A Chronicle: 2013

Sunday, December 15, 2013

6. Immersive Education at Boston College

These are my assignments from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Video Games and Virtual Reality. To learn more visit the Immersive Education BC portal athttp://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

I worked on a number of these assignments with my fellow classmates. This semester I took this course with:

AJ Prince (http://ajprince15.blogspot.com/)

Amanda Yerke (http://virtual35801.blogspot.com/)

Andrew Langone (http://langonemt35801.blogspot.com/)

Diana Cheung (http://dcmt358.blogspot.com/)

Greg Dunn (http://virtualgregd.blogspot.com/)

Jeff Andrade (http://immersiveeducationjeff.blogspot.com/)

Matt Blinstrub (http://mstrub.blogspot.com/)

Michael Rodriguez (http://michaellrodriguez.blogspot.com/)

Noah-Benjamin Pollack (http://anonymousinsider.blogspot.com/)

Sam Bellar (http://617music.blogspot.com/)

Suzanne Veiga (http://svmt35801.blogspot.com/)

5. WoW Machinima

Created using Screencast-O-Matic (Poor Video/No Soundtrack)

Created using Screencast-O-Matic and Debut Video Capture combined (Better Video/Sountrack/Poor audio :(

4. Immersive Library Machinima

PART 1

(Sorry for the clinking radiator!)

PART 2

3. MACHINIMA

Machinima, portmanteau of the words machine and cinema, is a way for video game fans to capture their play in action, and to create films based around games, using computer graphics and virtual reality. Machinima.com aims to provide video game fans, dubbed fan laborers, to make videos and share them with other machinimators. Making machinima video clips is a way of capturing some of your favorite gameplay scenes and graphics. With the rapid rate of games and the hardware they run on being upgraded, machinima is also a way of documenting what will eventually become obsolete gaming, however stunning the graphics may now be.
Machinima first came to prominence through the use of the computer game Quake in the mid 90's. One fan laborer made a very brief film with a short story line capturing some of the goriest scenes and graphics in the game. This short film, Diary of a Camper, inspired many more gamers to make their own Quake movies. Since then it has gained widespread mainstream attention, and with the launch of the website, solidified the community. It has now come to commercial use, with video game developers allowing for machinma based miniseries and advertisements.

wikipedia.com/machinima
http://www.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

My Favorite Machinimas

2. Final Project and WoW: Test Video

1. Immersive Education: The Future of Business and Leadership

Communication is an important part of leadership in the business world. And so too in the online gaming world. MMORPGs provide users with various ways to interact with other people playing the game. Most often this form of communication is used to create groups, guilds, parties etc. to band together to accomplish a goal. Most often, someone in the group will be deemed the leader, and will take over communication, as well as how the task at hand is going to be accomplished swiftly. This is becoming more and more appealing to leaders in business, looking for youth and leadership in a ever changing society, and indeed world, where technology has become the ultimate tool for success in business.

The business world and the environments that can be seen in MMORPGs are highly complex and demanding on those who wish to succeed in them, and this is an interesting juxtaposition that points to the demands of leaders, and the necessary capabilities and competencies one needs to thrive in both the real and virtual worlds. Both worlds require group collaboration, making quick decisions, orginization, incentive based performance, as well as an array of different communication tools. Success in a highly competitive virtual environment, which is highly diversified, provides a glimpse at not only someones capabilities as a leader in a game, but in what could be the future of corporate business and communication.

In the corporate world, as well as in the online world, everyone must know their role if they are to succeed in a group. The success or failure of any enterprise is always based on this principle: KNOW YOUR ROLE. MMORPGs provide users with this task, and not only is this a must, it must be done according to the wishes of the group. The group decides their roles, and they stick to it, or the end result is failure. This type of self organization to accomplish a goal is an asset that many leaders in business would consider to be of utmost importance. Collaborating in a diverse group, and being able to both lead, and be led is a prized attribute. Not only are they accomplishing this task, they organize it themselves. This makes this task all the more impressive and desirable to the corporate CEO, looking for a leader in a highly progressive, highly technological world.

Right now, research is being done into the validity of this type of comparison. An according to many academics and business execs alike, this is not all too far off from an accurate vision of the future. The ability to collaborate and succeed in MMOPRGs, such as World of Warcraft, games that require all the desired abilities of real leaders, are not far off from those required of leaders in business. And with businesses relying more and more on not only technology, but those as seen in the virtual world, these comparisons can be justified. Communication skills, organization, quick decisions, the delegation of duties to those who are competent, are all prized traits of the business leader.

