jibe windows swallowing mouse cursor while browsing different sites in other browser tabs (and where buttons in editor are sometimes hard to click when pointer is hidden). Old style icons are still available and can be re-enabled with a checkbox on the Cursor object in JibeGUI
PlayerCamera has been changed - previously this lived in the PlayerCharacter prefab, now it lives in the live scene in the Jibe object. This enables scene-specific camera settings, giving users options to change draw distance, camera effects, on a scene-by-scene basis, rather than per project.
PlayerCharacter prefab has been deprecated and is no longer used. Players are now spawned from their respective Character Prefabs (Avatars - Prefabs - Characters) and components like map icon, blob shadow, etc. added automatically.
User ID fetched on startup (if hosting web page provides it) and stored in a preference file for use in tracker scripts.
Loader scene now only offers avatar choices on startup if the user has never logged in before - the Dressing Room is offered on login, or proceed straight to main scene. These options are configurable in the Loader scene's Init object.
Jibe iTween functionality added to easily network an iTween event so all players see an event happen at the same time. To enable this, to the object with iTween scripts attached, add a JibeiTweenClick script and enter the event to synchronize. In the JibeiTweenClick.cs script, you need to uncomment line 43 - only do this after adding iTween scripts to your project or you will have errors that prevent building your application.
Jibe Animation code has been loosened significantly to facilitate non-jibe avatars. There is no more JibeAnimation enum defining animations, but you need to ensure that all models in use in a Jibe build share the same animations for animation synchronization to work correctly without errors. All Jibe avatars (or avatars with the same animation states), all dragons, etc.
Old animation code (ThirdPersonAnimation.js) has been removed, and replaced with C# code - this has enabled the PlayerMovement.cs script to be moved in with the rest of the Jibe scripts, keeping the project more tidy, and making future code more simple.
Jibe avatar skins have been refreshed and updated.

Note that the Cityscape scene is now available for free for all new Jibe customers, and is a simple scene that we hope will help get folks who are new to Unity and Jibe up and running more speedily, though the plain kit is still available for those with their own builds.

Stay tuned for a link to a demo space in the very near future to see dragon avatars in action!

Anyone with questions about the upgrade, please contact us via http://metaverseheroes.com and we'll be ready to help!

Chris Hart, CTO ReactionGrid Inc.

Moving to OpenSimulator 0.7.1

2011-05-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

The recent release of OpenSimulator 0.7.1 has been widely welcomed by the enthusiastic OpenSim fans and many have asked us what our plans are for upgrading. There has been some speculation about why we have not yet upgraded, and I'd like to explain what's involved in upgrading our systems, and why we are usually a little behind the bleeding edge!

I say bleeding edge speaking from experience -when we first started hosting OpenSimulator back in 2008, and our official ReactionGrid opensim grid launched at the end of that year. For the first few months we stuck to the subversion trunk of core code, upgrading every few weeks to the latest and greatest. Mostly, we were fine to follow this track, but occasionally we got bitten and had to roll back to a previous release - such is the bleeding edge! As time passed, it became clear that we could not continue this pattern if we were to grow, so we re-evaluated our strategy.

We now knew the platform well and were starting to host grids for customers, and we had a duty to them to ensure that we were able to offer a known good configuration within acceptable tolerances. Once the project moved on to 0.6 we moved to following official releases with minor tweaks for our own purposes. As we grew, each upgrade would take longer to roll out, since it was no longer just our own grid, but also those of our clients.

Our most recent upgrade was to 0.6.9 last year, and the full rollout to our customers took several months. For the most part this release has proven to be a significant improvement over previous releases, though it does have a few issues that continue to frustrate us to this day. We have been looking forward to 0.7.1 for some time now. 0.7 was tagged very soon after 0.6.9 was released, and I was aware that some of the core developers had planned some major work that was not going to happen after this point, and would likely be included in 0.7.1. As such, I recommended that we hold off 0.7.0 and waited for the next release, including improved HyperGrid security that our customers really have been asking for.

We are now in the process of upgrading our core systems and applications to work with 0.7.1. Our servers use the MSSQL database platform for OpenSim, so I'm adding additional support to those modules to be compatible with 0.7.1 and will contribute this code back to the community once completed, as I have done in the past. We'll also be upgrading our groups server, our core admin applications for user registration and administration, as well as many other systems. Testing different configurations; with & without HyperGrid, FreeSwitch voice, megaregion, single regions (one console), multiple regions per console, multiple region servers per server, with groups, no groups, etc. It's a significant undertaking, and we are committed to doing this to the best of our abilities for the benefit of our customers.

