Category: Other Worlds and Tech

Cloud Party: Oculus Rift support and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s been a while since I last reported on developments over on Cloud Party. There’s a lot that has been going on and which I’ve received e-mails about; I’ve just not had time to sit down and write-up everything.

The platform has recently started introducing features and capabilities on a weekly basis which have seen one or two new features introduced each week. The most recent of these is an official announcement of support for Oculus Rift.

Cloud Party’s CTO Conor Dickinson using Oculus Rift (courtesy of Cloud Party)

The blog post, issued on Wednesday October 9th, gave details on the support being provided,  including the regions within Cloud Party which have been set-up for use with the headset.

There’s currently no native Rift support within Cloud Party, so those with an Oculus Rift SDK kit will need to go one of two routes: either run OculusBridge, a standalone app which bridges the headset and a web browser via websockets, or via vr.js, a browser plugin which works directly with the headset (although the blog post notes this is not recommended as a result of Google’s announcement that Chrome will cease support for plugins in 2014).

The blog post additionally provides general advice on using the Rift – including notes about head movement (the visual stimulus and sudden head movements have been known to cause nausea and other issues as a result mismatched inner-ear cues).

One of the builds within Cloud Party supporting Rift use is a hoverbike race, which appears to be based on the race launched in late September and promoted via a short video.

Other recent updates over the past two months or so have seen a revamp of the Cloud Party website, which had it take on far more of a social environment feel, with the ability to preview people’s builds, “Like” them, share them via social media, etc., and which included the ability to embed builds in things like YouTube, etc.

August also saw the introduction of a new membership structure, with free accounts replaced the limited-functionality “anonymous” accounts together with a two-tier subscription option for general users. Thes free account option provides users with an unlimited number of “small” builds (up to 10MB bandwidth per build), 5 marketplace listings and knowledge base access.

The Basic subscription option, at $14.95 a month ($11.95 if paid annually), includes the “free” membership features and:

  • 2 medium sized builds
  • 20 free marketplace listings
  • Billing / Fraud Support
  • Privacy / group edit settings on builds

The Pro subscription, at $99.95 a month ($79.95 if paid annually) features the above and:

  • 4 medium sized Builds, 2 large Builds
  • 100 free marketplace listings
  • Live tech support

There is also an Enterprise subscription / billing option, but details of this have to be applied for from Cloud Party directly.

Further recent updates have seen avatars within Cloud Party become more customisable, with facial customisations and animated attachments, while builds have gained customisable skies and the ability to play videos.

A key factor with many of the updates is that they’ve also been accompanied with tutorials on how to make use of them’ such as with the customisable skies, helping users make the most of the updates. One has been promised for the Oculus Rift support as well.

For those not already aware of the fact, Cloud Party is no longer tied to Facebook for access. You can now do so via Facebook or Google+ or via account registration. As a formally “anonymous” user, I switched to using my Google+ account back in August. Logging-in with it was smooth and hassle-free – although I did experience an odd moment of deja-vu when an avatar picker looking remarkably like the one used in Second Life many moons ago popped-up!

The avatar picker in Cloud Party. Reminiscent of the "old" SL avatar picker
The avatar picker in Cloud Party. Reminiscent of the “old” SL avatar picker

All told, Cloud Party continues to hum along, and while it may not be to everyone’s taste, it’ll be interesting to see what else pops up in the coming weeks.

Keeping in shape in InWorldz

Posted on by Inara Pey

There has been a lot in the blogsphere over the last twelve months about virtual world and matters of health.

For example, there’s Fran Seranade (Fran Swenson in SL) and the benefits she’s personally experienced in using Second Life as a sufferer of Parkinson’s disease which has led to Donna Davis of the University of Oregon and Tom Boellstorff, an anthropology professor at UC Irvine researching the matter in-world.  Virtual Ability has a long history of helping people with disabilities make full use of SL for the betterment of their real lives, and the Centre for ME/CFS and Other Invisible Illnesses is based in Second Life. There have also been numerous projects involving medical workers, such as the research performed by a team at the Imperial College London to improve patient management skills among surgical residents at hospitals.

Now over on InWorldz, the team there have taken things a step further – literally and figuratively – with an app which allows you to exercise at home while still exploring InWorldz.

InWorldz InShape is currently available for Android devices, although iOS / Windows versions are promised for the future. It essentially gathers data on your real-world exercising when using a treadmill, stationary exercise bike or elliptical bike / trainer, and translates it to in-world movement. Thus, people using it can explore in-world regions with their avatar which exercising, and even compete against one another.