In Conclusion, as video games have emerged and evolved over the past 30+years, more and more gamers have come to be included in the workforce of society. With the dawn of MMORPGs, more collaborative gamers are emerging, and soon enough they will be emerging in the business world. The qualities possessed by leaders in such games are a testament to their character and the way they can learn to work in groups and communicate in a wide variety of ways. When we game, we are not just simply playing a game with other people in the world, we are learning to survive and thrive in an adverse environment, and do so together, regardless of predispositions.

IBM Gaming Report: Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders
IBM: Gaming and Leadership in a Distributed World
Link to iED:
http://immersiveeducation.org/

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Optimizing My Immersive Library

After arriving I turned on the FPS tracker and tried to load one of the PDFs that would not load. As you can see I was a little above 10 FPS and it would not load.

I figured perhaps I had too much unnecessary content and therefor too much texture to render, so I deleted a lot of objects I had added to add style and spruce it up. All that work for nothin!

Thank you and goodbye!

My FPS went up a bit, but only about five clicks.

I did the same thing with a few more objects

Gracias y Adios!

Used the in program renderer to select an average of 30 FPS

It did not really work!

Danke und Auf Wiedersehen!

I logged out and tried to change the settings of the program to render at 60 FPS, where all my classmates seemed to be nearing.

I logged in and tried to play a video. It was around 18 FPS before playing.

It dropped to 10 after pressing play.

I decided to check out someone else's world, to see if perhaps I was just rendering poorly all around due to a 6 year old computer. In AJs world I had very poor rendering, while he said he was rendering at around 55, I was only around 8 FPS. He was kind enough to log out and check out my world, where he said he was averaging 45 FPS, so my computer could be a factor. However, he also noted that I had a "duplicate" layer. I am not sure how, because I only had selected one layer after removing the second of my two original layers a few weeks ago! He also noted that I could change the water texture, as he and Diana had. I had already done this, opting for "none" instead of "simple" in the water texture selection.

After logging out of his world, I immediately logged into my Meshmoon account on the web and checked the layers, where only the Landscape was listed. I then logged back in on Rocket and immediately checked my layers in here as well. I only saw the one listed again, but after removing it, or making it invisible, the FPS rose exponentially! From around 12 FPS to almost 60!

The Landscape is now not visible, and this must be a default layer? I am not sure as only one is listed in my manage layers tool, as well as my Meshmoon account online. But without the Landscape, it was rendering around 55/60 FPS!

I played a video, and it dropped a little, but only to around 53.

I went and checked on one of my PDFs that was rendering around 10 before, now rendering at 56 FPS. My world looks very ugly without the Landscape, but it renders at much faster FPS! I had a lovely little world and started deleting everything to make it render better when the whole time it was what I will call a "ghost" layer, because I only have one layer listed! All those long hours for nothin! However, my library is now performing better. AND, all of my catalogue is still available via my blogs!

Added two more YouTube videos to my Library Catalogue, using the "pivot" method. This brings the PDF/Video total to 24.

Here they are on the blog catalogue!

(Access my entire collection here!)

myvids3dvr.blogspot.com

3dvrpdf.blogspot.com

PLAYING WoW IN GROUPS

I played with AJ Langone and Gregory Dunn on Garrosh. We each started new characters to make meeting up easier. We used Skype for voice chat.

Here are our characters. AJ is Casgair the Wakener. I am KilgorTrout. We were both Dwarfs. And Greg is Gregorytdunn, a Gnome.

Killing some Rockjaw invaders.

Level 2 Achieved!

Grabbin' some loot!

Level 3! New ability! (In this zone my graphics did not render very well. As you can see the snow was the problem, with patches of black trapezoidal shapes appearing as I made my way through the snow. This is the only zone I have encountered graphics problems.)

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Final Project: Step 9

Adding 10 New Content Elements to my Immersive Library

My virtual library has a total of 8 videos and 10 PDFs
My entire catalogue, however consists of 12 PDFs and 10 videos, all accessible via my blogs.
I created blog pages that contained all of my Research Papers and videos as an alternative for loading issues.
(Some of the videos in my world are different than what I had collected. Most of mine were too long and therefor too large to be loaded. So I had to search for a couple new ones.)
http://myvids3dvr.blogspot.com/
3dvrpdf.blogspot.com

After reading my classmates review of my world, I realized that the youtube pages embedded in world start automatically and that is what he was hearing. So I deleted those, and created a blog with more videos as an alternative.

Here is a Web browser with my Blog which has more videos. The link is http://myvids3dvr.blogspot.com/ I did the same thing for PDFs and added a Library Catalogue page at 3dvrpdf.blogspot.com. If my PDFs fail to load in the virtual library, they are still accessible via this link.

Added a PDF on a Giant Block

Once I added a few more, they all displayed a fail to load message. I figured this was due to their close proximity and "view frustrum culling". So I spread them all out.

Here they are all spread out. However, sometimes they fail to display, sometimes they don't. Theres a couple that always display, and a few that have never.