Connect with ReactionGrid at these Upcoming Conferences on Virtual Worlds and Experiential Learning

If you'd like to connect with someone from ReactionGrid, here's some information about two upcoming conferences:

4th Global Conference - Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds

March 22-24, 2014

Prague, Czech Republic

The main aims of this conference are to increase our understanding of experiential learning in virtual worlds, both formal and informal, to share experiences and best practices, and to debate future possibilities for learning in virtual worlds.  For full details, please see the conference website.

My panel presentation will be "Finding the Balance between Pedagogy and Technology."  Here's my abstract:

Next Generation virtual worlds will be tightly coupled to many other emerging technologies, leveraging modern knowledge management processes and providing platforms for broad use among teachers and learners.  As the technological landscape grows, it is becoming increasingly difficult for educators to identify the right platform (or mix of platforms) for their specific immersive learning needs.  

In my current position at ReactionGrid and my previous work at Linden Lab and Harvard Medical School, I have explored the use of a wide range of gaming and virtual world platforms to augment education.  Today there are a number of very interesting virtual world technological trends involving specific gaming technologies like Unity as well as the growth of Open Source platforms such as OpenSimulator.  My ongoing work involves finding the right match between educational goals and technological affordances as well as identifying key synergies when virtual world technologies are interwoven with existing social media and web-based educational content.  

Above all else, there must be a thoughtful match between pedagogy and technology.  Different virtual world platforms are suited for different uses, ranging from collaborative work environments to immersive goal-oriented simulations.  One of the most important and challenging goals for any educator exploring virtual worlds is simply finding the right tool for the right job.  Likewise, it is critical for virtual world platform developers to keep a firm focus on well established knowledge management principles when designing new technologies intended to advance the field of immersive learning.

I'm particularly thrilled about this panel because I'll be participating with Dr. Bryan Carter from the University of Arizona.  Bryan is a true pioneer in using virtual worlds for experiential learning, and he's been working with virtual environments since his dissertation project in 1997 when he created a virtual simulation of Harlem, NY as it existed during the 1920s Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance.  Virtual Harlem was one of the earliest full virtual reality environments created for use in the humanities and certainly one of the first for use in an African American literature course.  The project continues to grow and evolve as Bryan explores new virtual world platforms.

1st International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training (e-LEOT)

September 18–20, 2014

Bethesda, Maryland, United States

This new conference will assess a wide range of progressive ideas for the future of e-Learning, focusing on the idea of technology as a means to education rather than an end in itself.  The conference organizers are lining up a wonderful range of interdisciplinary speakers and are planning to attract a wide group of heterogeneous scholars and practitioners.  For full details, please see the conference website.

I'll be giving a keynote at this conference.  And if you're looking to interact with the organizers and other attendees and speakers, be sure to check out the e-LEOT LinkedIn Conference Group.

If you're planning to attend either of these conferences or if you just happen to be in town when they occur, please contact me via my about.me page if you'd like to meet up and chat about virtual worlds.  

Be seeing you!

-John Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid

How to create multiuser networked events in Jibe and Unity3d using iTween

In Jibe 2.0 we've included an easy system that gives you the power to use iTween to create multiuser networked events.  This allows you create shared experiences between avatars using interactive and complex object animations.

Watch my tutorial to learn more!


Video: How to create multiuser networked events in Jibe and Unity3d using iTween


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

How to create Avatar Sit locations on any object in a Jibe world in Unity3d

Here's a short tutorial video that will show you how to create avatar sit locations on any object in your Jibe world.  It's a very powerful and flexible system where you simply drag and drop sit locations onto anything in your multiuser Jibe world, allowing you to easily create collaborative meeting environments that encourage avatars to gather together in groups.

In this video, I also review how to avoid the accidental misuse of a script that could potentially cause your Avatar to fall through the floor.  Safety First!

Creating Sit Locations in Jibe and Unity3d from John Lester on Vimeo.

You can also find this tutorial video in our Knowledge Base.

