realXtend news
Posted by on March 5, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Be the First to Comment
Thank you for reading The Rex Files.
To make things a bit simpler, I have started posting realXtend related news and howto-articles directly to the main web site http://www.cybertechnews.org.
This is the last post on this sub domain, update your bookmarks!
Posted by on March 4, 2009 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments to Read
NEWS RELEASE FROM RADIO ARCALA
Read the article here.
Posted by on February 28, 2009 under avatar, howto | Be the First to Comment
You can connect to Second Life using realXtend viewer. It is not at its best that way, but still there are some nice features worth writing about. One of them is the possibility for inter-grid teleporting, as I wrote in teleporting with realXtend. Another smaller yet interesting feature is that it is possible to import and export the avatar appearance.
Many people have spent a lot of time in tweaking their avatar appearance in Second Life. SL Avatar has 144 settings:
Bringing your avatar to OSGrid is clearly a non-zero effort. Using realXtend appearance import/export, the work is made significantly easier.
The export gives you a XML file that can be saved to a local computer (it is actually just a text file, not xml inside). You need to have “worn” bodyparts and clothing on when using the import and export facilities. Textures keys are exported but currently not able to be imported, because different grids will have different keys, and there is no way to match them up.
To Export:
To import:
This is tested from Second Life to OSGrid, and to a standalone Opensim. Textures need to be upload separately and set manually. Many thanks to Ewe Loon for the code patch!
Note: The avatar appearance import/export works in Opensim and SL, not with the realXtend’s own free form mesh avatar. realXtend’s own avatar is stored on a separate server which makes it easy to be used at different realXtend servers (ie your avatar travels with you when you teleport around), which makes this kind of import/export unnecessary.
The avatar appearance import/export can also be used to back up your sl avatar easily or you can even send your sl avatar settings in email.
Posted by on February 22, 2009 under howto | Be the First to Comment
realXtend viewer is able to teleport between Second Life, Opensim and realXtend. Simplest way to teleport is to use view->address bar menu item to show your address bar. Type and go, just like in a web browser!
World owners can also make link objects. In the picture above, there is a realXtend teleport object on the left. However, teleports can be scripted to any object. Here’s how:
Save the script, close the edit window and the link object is ready. Click the object, and a popup will appear asking for the username & password. Lucy is going to teleport to Second Life, and change user account to Yani Pinion on the way in the picture below:
Here are two llMapDestination examples you can use. rex-url is used when you want to teleport anywhere else than to Second Life, and sl-ulr is used when you want to teleport to Sec0nd Life. The same works from Second Life, just use rex-url in llMapDestination to exit Second Life and teleport to realXtend or Opensim. This works only with rexViewer, naturally.
llMapDestination("rex://world.adminotech.com", <100, 100, 0>, ZERO_VECTOR); llMapDestination("sl://cisco", <76, 173, 142>, ZERO_VECTOR);
Posted by on February 5, 2009 under howto | Be the First to Comment
In the previous slideshow howto article, the process of bringing a powerpoint slideshow to a realXtend virtual world was explained. The process was, although technically sound in many ways, also a bit cumbersome.
There is an easier way, especially if your slides are not top secret.
In the picture above you can see the result. I am taking advantage of the webscreen I presented in an earlier article - Browse the web together in realXtend.
The process is simple. Upload the slides to http://www.slideshare.net on your account. You get a URL for every slideshow. To protect your slides from public viewing, it is possible to define slideshows private, and you can get a URL for them too.
Now use that URL with the webscreen or as a texture MediaURL to show the first slide of the presentation inside a realXtend world. Now there is one problem to overcome - there is a lot of stuff that does not belong to the slide, just like with Youtube videos (check also previous article Watch YouTube videos from realXtend). Now it is time to use slide offset and repeat -properties to show only the slide portion of the web page. Take a look at this picture to see the exact settings you need to do. As a sidenote, this works with Youtube as well.
To change the slide, you need to append slash + slide number at the end of the URL. Look at the first screenshot to see an example. This can be done using the webscreen, or simply manually changing the MediaURL.
Posted by Juhana Jauhiainen on February 4, 2009 under News | Read the First Comment
Centria is the R&D unit of the Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences. Our staff and students have used realXtend since summer 2008.
1. Games
We have developed a virtual version of the Finnish board game Star of Africa, and ported a board game called Galactica Battle Farce, developed by Ville Malila.
2. Building
We have built a virtual model of our school building in the realXtend viewer without any external 3D-software.
3. Importing external data
Using a coordinate transformation functions previously developed at Centria we brought GPS-data to rex and used them to move objects on a 3D-map of Ylivieska. A model of the building our Ylivieska branch works in has also been imported to rex.
4. x1o experiments
X10 can be used to connect the real life environment with rex. Some small scale x10 testing has been done, using light modules and motion detectors. The x10 testing has been done taking advantage of the examples released with rexserver. For example, motion detectors can be used to show alarms in rex.
5. Phidgets and ZigBee
Recently we have used Phidgets with realXtend. Phidgets are sensors or input devices which can be used to move objects in rex. Phidgets include various sensors including humidity, accelerometers and RFID readers. ZigBee sensors, such as a ZigBee accelerator for controlling prims, have been integrated with Rex too.
