Week 8

Slight change of scope and progress

There is a slight change of scope here for the project.
Instead of just concentrating on building out prototype or proof of concept, we've decided to add a few areas of research to concentrate one.

Being linked to virtual reality(QTVR and VR tours) we could look into the effects of how virtual reality can change the prespective people have over places or things.
Since out QTVR targets external and prospective students, research can also be done on the impact VR has on the sale of a product, as the target of prospective students is actually trying to "sell" the university to them.

Of course firstly we have to find out a clear defination of virtual reality as stated on Wikipedia

"Virtual Reality (VR) is an environment that is simulated by a computer. Most virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced and experimental systems have included limited tactile information, known as force feedback. Users can interact with a virtual environment either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, polhemus boom arm, and/or omnidirectional treadmill. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world, for example, simulations for pilot or combat training, or it can differ significantly from reality, as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution and communication bandwidth. However, those limitations are expected to eventually be overcome as processor, imaging and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time." Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia(www.wikipedia.com)

Further research also stated that virtual reality will have the following impact:

1. Virtual reality will be integrated into daily life and activity and will be used in very human ways.
2. Techniques will be developed to influence human behavior, interpersonal communication, and cognition (i.e., virtual genetics).
3. As we spend more and more time in virtual space, there will be a gradual “migration to virtual space,” resulting in important changes in economics, worldview, and culture.
4. The design of virtual environments may be used to extend basic human rights into virtual space, to promote human freedom and well-being, and to promote social stablity as we move from one stage in socio-political development to the next.

"Power, Madness, and Immortality: The Future of Virtual Reality" by Mychilo Stephenson Cline

With this I suppose our scope of research will be more or less focused and now at least we know a standard direction we are heading.

As for the progress, the photo panoramas have more of less been finished, now I'm going into the real coding of each panorama and linking them all together.
I've yet to receive any othe the information and extra details of information to add, so I'll leave it as that and concentrate on fixing the VR tour up for this week.

Mid Sem Break a.k.a MMDS project week

Since this is the mid semester break, there would be less people in the uni thus Anthony and I decided to take the images during this time, however there were several things we have to keep in mind while taking the images.

We had to decide on a time where the lighting was overcast, and not too bright, as through trial we discovered that photos taken espacially those on the foyer have areas which are either over exposed or under exposed, which in this case can't be of much use as it does not show much of the area.
Taking the photos at night would also be hard, as this time round the problem would be that our reflections can be seen on the glass.
We had a walk around the area during the afternoon and planned our route on how we are going to take the photos, where are we going to stand, which camera angles would be better, where should we take the photos first before the lighting changes.

We decided on the time to be 4.30pm in the evening, as that time, the sun is setting it is almost overcast, and we would have at least 1 and 1/2 hours to take the photos from outside and in the foyer before the lighting change becomes obvious.
The deciding on this time also explains why we needed a lot of planning, as it is only 1 and 1/2 hours, and the sun sets very fast during that time, thus we must know what to do and where to stand.

With all that planned out, we managed to get 14 out of the 16 hotspots which we've decided on, now we would be left with the editing and stitiching of the photos which can be done on our own time, there after I would be able to mark out the hotspots and create the VR tour section of this assignment while Anthony creats the QTVR tour before they are combined together.

Week 7

Not much has been done this week, in fact we have been preparing what to do and planning out our timeline for the break.

Coding
I've been playing with some sample code for Director with regards to MIAW (Movie In A Window), this could really come in handy later in the project or even for expension.
MIAW allows you to call another window and even exchange veriables in the background. This function would be used full when we're adding modules to it or even for the webcam, as Kyle could just code it on a totally different Director file, and I'll just use MIAW to call it in the VR Tour file.

By using MIAW it also give us an "infinity" working space, as now we're also making use of the space off screen, thus we can have as modules as we want(off screen), and the user can just call them in when needed.
This will also make it easier to update, as we do not need to update the main file, we'll just have to update the specific modules we want to and the changes will be reflected in the main file.