We want this release to be a success, and will be doing all we can to ensure any upgrade we produce for our customers has been tested as much as possible before we offer it to them. We will not accept any release of OpenSim that is less stable than our current builds. The goals are clear - improved stability, more features, increased compatibility with newer clients, and increased security wherever possible. We still believe that the OpenSimulator platform is a great tool for working in 3D and are very grateful to our clients for understanding the work that goes into preparing for each upgrade.

As for a specific timeline (I know you're all jumping up and down asking for a date!) I simply cannot say for certain at this stage, but so far code is going well. I'm hoping very much to have a release ready before July, and as soon before then as possible, but this all depends on how testing goes. I'll be working with the team on all aspects of the upgrade, and we will keep you all updated as soon as a release is imminent!

Chris Hart, CTO ReactionGrid Inc.

Summary of ReactionGrid's ISTE SIGVE presentation in Jibe

2011-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

ISTE SIGVE (International Society for Technology in Education - Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments) is a group of educators, administrators, and educational technologists who are interested in the development of 3D Virtual Environment platforms for connection and collaboration.

They hold online meetings each month, and on May 17th they invited me to speak to their group about Jibe and Virtual Worlds on the Web.

Folks logged in to my Jibe world where I addressed the group using voice while people asked questions in text chat. We sat around for a brief introduction then went on a walking tour to illustrate how Jibe can be used to create immersive and interactive learning experiences. I also spoke about the unique affordances of having a 3d virtual world embedded on a web page.

I had a few slides which I displayed in a frame on the webpage where my Jibe world lives. This made it easy for people to click through the slides while we moved around and explored the 3d space.

We had a peak of 22 simultaneous users during the meeting and over 100 unique visitors over the course of the entire day.

Because of its low bandwidth requirements, Jibe can scale nicely to handle many concurrent users. Data throughput during the meeting of about 20 people was on average about 100-200 kbps for the entire server. Compare that to a virtual world environment like Second Life which requires a connection speed of at least 500 kbps per client.

This presentation was a lot of fun, and I want to personally thank Scott Merrick for inviting me and everyone else who helped organize it. Thank you!

-John Lester, Director of Community Development, ReactionGrid

Jibe demo at GAMBIT Lab at MIT – Friday May 20 @4pm Eastern

2011-05-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

GAMBIT is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore, created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. The lab focuses on the creation of video game prototypes to demonstrate their research as a complement to traditional academic publishing.

Tomorrow (Friday) at 4pm Eastern, Chris Hart (ReactionGrid CTO) and I will be at the GAMBIT lab at MIT to talk about Jibe!

More details can be found on the GAMBIT blog.

There will be a live video stream of the presentation, so you can also tune in to watch.

UPDATE 5/24/11: Here's a video recording of our presentation.

-John Lester, Director of Community Development, ReactionGrid

We Must Say Good Bye to a Good Friend

2011-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

The ReactionGrid Team received some very sad news today that we would like to pass on to others that may have known Chris Surridge.

Chris Surridge passed yesterday of a heart attack on his birthday at age 46.

He was a great influence in the Opensim and SecondLife Education community and his passing will be seen as a great loss.

We will remember him fondly.

New Security Alert

2011-05-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

Last night ReactionGrid was hit once again by a Griefer who dropped a mess of prims about the grid and performed mass object moves on regions that did not have their objects locked down.

As a result we have tracked the IP range of addresses the griefer is using and have contacted the ISP to see if we can bring action against this person.

Gridizens - the call is out to you now to make your grid a safer place!

Please secure your regions and set them to No Building when you are not physically there.
Also please make sure you take the precautions as well to never set object to 'Allow Everyone to Move' as this griefer is moving objects that are not locked down.
So if objects have been moved on your regions the griefer has selected mass objects and moved them all at one shot.

This is a matter that we all must be vigilant on.

Please report any strange activity at http://metaverseheroes.com by adding a support ticket.

Security Advisory

2011-04-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

Recently ReactionGrid has experienced a littering of prims about others regions.