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

ReactionGrid Inc: Growth and Change in 2013

Growth and Change always happen together. For something to evolve and flourish, it must grow.

And you cannot have growth without change.

ReactionGrid Inc. is growing and changing. Over the past year you've seen us shift away from Opensim to focus on developing our own proprietary web and mobile-based Jibe platform. You've also seen us evolve into a production studio that provides custom development services for educational 3d simulations using Jibe and Unity3d.

In 2013, you will see us continue to grow. We're working to expand our in-house videogame and instructional design expertise so our team can create the highest quality custom learning simulations. We're enhancing many of Jibe's core features to make it the most compelling multiuser 3d simulation environment out there, with the ability to coordinate complex data flow between virtual and physical world devices. And we are starting some major new projects with clients who are exploring amazing opportunities in the areas of immersive education and deeply engaging learning.

Along with all this change comes changes in leadership. Chris Hart has left her position as CTO to pursue her own ventures in data visualization, and she has handed over her lead developer role to Matthew Bertrand. Matt's been working with ReactionGrid for several months now, and we're very excited for him to take on this new challenge. Chris will remain an active contributor on the Jibe Unity Google Group in case anyone wants to pick her brains about all things Jibe.

At the helm of ReactionGrid, we're very excited to have Robin Donnelly now leading the company as President and COO. Robin's years of management and business development experience will be a great asset during this new phase of ReactionGrid's evolution. And lastly, Kyle Gomboy has left ReactionGrid to pursue his own projects. We wish him the best of luck.

We've got a great core team moving forward (see our updated About Us page), and we'll be continuing to expand our expertise while exploring how to integrate virtual worlds with some fascinating emerging technologies.

Keep an eye on this blog. We plan to surprise you in many wonderful new ways.

-The ReactionGrid Team

How to create Wandering Animals in your Jibe world using Unity 3D Pro

A great way to breathe life into your Jibe world is to add animated animal models that wander around the 3d landscape.  Here's how you can do it using the Pro version of the Unity3D editor.

The Unity Asset Store has many great models available for low cost that can make your Jibe space come to life. Just run a search for Horse or Cow and you may find just the model you're looking for. To make roaming animals, look for animals that come complete with animations. Mixamo produce many models that work well in Unity, though there are plenty of other publishers you can choose from. For this simple ambient animal example, you need just two animations - one for a stationary animal (so an idle / grazing animation) and a walk or run.

Step 1 - place animals and place empty cubes that the animals will walk to.  If you want the cubes to be specific per animal than you can place them in the animal object in the Hierarchy for organization but it doesn't matter where they are in the Hierarchy for performance. Making the cubes specific to an animal (by dragging those items into the hierarchy of the animal) then you can move the animal and the relative waypoints together in edit mode more easily.

Step 2 - Set up the Nav Mesh. to do this go to the Windows menu and open the Navigation window located towards the bottom of the list

Next select from the Hierarchy any objects that you want the animals to avoid such as buildings, fountains etc. In the Navigation window under the Object Tab those objects will appear with two check boxes and a drop down. Check off the Navigation Static check box to make it true, this will prevent the Nav Mesh from going under or through these objects. Next select the Terrain from the Hierarchy and check both Navigation Static and OffMeshLink Generation

Now in the Navigation Window click on the Bake Tab located next to the Object tab (do not press the Bake button at the bottom of the Window yet).  These settings will determine the accuracy of the Nav Mesh:

• Radius - how close to walls the Nav Mesh will generate.
• Height - how much clearance is required for the Nav Mesh to go under a floating object.
• Max Slope - the steepness of a slope that Agents can traverse.
• Step Height - the step-up height Agents can traverse between levels.
• Min Region Area - the smallest amount of space that the Nav Mesh can exist in.
• Width Inaccuracy % - how inaccurate the horizontal distance from wall and ledges the Nav Mesh is.
• Height Inaccuracy % - how inaccurate the vertical distance between the terrain the Nav Mesh is.

The Generate Off Mesh Links are for special actions of Agents being able to jump across gaps and drop down from ledges.

