Centria is the R&D unit of the Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences. Our staff and students have used realXtend since summer 2008.
What have we accomplished using realXtend?
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.
Other interesting projects at Centria
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.
Our goals in realXtend
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
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.
Intro to ReactionGrid
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.
First realXtend sever nodes have been already set up at Immersive Education. They were recently demonstrated at Immersive Education: ASIA events in Japan, University of Aizu.
The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Computer Graphics World wrote an article about Immersive Education.
Linux users can run realXtend viewer by using Wine.
Introduction of Wine from the website: “Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems. Windows programs running in Wine act as native programs would, running without the performance or memory usage penalties of an emulator, with a similar look and feel to other applications on your desktop.”
Screenshot from OpenSim wiki that shows off rex on linux
Instructions how to use Wine and make the realXtend viewer 0.4 run on Linux can be found from OpenSim wiki. The instructions were for Linux, but Wine works also on Mac OS X. If you try that and make it work (or not) on OS X, please leave a comment on this article!
When I first read about realXtend on Wine, I was suspicious about the performance. Wine works surprisingly well, the OpenSim wiki page says that the frame rate was “about 40/50 fps on a 8600 GT“.
realXtend viewer has been Windows-only right from the start. The first goal of the realXtend team was to make a prototype, so it did not matter that it was working only on Windows. The prototype was working well enough at the time of the first release (February 2008) that the prototype development continued - and continued as Windows-only.
The realXtend team is now planning a new from-scratch, BSD licensed and cross-platformviewer (read the CTN article about the new viewer). However, as making a new viewer is a huge task, we can not expect to use the new viewer before summer 2009 - so Linux/Mac users can use Wine as an intermediate solution until that.
The current SL Viewer based rexViewer is going to advance into 0.5 release early 2009. It will most likely run on top of Modrex+OpenSim. Most of the work for the 0.5 will be bug fixing and stability improvements work to make it suitable for business use throughout 2009.
Fish talk from realXtend 0.4 demo content
The realXtend team is planning to make the new from-scratch viewer during 2009. During the planning phase this new viewer is called rex-NG to distinguish it from rex-legacy.
“0.5 is intended to be the last release of the current system, and should include a set of important stabilizations, and work with modrex”, says Ryan McDougall, realXtend software architect, “reX-NG will likely take a while to make useful, and 0.5 will be recommended for use until then.”
However as growing number of teams outside of immediate realXtend core team are starting to work on current realXtend viewer, it will also gain new features and improvements. One of the teams working with realXtend viewer during 2009 will be 3DX.
Steve Sima from 3DX comments that “”3DX will continue to build on the current RealXtend viewer work integrating into our future R17 & R18 viewers. This effort will be in parrallel to the new viewer project from RealXtend which we welcome and support, until a suitable time to cross completely to the new viewer platform is viable.”
A virtual radio station was built using realXtend 0.31 platform. It was connected to a real amateur radio station to enable remote control.
The text at the web site states that: “In this live demonstration new techniques of Internet and the first ever global community of amateur radio will allow mixing the edge of virtual world and real life when operating remote located HF-radio station thru virtual world. In demonstration virtual world is executed with realXtend, next generations open source platform for virtual worlds.”
radio Arcala antennas, aerial view
This kind of use of virtual worlds for real world control is also demonstrated by Implenia, a swiss construction firm. I believe that the real world control cases offer interesting possibilites for virtual worlds in the future. One of the realXtend project’s core missions was, and still is to enable good interfaces between real and virtual, to enable applications just like this.
Hannu Hollström, Tomi Kujanpää and Antti Ilomäki, the new program manager.
The long time program manager Jani Pirkola resigns. “I could not put enough time for the project anymore, after we got a new baby to the family. Being the program manager for realXtend is really a 24/7 duty, which does not mix well with small children. The family deserves me and the realXtend project deserves a full time leadership.” says Pirkola. “This was the dream come true project for me. I am proud of the realXtend team and all the hard work they have done. I got the dream team for the project.”
Jani Pirkola, the old program manager.
The new program manager for realXtend is Antti Ilomäki. Antti is the first employee of the realXtend project, as he started during July 2007. After the initial planning phase, the realXtend development project started September 2007. The program manager Jani Pirkola started at the same time with the development team.
The realXtend project has successfully achieved its goals for 2008. The long term goal of the project is to gain the de facto standard position of the new 3d Internet. realXtend is working with Deepthink to make the realXtend server to run as a dll on top of OpenSim. The first versions are already running, although they are still lacking many of the features. This is seen as a remarkable milestone.
Ryan McDougall, realXtend technical architect wrote an open letter to OpenSim-dev mailing list. The letter said that realXtend is planning “…a from-scratch BSD-derived viewer.”
realXtend
Current realXtend viewer is a fork from Linden Lab Second Life Viewer, and it is GPL licensed. The SL Viewer causes problems as OpenSim contribution policy explicitly states that OpenSim can not accept code from developers who have seen or developed SL Viewer. This policy is widely discussed in SL-Dev and Opensim-dev mailing lists and it seems unsolvable.
“We will begin this new process in January and continuing until February of 2009, with a feasibility study.” wrote Ryan McDougall in his letter. “That process will conclude with a proposed road-map as a result, what will be able to take us through 2009 and beyond. The process will begin internally with RealXtend, in order to solidify a unifying core set of principles, but very soon move outward to include a call for proposals and comments from all of you. With a clear road-map and a successful consultation process, we are confident that we will birth an cross platform Open Source community that will be at the forefront of the 3D Virtual World revolution.
“We invite you to give your feedback by visiting the RealXtend website, trying out our software out, signing up for our mailing lists, or joining us on IRC.”
This is an exciting move and from what we have seen from realXtend, we can have high expectations.
“realXtend 0.4 which was released a week ago has a significant optimization regarding avatar movement packets. The number of packets has been reduced, the size of them made smaller and more movement updates are combined into one packet from multiple avatars. With this optimization and the new rexbots, we have been able to have over 300 bots on our LAN servers. Here’s a video to prove it.”
via http://community.rexdeveloper.org/
This is unexpected, totally. My experience with OpenSim is that when the user count goes over 30, or even 20, things start to degrade. The article said that there were optimizations done for the protocol, so that has been the real bottleneck.
Having 300 bots is not the same as having 300 avatars - there is a significant difference in the resulting amount of network traffic. However this is a big step to right direction!
How many simultaneous avatars realXtend supports? After the optimizations, my guess is: around 60.
It also looks that the rexviewer is quite well optimized, because it could render those 300 avatars in the video, all at the same time.
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