We have managed to ban the user and are watching the grid for suspicious activity.

Please alert us at http://metaverseheroes.com by submitting a support ticket using the subject line Security Alert and please reference the region(s) name(s)

If you are experiencing trouble logging in please visit http://metaverseheroes.com and submit a support ticket.

In an effort to prevent these sorts of mass dumping of prims on your regions please turn off build when you are not on your regions and building.

We thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Prevention is key.

Thanks!

1939 New York World's Fair Opening Celebration

2011-04-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Seventy-two years ago, on April 30th, 206,000 people gathered across 1,216 acres, an area that only a couple years earlier was an ash dump. But on that day, thanks to four years of hard work and planning, those people were able to glimpse at the future, for they were attending the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

This year, from April 30 through May 7, we will celebrate the Opening of the World's Fair in the Virtual World of ReactionGrid. This is the first time an event commemorating the Fair's opening in a virtual world has ever been done. While only a few of the pavilions have been constructed so far, this is an opportunity to see the Fair, and to actually be a part of it. Walk through the Trylon and Perisphere, view Democracity, and travel down the Helicline. Visit the New York City Building, the Belgium Pavilion, and Westinghouse Electric.

For a preview of some of what has been done on the Grid, there are 4 movies on http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds_fair/WF_ReactionGrid/grid_videos.htm.

During the Celebration Week, there will be live talks and shows about the Fair: Below is the initial schedule for the week.

SATURDAY APR 30

Time: 10:00 am PDT

Theme: Opening and Welcome

Location: NYC Auditorium

Presented by: The ReactionGrid Team

Time: 11:00 am PDT

Theme: King & Queen of England - Visit to the Fair, Written by David Cope, Fair Historian

Location: NYC Auditorium

Presented by: David Schwartz, PhD.

SUNDAY MAY 1

Time: 1:00 pm PDT

Theme: Trylon & Perisphere

Location: T & P - walking tour

Presented by: Joey Vas

MONDAY MAY 2

Time: 11:00 am PDT

Theme: About the Fair:A talk about the Fair beginnings, the Fair Corporation, changes from 1939 to 1940 and a some facts about the Fair in general.

Location: NYC Auditorium

Presented by: Paul M. Van Dort

TUESDAY MAY 3

Time: 10:00 am PDT

Theme: Westinghouse Electric

Location: Westinghouse Auditorium

Presented by: Ms. Shirley Manning

SATURDAY MAY 7

Time: 1:00 pm PDT

Theme: About the Fair:A talk about the Fair beginnings, the Fair Corporation, changes from 1939 to 1940 and a some facts about the Fair in general.

Location: NYC Auditorium

Presented by: Paul M. Van Dort

More talks will be added in the next couple days, including someone from the New York Public Library. For a current schedule visit: http://39wfblog.1939nyworldsfair.com/

For information on ReactionGrid visit: http://www.ReactionGrid.com

Join us in celebrating the 72nd Anniversary of the Opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Jibe 1.2 Release

2011-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

While it's not been long since the 1.1 release of Jibe, this week sees the arrival of 1.2! We have added a couple of new features and an important bugfix for users on the newer SmartFox 2X platform.

Bug Fix:

Fixed bug with SFS2X where a user left on the Loader scene would timeout and get stuck in the dressing room

New Features:

Introduced own name tag over head, which you can choose to use or hide in your scene configuration - this was one of the most frequently requested items from our users!
Option to disable the extra idle animations on the avatars - the system that is in place could be used in a similar style to a basic animation override system that gives avatars who are standing still a little more movement. Some of our Jibe users prefer avatars to stand still when they are idle, so a new checkbox will disable the AO.

We have several more features in development at the moment, including a simplified system for using other avatars in Jibe, replacing the models we have supplied. We expect this will form the core of a 1.3 release in the next few weeks once that system has been fully tested!

For more information on upgrades from previous releases of Jibe, or any other technical questions about the platform, please drop me a support ticket via MetaverseHeroes!