When everything is set up the way you want it click the Bake button located at the bottom right of the Navigation Window.

Step 3 - setting up the Animal AI. Download RGScripts.rar (includes AutoAnimateNPC.cs and NavigateToTarget.cs).  The below picture are the four scripts that will need to be on the animal to allow them to walk around.

• Animation - Set up the animations that the Animal will be able to do.
• Nav Mesh Agent - The most important of the scripts, this is what attaches the animal to the created Nav Mesh. Most of the settings in here are straight forward, the Radius is a collision sphere that tracks where the animal is on the nave mesh, speed is how fast the animal will move, height is how tall the Nav Mesh collision sphere is (so if there is a bridge that can be walked under and the height is set too high the animal won't be able to get under the bridge.
• Auto Animate NPC - plays the correct animations when walking or idle.
• Navigate To Target - sets the targets that the Animal can walk to.  This script will talk to the Nav Mesh Agent selecting a random destination from the list and passing that position to the Agent.

When you are happy that all works as it should, make all the targets invisible by turning off their Mesh Renderer component and removing their box collider components so you won't end up bumping into invisible boxes as you walk through the scene.

Step 4 - Run the game and enjoy.

-Matt Bertrand

Jibe Developer, ReactionGrid

Speaking at "Train for Success" Panel on the Future of Virtual Worlds - Nov 8 @ noon Eastern

The Gronstedt Group hosts a weekly "Train for Success" speaking series, and this week I'll be participating in a panel discussion on the State and Future of Virtual Worlds.

The panel will be held in Second Life and starts on Thursday November 8 at noon Eastern.  You can also watch and ask questions via the live stream on the web.  

For more details, please see Facebook.  Here's a summary:

"The landscape of virtual worlds is changing. Social and game mechanics make virtual worlds more engaging. Browser-based virtual worlds make them more accessible to a wider audience. The panel will discuss the state and future of virtual worlds. Join this conversation about the emerging platforms and applications of virtual worlds in learning and business." 

Hope to see you there, and special thanks to Anders Gronstedt for inviting me to participate.

-John "Pathfinder" Lester
Chief Learning Officer, ReactionGrid

Video of panel on "Virtual Worlds Revisited" at the 2012 Chicago eLearning and Technology Showcase

I recently participated in a wonderful “Virtual Worlds Revisited” panel discussion as part of the Chicago eLearning and Technology Showcase.  The panel was organized and moderated by Mike Kemmler, and participants included virtual world innovators Anders Gronstedt , Mark Jankowski and Karl Kapp.

The panel was held in Second Life, but the focus of our discussion was firmly on the future of new virtual world platforms and new modalities for immersive learning. We were projected into the physical world meeting room in Chicago where about 30 people attended in person. Here’s a summary:

Still deeply entrenched in Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment, is it time to revisit virtual worlds?  Mike Kemmler hosts a virtual panel discussion via Second Life with a distinguished group of virtual world innovators, presenters, consultants, and authors, including Anders Gronstedt, Mark Jankowski, Karl Kapp, and John “Pathfinder” Lester. Panelists address the current state of learning in virtual worlds, explain platforms they see organizations using for immersive learning, and discuss current challenges and future possibilities of using virtual worlds for learning.

Thanks again, Mike, for this great opportunity.  It was an honor to be on a panel with such a stellar group of pioneers in virtual worlds and immersive learning.

NOTE: The audio from Second Life is bit choppy for the first 30 seconds, but then clears up perfectly for the rest of the video.

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

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

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

How to become an Expert at Jibe and Unity3d

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:

1. Jibe-Unity3d Google Group
   A great place to start meeting other people who are exploring Jibe and Unity3d. Introduce yourself and start asking questions!
   
   
2. Unity Official Forum and Q/A
   Helpful community resources from Unity Technologies.
   
   
3. ReactionGrid Wiki
   Lots of educational articles about Jibe and Unity3d.
   
   
4. ReactionGrid Classes
   We've started offering formal classes on how to learn key skills. More coming soon!
   
   
5. 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!