Photos
I've decided with Anthony that we'll be going all the Panoramas during the holiday when the building is least used, this will solve our privacy problem, of having to ask any student is in the photo to sign a "photo relise form" and it will also make our job a lot easier.
I'll been going through with Anthony on where to take the photos and some lighting issus, but I do for-see that we'll have to change certain things we've been talking about as we won't really know how the photos will turn out until we've actually taken them.
The reason I wanted the Panos available as soon as possible was becuase I've already gotten the code up and running and the trial program seems all fine and ready to go, thus the sooner I get the panos, the sooner I finish the VR tour and the sooner I can go into beta(public) testing (and some research and test results), I might get some first years involved.

Presentation
The Presentation has been more or less done, we've been talking to each other about part to add in and also thing to add in, I've came up with a very rough working version of the code, with transitions included, just to give a rough look and feel of wat I've done so far. The slides also imclude the phases do the development and testing, problems I faced while coding or looking for existing functions, and also how things can be added in to solve certain existing problems and add some key features to the VR Tour section.

Week 6 - Meeting

So far we've been doing each of our individual parts and combining them more and more.

We've had a meeting and I managed to see a few of the interface design done by Sarah, she has decided to stick to a slightly more robotic layout giving a metalic background and using the colour blue as the main theme colour.
I've discussed with her where the windows should be placed and how big do we want the VR tour window to be, we've decided to stick to a 800 by 600 interface size to cautor for smaller laptop screens which is becoming increasingly common now a days. Talked about sliding menu bars that appear on screen when triggered by a button click.

As for the panoramas to use for the work-in-progress, Anthony and I have decided to used the level 3 section from TEDI to the nursing foyer, and have link hotspots and also 1 information point to show an example of how information would appear on screen.
However we've yet to be able to settle with a good QTVR program, most of what we've managed to get a trial version, which are either very limited in feature or has everything but export to QTVR.

I've managed to get the VR tour code working and am currently trying it out on several veriations, different height, different size, different length of images, different number of images, basically trying to cover all angles with the code. Will be adding the hotspots soon to have a look and feel of things and also to test out the transition method which Sarah and I had discussed about.
I've also manged to solve the problem which Matt Simpson proposed, about updating the formation easily, Director is able to call in text from an external .txt file, which means all we have to do is to change the text in the .txt file and when the director file is being run, the changes will reflect in them as well. Now a new point has been brougt up by Anthony, which I think may be possible.
Can the same thing be done for images? From what I know there are such things as external cast files, so I was thinking of these images where an external cast file, and the same effect might be able to ve achieved by just either changing the image or the cast file.

Week 5

This week was rather slow, however there were several interesting discoveries....

Anthony has started taking the pictures and I've been able to catch up with him several time to look at progress and problems and how we can actually go about solving these problems.

Firstly we've managed to loan out the tripod, a good digital camera and of course the camera locking tool that enables you to take photos are specific angles.
These was some problems with the digital camera it seem to be stuck in automatic mode. In this mode the functions of the camera is greatly limited, proberly as bad as like driving a Farreri with only 3 gears, that would suck big time.
Since I had a similar but later model of the camera, I decided to through some of thr basic functions of that camera(canon ixus 430). Basic stuff like control the shutter speed, the ISO, switching lense mode, allow it to capture more colour(vivid mode), control/use of flash. These factor would be highly essential if we are to get good photos, are it would affect the lighting in the ares and for QTVR, a photo which you can hardly see anything is hardly of any use.
The diddferent modes of the camera was also explored, however this was after Anthony could get it to switch modes, the Ixus 430 does have its own panoramic mode, however this mode give you VERY poor control of lighting and renders the image almost useless. I guessit is just simply better to stick to the other modes after all.

I took some time to go through the documents of where I wanted the photos to be taken and right now Anthony would be taking trial photos for me to come up with a dummy code, we also talked about the time of the day in which to get the best photos to get the best lighting and where there is the least people.
We've also be playing around with stitching software and trying to get the best one available, several which crops out the height and loosing out important details, some not even stitching the photos properly and leaving an obvious line, and even screwing up the lighting of the photos after all the effort we put in to get the best photos.

I managed to get a dummy/trial image of the building 1 foyer and am currently working on the coding for the VR tour. Just basic playing around with code that I already have from past project(uni and work), I've managed to get this rather cool effect of panning around an area just by having mouse overs of borders on of the tour window.
Now would be to actually refine the code to be able to work on all 4 directions and to write it in such a way that transitions and other stuff can be added to it. Basically it the stage of making the code "re-useable", in order to have less problems later in the development stage.