Chris Hart

CTO, ReactionGrid Inc.

http://reactiongrid.com

Jibe 1.1 Release

2011-04-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that Jibe 1.1 is now available to all our Jibe customers. For anyone on 1.0, you can download the update pack to 1.1 from our central downloads site. This upgrade is a small change set but includes some important bugfixes and some great new features, including:

Bugfixes:

Changing scenes no longer breaks private chat between avatars
You can now return to the dressing room at any time to change your appearance
Appearance now persists across logins via simple cookies -your appearance choices will be remembered as long as the world file name is not changed
Chat history to web page improved

New features:

The biggest new feature is that SmartFox 2X support now included in Jibe 1.1. We've been using the SmartFox 1.6.x server platform as the network provider for Jibe worlds since our first release, but with the Jibe 1.x platform architecture, we are able to implement additional network providers and offer customers more choice in which network provider they use. Each platform has its own set of features that customers can consider for their worlds. In Jibe 1.1 we now support the following platforms:

For our Jibe Atmosphere and Moon customers, we provide the network infrastructure for your worlds on the SmartFox platforms. For Mars and self-hosted you have the option to choose from any of these platforms. We will offer both SmartFox platforms as our standard option, but Photon is an alternative you can use if you prefer it. In future, we'll be looking to implement ElectroServer as another supported platform.

For more information on upgrades from previous releases of Jibe please drop me a support ticket via MetaverseHeroes and I'll happily explain what is involved in upgrading. Anyone interested in learning more about the technical aspects of the Jibe platform is welcome to contact me any time.

Chris Hart

CTO, ReactionGrid Inc.

http://reactiongrid.com

Jibe5 Monthly Contest-Summer 2011

2011-04-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Have an original idea for a 3D multi-user virtual world? Send it to me, Kyle G, for consideration for a free 6 month self-hosted Jibe license. Be detailed in your concept explanation as we are just looking for whatever matches our mindset each month.

This is for non-commercial, non-production projects. There is no user- registration or other web tools provided with this special. Only Wiki and KB support is included.

We will help you get setup with Jibe and only ask for progress reports as you develop your concept we can share with others. Hit me up with ideas!

Kyle G
CEO ReactionGrid Inc.
http://jibemix.com
http://reactiongrid.com

The Affordances of a Virtual World in your Browser

2011-04-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Is running a virtual world in a web browser really that big a deal? If you have to download a browser plugin, then why not just download a standalone application? What's the point of having a virtual world sitting in a webpage? Does it really make any difference?

I hear these questions a lot. So let me share a few of my recent experiences with Jibe and setting up my own web-based Jibe world.

I need to get folks into my Jibe world quickly.
Ah right, it's just a URL.

I can't overstate how powerful it is to be able to give out a URL and tell folks "just click on it and you'll be in my virtual world." And even though they have to download a Unity plugin to make it work, the whole process still happens within the web browser itself.

Think about how much time you spend each day in front of your web browser. If you're like most folks, a web browser is probably always open on your computer. Which means that anything happening in your web browser is always right at hand.

And since my Jibe world is just a URL, I can make it something short and easy for me to remember. Easy for me to quickly jot down on a piece of paper, too. I just write or type bit.ly/Jibe_Pathfinder and that's it.

I need to add links to useful info for people visiting my my Jibe world.
Oh wait, I can just add that as HTML inside the webpage where Jibe lives.

Since my Jibe world lives on a plain old webpage, I can easily add additional text and hyperlinks that appear around the Jibe world on the page. Tweaking a web page like that is a snap, even for a web-wrangler like myself who uses a pretty basic HTML editor.

I want to use Google Moderator and Dabbleboard with people in Jibe.
Hold on, I can just embed them next to the Jibe world on the webpage.

Again, my Jibe world lives on a plain old webpage. Which means I can use iframes to embed a useful web-based application and have everyone see it while they are inside my virtual world. And there are a lot of great web-based collaborative tools out there.

Standing around in a 3d environment looking at 2d documents hanging on virtual walls has always left me scratching my head a bit. Especially when those 2d documents need to be dynamic and collaborative. Why not use the right tool for the right job? Have the 2d content live on the webpage, and have the engaging 3d content in the 3d window. That gives you the best of both worlds, and both can exist on the same webpage.

I need to track visitors to my Jibe world. How do I script that inworld?
Oh duh. I can just add Google Analytics to the webpage where Jibe lives.

Took me about an hour mulling things over before I suddenly realized this one. A quick copy/paste of the Google Analytics javascript code into my web page, and I was done.