InWorldz InShape: spend time in-world while exercising at home
InWorldz InShape: spend time in-world while exercising at home

The app and idea are still very much beta, but already InWorldz residents have built a park where those with the app can go for walks / runs / rides, and there are plans to start weekly exercise sessions, allowing users to meet in-world and go through a routine together on a “group treadmill” while also exercising at home. The InWorldz team also hope that residents will build race tracks, walks and so on to make use of the app and offer further opportunities for combining fitness training with in-world activities with friends, making it easy to keep fit together.

InWorldz InShape in action: a walk in the park in-world (left) while exercising at home (r)
InWorldz InShape in action: a walk in the park in-world (left) while exercising at home (r)

An InWorldz beta programme for the app has been launched, and the InWorldz team are looking for people to join them in trying it out. Those wishing to sign-up will need to have an InWorldz account and meet the following requirements:

  • Be in good enough physical health to start or participate in a light exercise programme (consulte your doctor if you have any concerns)
  • have enough time to participate in testing once a week, during the weekend, for about 45 minutes
  • own or have access to an android powered phone (Android 2.3.3 or later)
  • own or have access to: An exercise bike, elliptical, or treadmill and a computer or tablet that can run a viewer (/Lumiya) connected to the InWorldz Grid.

Those meeting these criteria can register their interest at the InWorldz website.

A demo video has been produced, hosted by InWorldz’s own Tranquility Dexler, which provides an in-depth look at the app in use.

This looks like a very practical and fun application for a virtual world environment, and could potentially see a lot of new opportunities for competitive undertakings in-world or bring a whole new dimension to something like the RFL track walks for people – again, providing due care is taken with RL fitness condition.

I’m keen to sign-up myself, but I don’t have the requisite exercise equipment. I wonder if they’ll ever be able to include a rowing machine and a lake to paddle across …?

Related Links

All images courtesy of InWorldz.

Of rocks and water, swans and falcons

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityCuriosity has resumed its long drive towards the point where it can begin its examination of the huge mound sitting at the centre of Gale Crater which NASA has dubbed “Mount Sharp” (its official name is Aeolis Mons).

The rover recently stopped-off at an area dubbed “Waypoint 1”, the first of several potential stop-over points on the rover’s route, where it will carried out various studies of the surroundings.

Curiosity departed the area on September 22nd after spending some 10 days examining rocks at “Waypoint 1”, and is once more travelling slowly but steadily towards the point mission managers have identified for it to bypass a dune field lying between it and “Mount Sharp”. Along the way, it is liable to make around four more stops.

While at “Waypoint 1”, the rover spent time examining a rocky outcrop dubbed “Darwin”, using a range of instruments to gather images and data which again showed that Gale Crater was once the scene of considerable water activity.

A mosaic of four images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera shows detailed texture in a ridge on the rock outcrop dubbed “Darwin” the rover studied at “Waypoint 1”. The images were obtained shortly before sunset Sol 400 (Sept. 21, 2013) with the camera 25 cm (10 inches) from the rock. Scale is indicated by the Lincoln penny from the MAHLI calibration target, shown beside the mosaic.

“We examined pebbly sandstone deposited by water flowing over the surface, and veins or fractures in the rock,” said Dawn Sumner of University of California, Davis, a Curiosity science team member with a leadership role in planning the stop. “We know the veins are younger than the sandstone because they cut through it, but they appear to be filled with grains like the sandstone.”

While much of the outcrop was covered in the all-too-familiar oxidised Martian dust, there were a patches of bare rock scattered across its surface in which sand deposits and pebbles could be seen, and it was these that drew the attention of the science team.

A mosaic of nine images, taken by the MAHLI camera, shows detailed texture in a conglomerate rock bearing small pebbles and sand-size particles. Again, these images were captured on Sol 400 (Sept. 21, 2013) with the camera positioned about 10 cm (4 inches) from the rock. Scale is indicated by the Lincoln penny from the MAHLI calibration target, shown beside the mosaic.

Following extensive studies of the outcrop, the science team interpret the sand and pebbles in the rock as material that was deposited by flowing water, then later buried and cemented into rock, forming conglomerates. Research will now focus on the textures and composition of the conglomerates as Curiosity continues onward, to understand its relationship to stream bed conglomerate rock found closer to Curiosity’s landing site. Doing so, together with studies to be undertaken at the remaining waypoints, should help scientists to piece together the relationship between rock layers at “Yellowknife Bay” where the mission found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment favourable for microbial life, and the rock layers at the main destination on lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”.

Water, Water, Everywhere

On September 27th, the Curiosity team published five reports in the journal Science which discuss the mission’s findings during the first four months of the rover’s time on Mars. A key finding from this work is that water molecules are bound to fine-grained soil particles, accounting for about 2 percent of the particles’ weight at Gale Crater. This result has global implications, because these materials are likely distributed around the Red Planet.

