Friday, November 10, 2017

2018 IMA: EDU: Wanted: a virtual world viewer for education. Straw-man model

Wanted: a virtual world viewer for education: 
Straw-man model
Updated 1/11/2018
A straw-man model for a virtual world viewer is presented with the objective of eliciting comments and suggestions for improvement.  Comments and suggestions will be used to produce a more refined model.  This article is explicitly licensed as public domain.
  • A straw-man model is used to start developing specs
  • Straw-man strategy: You put it up and everyone tells you what is wrong with it.
  • Comments and suggestions will be used to produce a more refined model.
  • This article is explicitly licensed as public domain.
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What do we need from a viewer for education and educational research?

  • Minimize viewer learning time 
  • CapabilityUser activity tracking.
  • Use secure, web-compatible exchange protocols (https)
  • Meet standard accessibility requirements for educational offerings.
  • Use a standard, widely taught, scripting language.
  • Provide for still and video capture. by learner, instructor, and researcher
  • Provide settings to configure for multiple learning styles.
  • Mobile device compatibility
  • Microlearning compatibility 
  • Support for individualized instruction guided by observed performance.
  • Comply with relevant industry specs.

Easy learning of viewer use

  • Cut actions to be learned to minimum needed for education:
  • Walk, talk (voice), text
  • Make friends, locate friends
  • Send and receive instant messages
  • Click objects to activate or select them.
  • Gather objects and place them (learners can build to keep score)
  • More? TBD

Accessibility requirements (TBD)

  • Text to speech (probably available)
  • Speech to text (in test on web-worlds)
  • Use only browser compatible calls 
  • More?  TBD

Desirable features

  • Optional recording to MP4
  • Recall recording: Last N minutes before an error. 
  • Small segment video recording.
  • Small segment saving for micro learning review.
  • Add drag and drop importing for images, COLLADA files*, videos, urls, and avatars.
  • *And other industry standard model formats: obj, 3ds, wrl, x3d
  • Allow user to drag windows off the viewer screen.
  • Keep compatibility with OpenSimulatorHeliosHalcyon  and Whitecoresim 
  • Integrate with web-world development (CybaloungeWebworldz)
  • Offer optional tips on learning and web-use.
  • Provide hooks for the insertion of hand-held controls.
  • Provide a way to overlay part of the virtual world scene on a video image.
  • More?  TBD

Relevant industry specs

Thanks to Lisa Laxton (Infinite Metaverse Alliance) for help on this

Virtual Worlds and Simulation

http://www.web3d.org/standards  VRML-ISO Standards .wrl and .x3d formats plus Humanoid Animation
https://www.khronos.org/files/collada_spec_1_5.pdf Standard for Collada 3D .dae files
https://www.sisostds.org/ProductsPublications/Standards.aspx  Standards page mostly for real-time military simulation HLA and DIS standards
https://www.nationalbimstandard.org/   Building Model Standards Info Model Correct RL design for size etc. Human sizing
http://www.opengeospatial.org/docs/is  Open Geospatial Standards (Close to Web3D GIS mapping)

Accessibility

Usability, User Interface Design, and User Experience

https://www.usability.gov/ User Experience Guidelines
http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/r_international.htm  Tools for Usability 
https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/  Web design Standards HTML5 etc
https://www.w3.org/standards/agents/  Browser Standards media players etc.

Internet-based Data

Security

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_security_standards  Cyber Security Standards
http://www.iso27001security.com/html/27033.html Network Security Standards Applies to Open Simulator 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/design-guidelines/index  .net Specificiation for c#
https://cryptoconsortium.github.io/CCSS/  C4 Crypto Currency Standards

Virtual and Augmented Reality

https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/3333.3.html Head mounted Display Motion sickness issues
https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-gear/head-mounted-displays/ VR Standards headsets for UK
http://standards.ieee.org/innovate/ar/  Standards for AR headsets
https://standards.ieee.org/develop/wg/VRAR.html  New committee at IEEE for VR Standards

WebGL specs (for web-worlds) 

Suggested open source resources for viewer

Voice


Mesh handling



Viewer



Notes

Open Source Viewers (Source Code):

Linden Labs (original project)
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Get_source_and_compile

OnLook (third party viewer of interest)
https://github.com/diva/OnLook

Firestorm (third party viewer of interest)
http://hg.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix-firestorm-release/

Kokua OS (third party viewer of interest)
https://bitbucket.org/kokua/kokua-os

Radegast (third party viewer of interest)
https://bitbucket.org/cinderblocks/radegast

Singularity (third party viewer of interest)
https://github.com/singularity-viewer/SingularityViewer

CtrlAltStudio (third party viewer of interest no longer in development)
https://ctrlaltstudioviewer.codeplex.com/

Alchemy (third party viewer of interest)
https://bitbucket.org/alchemyviewer/alchemy

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License

  • Original text in this blog is CC By: unless specified public domain
  • Use as you please with attribution: link to the original.
  • All images without attribution in this blog are CC0: public domain.
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