For those of us used to using virtual worlds as standalone applications, you can see how realizing the real power of a virtual world in a webpage requires unlearning some things. You don't need to do everything inside the 3d world itself. You have the power of other web-based applications right there on the same page.

And I haven't even touched on the more complex affordances of Jibe and the web. Like being able to tie in preexisting web-based registration systems on the backend. Or being able to integrate Jibe with a preexisting web-based content or learning management systems.

A virtual world on a webpage is awesome simply because the web is full of awesome tools.

And they can all work together.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Unity Asset Store

2011-04-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's important for people to identify their own talents and cultivate them whenever possible.

And likewise, it's important for people to realize where they lack talent.

Personally, I'm terrible at 3d content creation.

I've tried very hard to learn various 3d modeling programs in the past, and I continue to push myself at doing my best to use them. But I've pretty much accepted the fact that, aside from being able to whip up the basics, I definitely lack the artistic talent and technical prowess to create beautifully detailed 3d models from scratch. I'll always be a hack.

But that's OK. I've stopped worrying about it.

Because the trick is to accept one's limitations while finding ways to work around them.

My Best Friend in Jibe: The Unity3d Asset Store

I've recently been learning how to use Unity3d to create my own multiuser virtual world on the web with Jibe. And I just started using the Unity Asset Store.

The Unity Asset Store is a place to buy things you can import and use in your own Unity3d projects. Anyone can submit items to be sold, too.

Pretty neat, right? Well, it gets much more interesting.

The clever folks at Unity decided to integrate the Asset Store with the Unity editor.

So while you're busily working on your world in the editor, you can simply pull up the Asset Store from the menu, search for something, buy it, and have it immediately dropped into your project file. And if you lose or break something you previously bought, have no fear. The Asset Store remembers that you bought it and can send it to you again whenever you like.

Of course, anyone can find 3d models for sale or freely available on many different websites. I do that all the time, and it works great. But it can sometimes get complicated depending on different import settings and optimizations. With the Unity Asset Store, I'm guaranteed everything will work in Unity3d. And the store is right there for me to access while I'm actively building my world, at the precise moment I need new content.

"Hmm. I need wildlife in my Jibe world. Like rabbits."

"Oh look, there's one in the Asset Store."

"Done."

I get excited about technology. But I get even more excited when I find tools that have a very positive philosophy behind them. The Unity Asset Store is a great example of how the folks at Unity are thinking very carefully about how to best empower people who want to create engaging 3d experiences. Connect, integrate, and build communities where everyone can best leverage their unique talents. That's a great philosophy in my book.

Jibe + Unity3d = Sharing your World

At ReactionGrid, we like to think we too have a very positive philosophy. We give people the tools to create and then share their virtual worlds with others. Being able to easily publish your vision on the web is pretty amazing, and I'm having a great time putting myself in our customers' shoes. Learning by doing.

Visit my Jibe world and see if you can find my fully rigged and animated mesh models of rabbits, courtesy of the Unity Asset Store. I'll be using them and other animal models to tell a little story over time for folks exploring my Jibe world.

Creating fun and immersive learning experiences through storytelling is something I can do pretty well. Thankfully, I don't need to be a 3d model expert to create engaging experiences in Jibe.

And guess what? Neither do you.

Join our Jibe and Unity3d Discussion Group and learn how easy it is to get started!

New Group to discuss Virtual Worlds on the Web using Unity3d and Jibe

2011-03-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've just started a new Google Group for folks interested in creating virtual worlds on the web using Jibe and Unity3d. You can join it here.

Unity3d is a very popular professional game development platform for creating 3d environments. Jibe is a platform that we've developed at ReactionGrid to allow anyone to deploy multiuser virtual worlds on the web that are built with Unity3d.

Unity3d and Jibe have some really cool affordances for developing immersive and interactive projects, particularly for educators. The worlds are accessible from a web browser, voice and text chat are both available, all content is based on industry-standard mesh models, and you can write scripts in C# and JavaScript. There are also ways to integrate a Jibe world with web-based CMS /LMS systems, and future versions of Jibe will also support deployment on things like iPads and other mobile platforms.

I'm not a professional 3d content creator, and I can barely script my way out of a paper bag. But I've managed to create my own Jibe world online. Learning Jibe and Unity3d is not insanely hard. Anyone can do it, really.

