Nmc 2007 Publish

Arts Metaverse in Open Croquet: Exploring an Open

Source 3D Online Digital World

Ulrich Rauch & Tim Wang, Arts ISIT

University of British Columbia

An On-line Environment For The Interactive Study of The Ancient World

What...

- Student driven initiative- Piloted in 2003- In 2006 reaches out to almost 500 students - Five Departments in Arts participating

Goal: to provide a supplementary infrastructure to enable students and academics to reconstruct and re-experience the material culture of ancient civilization in a collaborative environment.

An On-line Environment For The Interactive Study of The Ancient World

Why...

Reconstruction: Experiential Learning

Immersion: learning about e.g. architecture, but also social and cultural meaning/values of physical environment

Interaction and engagement – perspective taking

Visualizing Abstract Concepts:

... the new vernacular is visual

... new media technology promises to enhance our understanding of how meaning is constructed visually and experientially

An On-line Environment For The Interactive Study of The Ancient World

How?

Using 3D virtual environments:

to engage students in collaborative space building and peer-to-peer evaluation.

to enable the undergraduate archaeologist to rebuild the monuments of ancient civilisations in an interactive 3D simulation.

to support the recreation and understanding of the social and cultural environments in which artifacts became formed

to review the simulations in the academic community, and subsequently showcase and share (via the Internet) as original undergraduate research.

Early Days – MOD on Game Engines

Simulations in UT2004

Model Construction -> Archive -> Simulation

Machu Picchu - Maps

Machu Picchu - Overview

Machu Picchu - Photos

Machu Picchu - Sketches

Machu Picchu - Modeling

Machu Picchu - Texturing

Piece-by-piece Reconstruction

Replicating Texture (Drawing Cracks)

Model + Photo Realistic Texture

Machu Picchu - Construction

Machu Picchu - Rendering

Ancient Egypt - Maps

Nisga'a Village - Maps

Nisga'a - Photos

Nisga'a - Sketches

Nisga'a - Modeling

Nisga'a - Texturing

Nisga'a - Construction

Client Engine (simulation)

graphic rendering engine (OGRE) meshes, terrain and lighting

language engine (Lua) simulation language frame work luabind provides the interface between

Lua and C++.

virtual file system (Info-ZIP) load models, textures, scripts, and other

resources.

Programming

Space Editor (construction)

programming tool kit (WxWidgets) graphical user interface

customizable layout of docking windows and tool bars.

Programming

3D Modelling Blender, 3dmax

Texturing Photoshop

Construction Ancient Space Editor

Communication Blog, Wiki, Forum

Modeling

SME: maps > overview > photo > sketch > video > construction > evaluation

Modeler: modeling > texturing > construction > evaluation

Ancient Spaces Editor

Run Editor

What has changed in these few years?

Whereas Ancient Spaces in 2003 was pushing Web/ eLearning 2.0

The Arts Metaverse in 2007 strives to be eLearning 3.0

Dwell On It - http://dwellonit.blogspot.com/search/label/people

Nevillehobson blog - http://www.nevillehobson.com/2006/06/24/get-a-second-life-now/

Why are we doing all this?

Where are the Learners?

On-line Socialization

• 55% of American youth (age 12-17) use online social networking sites

• 55% of teens have created a personal profile

• 48% visit a social networking site daily or more than daily

• 91% use social networking to stay in touch with friends they see

frequently;

• 72% use social networking to make plans with friends

• 82% for friends they see rarely

• 49% use it to make new friends

• 17% use it to flirt

Source: Lenhart, et. al., 2007 with permission: ©2007 Marilyn Lombardi

Participatory Culture

• Co-creation

Multimodal interaction

• Affinity-based self-organization

• Distributed cognition

With permission: Marilyn Lombardi 2007

The Perfect Storm of Opportunity

OER open publishing, open source application dev, open courseware

Moving towards On-line Learning 3.0

Online LearningOnline Learning

3.03.0Community/Context-Community/Context-

CenteredCentered

Online LearningOnline Learning

2.02.0Student-CenteredStudent-Centered

Online LearningOnline Learning

1.01.0

Course-CenteredCourse-Centered

ProprietaryProprietary

Enterprise Enterprise

LMS/CMSsLMS/CMSs

Application ServicesApplication Services

Open SourceOpen Source Open Source Open Source

3D Meta-Medium3D Meta-Medium

Open CroquetIn order to reach online learning 3.0, we turned to existing multi-user simulation engines, Second Life was the first attempt:

Ancient Spaces in Second Life

Challenges: Limited prims Intellectual property in metaverse

Croquet

We stumbled upon Croquet

Open CroquetCroquet is a powerful open source software development environment for the creation and large-scale distributed deployment of multi-user virtual 3D applications and metaverses that are:

(1) persistent (2) deeply collaborative (3) Interconnected(4) interoperable

Open CroquetCroquet represents the combined visions of its architects:

Alan Kay David P. Reed

Andreas Raab Julian Lombardi

Mark P. McCahill David A. Smith

Open Croquet Consortium

The Croquet Consortium is a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation dedicated to developing and promoting the widespread adoption of open source, Croquet technologies for research, education and industry.

www.opencroquet.org

UBC and Croquet Consortium

UBC joined the Croquet Consortium in April 2007. As an institutional member, UBC helps to set the direction for the continued development of the open source Croquet platform. Arts Metaverse is a 3D virtual environment being developed at UBC that is based on the open source Croquet platform.

Why Croquet?

Croquet was chosen as the foundational technology for the Arts Metaverse project because it provides:

1) A structured peer-to-peer network that is much more secure than a server based large scale metaverses;

2) A portal technology that allows application sharing between different operating systems;

3) Video conferencing and other communication tools without using server technology;

4) The ability for users to freely define the space being created;

5) The ability to back up the contents published using Croquet, take worlds on line and off line, and provide mechanisms to ensure copyright compliance.

System Technology Behind Croquet

Croquet is derived from Squeak, a tightly integrated open source software development environment for live software construction using Smalltalk.

Islands are the basis for Croquet's replicated computation and synchronization.

TeaTime is a scalable real-time multi-user architecture that is the basis for Croquet's object-object communication and synchronization.

The real work of Croquet is actually performed by the objects that are inside of the Islands. These are the objects that know how to display themselves, respond to external user events, and perform time-based simulations.

Arts Metaverse Demohttp://ancient.arts.ubc.ca

Arts Metaverse in Croquet 1.0

Where are we now … A shift in the ecology of knowledge:

massively distributed collaboration

A shift of the intellectual authority (e.g wikipedia)

Distribution of information & knowledge: new cyber-nervous system for the planet: an ecology of knowledge

Paradigm Shift participatory pedagogy … engagement of the

learner Visual literacy – engagement with media and their

power of presentation understanding a “visual rhetoric”

Collaborative learning – teach less - learn more – re-creation -- networks of imagination

A new mode of reading -- becoming part of the text: enable questions of representation, perception, and cognition in relation to the production of meaning.

Thank You

Tim Wang Tim.Wang@.ubc.caUlrich Rauch Ulrich.Rauch@ubc.ca

Arts Instructional Support & Information Technology, University of British Columbia