CyberTech News

realXtend platform offers a way to share live applications over the network to realXtend users. Effective virtual world meetings usually require that you can show your slides (here’s how to do that). It may also help to browse web so that others can view the same web page with you. Sometimes you may want to show how to use an application in real time.

In this example we use VNC (Virtual Network Computing – a simple and working desktop & application sharing system) to share the desktop. 

Firefox window shared using tightVNC server and viewed in realXtend.

VNC allows also sharing the control between participants, and users can also join using a standard VNC client, if they do not want to use full virtual world to join the meeting.

In this example we use localhost, but I have tested that VNC works also over the network. In a real world situation I would set up another computer to serve as a VNC server – otherwise running the realXtend client on the same computer is a bit awkward as you need to have the shared content visible on screen to share it. Below is a screenshot how sharing the realXtend viewer window, which is looking at the shared content, causes infinite mirror -effect.

Watching your shared desktop getting shared, getting shared, ...

Follow these simple steps to test VNC application sharing with realXtend.

• Install and run tightVNC server; Everything should work with other VNC servers as well, but I have tested this only using TightVNC.
• Adjust the settings as in the following screenshots:

Set the view-only passport, all the connecting users need to know it.

Be careful to have the settings exactly as here, change them after you get them to work for the first time. 

• Bring a new texture to realXtend (file->upload)
• Create a new cube (right click on ground -> create)
• Edit cube and set the new texture on it (you can also use the texture on meshes for an interesting effect! Who doesn’t want to play doom and use a virtual sofa for the display?)
• Edit texture properties (find it from your inventory and right click it) and edit the mediaurl:

• Edit the cube again and set it to play media when clicked:

• Now close the edit window and click the cube to get the VNC run, you will get a dialog asking for the password (which you defined for the server earlier):

Top left dialog is the server telling that someone is connecting. 

Warning! After you hit enter, tightVNC client is launched – it is embedded to the realXtend viewer code – do not close it! Just bring your realxtend viewer to front and you see desktop sharing in action. You can use the tightVNC viewer to get the control over shared application, if the server owner grants you permission to do that.

Current VNC implementation is a prototype and it has known bugs. User can start one VNC session and after it is finished, the viewer needs to be restarted to be able to start a new VNC session. Users also need to be warned in advance so that they do not close the VNC viewer as it pops up after starting to view VNC.

realXtend application sharing, howto, network, protocol, realXtend, RL control, textures, viewer, vnc

NEWS RELEASE FROM RADIO ARCALA

The Finnish Amateur Radio alliance Radio Arcala (OH8X) has been studying the potential of promoting Amateur Radio in a variety of Virtual World environments by approaching the millions of young people who spend their time increasingly in well-known internet locations, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Second Life and others. The OH8X group early on bought an island (private server space) and built a complete virtual amateur radio station in Second Life.

After learning the limitations of commercial settings and available tools, they soon found out that there is a need for open architecture and improved tools. Hence they decided to have a key partnership in development work to create an open platform called RealXtend. It has gained a lot of ground among those working on next-generation Web 3D applications. The future World Wide Web is definitely heading in that direction.

While involved in the RealXtend platform development project, they are also busy working on their own Virtual World radio station, the first of its kind. The features include a meeting place for the Arcala team and their visitors to meet and operate the simulated OH8X/CU2X stations in the Virtual World from any place in the real world. Each and every feature of the real ham radio station is modeled, and interaction between the Virtual World and the real world connects them together.

“Everything sounds complicated at first glance”, says Juha Hulkko, OH8NC who spearheads the project. He adds that the young people of today spend their knowledge and their time in these virtual settings. So, it’s up to us to have a look at virtual space as a way of approaching the youth in their own familiar surroundings.

“We have been encouraged by the experience of seeing others enjoy the free platform introduced to boost application development”, says Juha, OH8NC. Just recently, a cluster of universities in the United States joined the Immersive Education Initiative which in turn has selected RealXtend as their platform to initiate their future distance learning in Virtual Reality. This confirms that taking Amateur Radio there is in line with the evolving world in a setting where young people ultimately meet for fun and education.

Juha, OH8NC and Martti, OH2BH will be co-speakers at the Visalia DX Convention, sharing their OH8X strategy and taking you on a tour to see first views of Amateur Radio in virtual space and to taste some of the applications.

(See also previous CTN article about Radio Arcala: Remote control of a radio station using realXtend)

OpenSim, realXtend amateur radio, immersive education, radio arcala, Real Life control, realxtend 0.4, RL control, Second Life, www

The purpose of this article is to publish a provisional patent application I filed back in March 2008. The provisional covers Content Injection and Control Protocol, which I created to allow Green Phosphor’s data visualization application to interface with virtual world platforms (see previous article on CICP here).

I recently asked the Slashdot readership whether I should fork out the additional $10k it would take to properly complete the app, since I am releasing CICP to the public domain anyway. Despite a large number of trolls saying I was stupid to ask such a question on Slashdot, I received a lot of very good advice; and it sums up to this: publish the work, and as prior art it protects the protocol. I think this is important. Not only is CICP useful for business applications to produce 3D user interfaces within virtual worlds; it is a predecessor to MXP (see previous article on MXP here). MXP has the potential to tie together many worlds and programs into one metaverse. The MXP project is seeking developers… go to http://www.bubblecloud.org.

Without further ado, here’s the publishing of the provisional patent application for CICP. CICP is for all.

Darkstar, OpenSim, realXtend cicp, download, green phosphor, mxp, network, olive, protocol, RL control, Second Life, wonderland

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.

realXtend powerpoint, realxtend 0.4, RL control, slides, textures, video, webcast, webscreen, www, youtube

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:

• Application sharing
• Document sharing
• Web co-browsing
• Spatialized voice support (3D audio)
• (Powerpoint) Presentations
• Streaming real time media
• Customizable avatars and rich interaction

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:

1. Open your .ppt file in OpenOffice Impress, check the slides that everything looks good
2. Make a new empty folder for the resulting files
3. Select file->export, type “rexslides.html” for the file name and “export as html” to the new empty folder
4. Select “New design” -> next -> “Webcast“
5. Now you can select ASP or Perl solution, depending on your web server platform – Perl should work for most – the rest of the steps assume perl. You need a web server for this to work; CTN recommends http://www.hosting24.com
   
6. Set URL for listeners to “index.html” and presentation URL to “http://www.cybertechnews.org/webcast/” and URL to perl scripts to “http://www.cybertechnews.org/webcast/perl/“
7. In the next screen, use jpegs and set the resolution to highest: 1024×768, in the next dialog you can save the design if you wish
8. copy txt files to the /webcast/perl/ folder at your web server, and set them writable (permissions to 666)
9. copy pl files to the /webcast/perl/ folder at your web server, and set them executable (permissions to 755)
10. copy all the other files to /webcast/ folder at your web server

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

realXtend browsing, impress, openoffice, powerpoint, RL control, textures, webcast, www