Which is precisely why I've started the Jibe and Unity3d Google Group. I'll be posting my own experiences to the group and sharing resources that I've found very useful. Bring your questions and creative ideas. Let's build a supportive and helpful community together!

And if you'd like to listen to a presentation I recently gave at VWBPE on the educational affordances of web-based virtual worlds, Jibe and Unity3d, please take a look at this video:

Office Hours in your Browser

2011-03-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

We've been working very hard here at ReactionGrid on our virtual world platform called Jibe.

Jibe is a great way to give people access to virtual worlds through a web browser, and future versions will support mobile devices and even game consoles. You use the Unity3D editor to create environments in Jibe, and I've been having a lot of fun learning how to use it as well as finding cool places to get reusable 3D mesh content.

I now have my own Jibe-based virtual world online and accessible by anyone who wants to visit. You can access it in your web browser by simply clicking this link.

You'll often find me in my Jibe world during the day, so please stop by and visit. And feel free to visit and explore even if I'm not around. I'm still building things out, so please mind the mess. I plan on adding some fun interactive games and hidden secrets in the future.

I also host weekly scheduled Office Hours in my Jibe world if you'd like to join me and other people interested in Unity3D development and creating online worlds with Jibe. Please see my Office Hours page for more details.

-John "Pathfinder" Lester

Director of Community Development

ReactionGrid, Inc.

Avatars in the Boardroom - A Presentation at Tuck School of Business

2011-02-25T14:03:00.001-08:00

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to students and faculty at the Center for Digital Strategies at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

My lecture was titled Avatars in the Boardroom: A Virtual Revolution in Workplace Collaboration, and my slides are all online. The focus of my presentation was on the unique affordances of virtual worlds as they relate to business goals. One of the biggest challenges to businesses is how to build effective teams that are distributed around the world, so I talked a lot about how virtual worlds are a compelling platform for building trust and developing team training programs.

The trick is to use the right tool for the right job. Businesses have many different communication tools at their disposal, and virtual worlds are part of this spectrum of choices. With their power to perceptually immerse people in an interactive learning environment full of other people, and their power to visualize data and models in 3d, virtual worlds are a technology that deserves thoughtful consideration.

I also spoke about the unique nature of the human mind. How our minds crave places and faces, and how powerful it is to develop communication platforms that engage people in ways that complement our natural human tendencies. Virtual worlds can help us feel more human as we communicate electronically, and they also unlock our innate creativity as we discover the unique malleability of our avatars and the virtual spaces around them. Just because we can identically replicate the physical boardroom in a virtual world doesn't mean we should. By creating new and more evocative virtual spaces, we can make collaboration more engaging and interesting.

To wrap things up, I gave some demos of ReactionGrid's Jibe platform and how it can be used for collaboration and data visualization. Our Jibe Server Control Room was a big hit. The students also gave me some very interesting ideas on how to possibly expand the metaphor in ways that could visualize even more information. Ideas such as scripted avatars that automatically position themselves in a server room to visually reflect which tasks employees are focused on, creating interactive bots that have access to back-end data, and how to best leverage a 3d environment to convey information that simply cannot be conveyed in 2d. I was very impressed by their brainstorming.

I had a great time at Tuck, and I was very impressed with the thoughtfulness and creativity of everyone I spoke with at the school. To everyone I met, thank you again for the opportunity.

Jibe Server Control Room - Update

2011-02-25T12:43:00.001-08:00

We've been working to enhance our virtual Operations Center this week, and now have 95 virtual servers reporting in and visualized. COO Robin Gomboy and I have had a super week tending to the fleet, catching issues and fixing them before they become critical, identifying troubled machines in a timely fashion and working with their owners to fix and improve performance.

Our latest edition of the operations center can be seen in the latest video.

Jibe Server Control Room

2011-02-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

Our Network Operations Center team consisting of COO Robin Gomboy, CTO Chris Hart (lead programmer for Jibe) & Support Engineer Felix Techie have created a virtual virtual server datacenter for our virtual worlds. Confused yet? Essentially we have replaced a 2D representation of our clients servers with a 3D space where we can monitor all systems.

We also review new systems like this to make sure we have improved how we digest aggregates of data, visualize that data and generally understand better what the data is telling us. In this case we have an instant hit. Our team will not use something if it isn't an improvement over the old way of doing things. This is a huge leap forward for the task at hand.