Centria has developed a 3D-map engine for mobile devices and desktop. It uses OpenGL and runs smoothly on the Nokia N95 and other similar mobile devices. Several ongoing software projects at Centria are involved in sensors, sensor networks, GPS and other technologies related to location awareness and ubiquitous computing.
The current development goals of Centria in realXtend are to test and develop other home automation systems than x10 and participate in the development of the mobile realXtend viewer. One home automation techonology we might use is Z-Wave. It is a low-power wireless technology designed specifically for remote control applications.
For more information:
Ville Autio (firstname.lastname@centria.fi)
R&D Engineer
Centria R&D
Vierimaantie
584100 Ylivieska
Finland
Tel 00 358 44 44 92 626
Posted by on February 3, 2009 under News | Read the First Comment
realXtend new features are making their way to users. ReactionGrid is going to start extensive trials on how the new technology could be taken into use. The main difference to the SL Viewer - Opensim combo is that in realXtend the rendering is done with OGRE3D and it is possible to use standard 3D mesh objects. There are also other benefits worth mentioning, like spatial voice and next generation free form avatars.
ReactionGrid offers Opensim region hosting with as low as $25 per month and a whole server with four regions $75 per month with more powerful plans available.
ReactionGrid is a PG Rated grid that caters to Business, Education, Collaboration, Art & Entertainment. The founders of the grid, Kyle & Robin G & Chris Hart believe in a hands on approach to help get your 3D project off the ground: “We invite you to stop by our grid by registering here http://reactiongrid.com/register.aspx“.
ReactionGrid is based exclusively on Microsoft technology, such as Microsoft Windows Server 2008 & SQL Server 2008. ReactionGrid is a fulltime 3D world whose owners can be contacted by IM, Phone, Email or InWorld.
Posted by on January 31, 2009 under howto | Be the First to Comment
If you want more land in SL, it is going to cost you more. A lot more. With realXtend, you can add more land mass with a few clicks. For free (actually you need to have necessary machinery and bandwidth available, so it is not so free).
Test User found a huge carbon footprint when he was checking his world: “No wonder that we are getting climate change - I am going to do only virtual meetings to cut my travel - and I don’t want to meet the guy who did that.”
rexServer 0.4 comes with the default fish world, which is only one region. Download blank server from CTN files before trying the instructions here (Thanks to Peter Quirk for the original instructions).
Copy the default.xml to myregion_east.xml. Edit myregion_east.xml in the following ways:
When the opensim.exe process reports that the server is up and serving two regions, type the following in the opensim DOS window (Opensim console):
change-region myregion_east
terrain fill 21
terrain bake
It is especially exciting to have your rexviewer connected as you get to see terrain changes in real time. It may give you a god-like feeling (or goddess-like depending on your preferences). Use command “terrain help” at the console to get some useful commands to make further experiments. Download the terrain file used in the screenshot - you need to adjust the height with terrain commands to get some water to the footprint.
Posted by on January 28, 2009 under Ideas, howto | Read the First Comment
First reaction of many people to virtual worlds is that they begin to think about possible applications. One of the most common idea is the meeting application.
It is so strongly in peoples minds, that if a virtual world platform does not support some basic technology enablers for the meeting use case, the platform is considered useless.
The key technology enablers for successful virtual meetings are:
I believe that moving our current 2D User Interface paradigms to virtual worlds is only an intermediate step towards true 3D applications. In true 3D applications brainstorming, training, planning and many other (collaborative) activities are not done in front of flat virtual screens. The real 3D approach takes current strengths and weaknesses of virtual world technologies into account (as I wrote in an earlier post - Virtual world advantage over real life).
But for now, it is still important to get basic things working as people have tons of legacy Powerpoint presentations and other 2D material. Follow the following steps to use your ppt files inside realXtend:
Now you are ready to use the presentation in realXtend. Just use a texture’s media URL property, set it to http://www.cybertechnews.org/webcast/ and apply the texture to your favorite object.
To control the presentation, open a web browser and point it to http://www.cybertechnews.org/webcast/rexslides.html
Posted by on January 25, 2009 under Ideas, howto | Read the First Comment
Collaborative web browsing plays an important role in meetings. Meeting rooms have usually data projectors so that people can plug in their laptops and show slides, documents and web pages to support their message in a meeting.
In realXtend 0.4 it is possible to show web pages with live flash content, like a Youtube video (see CTN article about that). The web page to show is defined in the texture properties as a media URL.
However, it is a bit clumsy to use texture properties to change the web page when there are lot of people attending a meeting and possibly wanting to share something.
CTN built a server side solution to the problem using PHP and javascript.
Follow these steps to test the solution:
Extra benefit of this approach is that people who do not have realXtend can also follow the presentation from the same URL using a standard browser (you can test it by using the CTN URLs in the steps above).
If you wish to have several webscreens showing different content, it is easy to copy the same web files to another folder at the web server to separate URLs. To develop the solution further, learn the tricks from this book.
The next topic will be about how to share your Powerpoint slides in realXtend - stay tuned!