Not only can we access data quicker, see trouble more easily and understand what is needed for corrective actions but we can also visualize who is responding to what machine in our fleet. I now know that Felix is likely already accessing a server because I visually see him near that virtual representation of that virtual server. Therefore I will not interrupt him as has happened often in the past.

So essentially what was previously a disparate system of Skype+RDP Manager+Email is now a cohesive 3D environment that our team already considers an invaluable tool. That kind of thing is what excites us about virtual worlds!

Full Image
Video

What Does Reactiongrid Love?

2011-02-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Today is typically a day you recognize the special someone you love with flowers, gifts, chocolates, or cutting edge tech toys (for those special geeks in our lives). It's also a good time to reflect as an organization on what we love doing.

So what is it that drives Reactiongrid? What is it we love doing?

Put in businessy terms, our vision statement explains what we ultimately want to come from our actions:

Our vision is a better world through broadly adopted metaverse and physical connectivity.

And our mission statement explains how we intend to make this vision a reality:

Our mission is simplifying metaverse making with tools, support, and community.

To put it in non-businessy terms, we love those "AH HA!" moments when a client's world completes their need. We love it when students and trainees finally "get" a concept from seeing it in-world. We love when teachers share stories of students joining in-world class activities despite them being at home sick. We love hearing a client say "Gosh, that was easy." We love seeing you do remarkable, unexpectedly brilliant, and previously impossible things with the worlds we help you make.

1939 World's Fair Project on ReactionGrid

2011-02-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

The project to recreate the essence of the 1939 World's Fair on ReactionGrid has been one of our longest-running and most successful projects. If you are interested in finding out more about the fair, and about future plans for the builds on ReactionGrid, join us today at 12:30pm Eastern US / 17:30 UTC on 39FairHQ region on ReactionGrid - see here for details on today's meeting!

Chris Hart

CTO ReactionGrid Inc.

http://reactiongrid.com

Jibe/Unity3D Developer Resumes Wanted

2011-02-02T12:42:00.000-08:00

If you are a Unity3D developer we'd like to collect your latest resume and examples of work for some upcoming 2011 positions. Simply visit http://reactiongrid.com and use the "Jobs" menu item to let us know more about you.

Kyle G
CEO ReactionGrid Inc.
http://reactiongrid.com

JiNote Nears Beta Release

2011-01-31T11:56:00.000-08:00

We've been hard at work on a number of collaborative tools for the Jibe platform. I'm pleased to report that JiNote, our collaborative note tool, is rapidly approaching beta release. With the JiNote system, users of the space are able to create 3D notes within the world containing simple text, URL links, images, teleports to specific world areas, and even portals to other web-based jibe worlds. As soon as it passes our final technical testing, we will make JiNote available to select clients for our Beta release.

Jeff Lowe

CPO ReactionGrid Inc.

http://reactiongrid.com

WCF Groups Template for RG Opensim

2011-01-26T16:15:00.000-08:00

ReactionGrid Inc.'s Opensimulator groups code is in final deployment on our main grid and rolling out to select client worlds. Our Hyper-V virtual server templates have been updated with groups which means all new clients will have them instantly on order from our shop. Open sourcing will follow after we are completed rolling this out to our client base.

Kyle G
CEO ReactionGrid Inc.
http://reactiongrid.com

Find out about Jibe 1.0 in person

2011-01-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

I'll be speaking at the Boston Unity Group meeting at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge on Feb 15th - my talk will be "The Perils of Multiplayer Games!" where I discuss some of the fun of making a multiplayer solution for Unity. I'll be showing demos of our latest Jibe 1.0 product and you can feel free to ask me questions on any aspect of Jibe if you are in the area and want to join!

http://bugfeb2011.eventbrite.com/

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM (EST)

Microsoft N.E.R.D. Center, Cambridge, MA

Chris Hart

CTO ReactionGrid Inc.

http://reactiongrid.com

Jibe Version 1.0 in final testing.

2011-01-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

ReactionGrid Inc.'s Jibe platform, based initially on Unity3D, RG Middleware & Inworld Scripts & SmartFox & Photon backends, is almost ready for pilot testing with select clients this month. Feature set and launch event announced soon after.

Kyle G.
CEO ReactionGrid Inc.
http://reactiongrid.com