The presence of water was discovered as a result of samples of surface material being heated to the point of vapourisation within a small oven inside Curiosity – and the most abundant vapour detected was  H2O. The quantity of water molecules bound-up in the Martian soil suggest that as much as two pints of water could be obtained through the heating of one cubic foot of Martian dirt.

This discovery potentially has major implications for any long-term human presence on Mars in the future. The water – once subjected to appropriate treatment to remove unwanted minerals, such as a perchlorate, which has also been found in small amounts within Martian soil samples and can interfere with the thyroid function – could be used for cleaning and drinking purposes. It could also be electrolysed and used in the creation of oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen could then be used for a variety of purposes, including as a raw fuel, or in the production of fuel in the form of methane (created by combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere), which could be used with oxygen to power surface vehicles.

An interesting part of the study is that the analysis of the chemicals and isotopes in the gases released during the analysis of soil samples indicates that the water molecules are the result of an interaction between the soil on Mars and the current atmosphere of the planet; so the process of depositing the water molecules is ongoing, rather than the result of some past mechanism. Even the discovery of perchlorate in the samples is of significance; previously, this had only been found in  soil samples examined at the high latitude Phoenix Lander site. That they’ve now also been found in a near-equatorial latitude suggests they have a global distribution as well.

The other papers released by the science team further confirm earlier studies into the mineral composition of samples gathered and studied during the rover’s initial four months on Mars using its full suite of sample analysis tools: MAHLI, APXS, ChemCam, SAM, and CheMin, all of which can perform a range of complementary as well as disparate analyses.

One of the papers additionally focuses on a rock I covered back in the early days of the mission – Jake_M. Named in memory of NASA / JPL engineer Jacob Matijevic, who worked on all three generations of NASA’s Mars rovers and who passed away shortly after Curiosity arrived in Gale Crater, Jake_M was thought to be quite unlike any other rock on Mars – not because of its pyramid-like shape, but because of its composition.

“Jake_M”, the remarkable rock examined by Curiosity on September 22nd 2012, and believed to be a mugearite type of rock. The markings show where ChemCam and APXS were used to examine it

The paper published in Science confirms that Jake_M is most like a mugearite, a type of rock found on islands and rift zones on Earth.

Continue reading “Of rocks and water, swans and falcons” →

Of methane and waypoints

Posted on by Inara Pey

ICuriosityn what has been something of a surprise to scientists around the world, findings from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) suggest the amounts of methane present in the Martian atmosphere, at least at near-ground levels, are at best negligible.

While it can be produced by non-organic, as well as organic means, methane has long been regarded as one of the tell-tale signs that life may have once existed on Mars – or even may still exist somewhere beneath the planet’s arid surface.

Using the highly sensitive Tunable Laser Spectrometer, a part of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) science package aboard Curiosity, MSL has subjected six samples of the atmosphere gathered between October 2012 and June 2013 to analysis  – and failed to detect any signs of methane, trace or otherwise.

The Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) shoots laser beams into a measurement chamber filled with Martian atmosphere. By measuring the light absorption at specific wavelengths, the TLS can measure concentrations of gases, including methane, as well as different isotopes of the gases. In this images of a TLS demonstrator, visible lasers are being used to show how the lasers bounce between the mirrors in the measurement chamber. The actual TLS uses infrared lasers.

This has come as a surprise because previous data gathered by US and international scientists via a range of means have suggested that while not present in abundant amounts, methane is very detectable within the Martian atmosphere. So much so that some of those involved in MSL were extremely confident ahead of the mission that the rover would find clear evidence of the gas as a part of its analysis of atmospheric samples.

Europe’s Mars Express, for example, which started on-orbit operations in 2004, and is still functioning today, found strong evidence for methane within the atmosphere of Mars. Not long after this, NASA’s own Mars Global Surveyor (the precursor to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which relays communications between Curiosity and Earth today), which operated in Mars orbit from September 1997 through to November 2006, also detected methane to a point where scientists where able to map its annual ebb and flow.

Map showing the relative concentrations of methane on Mars, 2004. Yellow indicates the highest concentrations of the gas, which coincide with the upland regions of the northern hemisphere, including the once volcanic regions of the Tharsis Bulge and Elysium

On Earth, methane (CH4) is largely the by-product of two distinct activities: geological, such as through volcanic eruptions  – and Mars certainly has a fair few volcanoes, some of the largest in the solar system in fact; and via organic means. Either way, it tends to break down relatively quickly, so even trace amounts of it within Mars’ atmosphere suggest that it is being renewed somehow. Given that an erupting volcano on Mars is a tad hard to miss (see “some of the largest in the solar system”, above), a renewable source of methane has seen as evidence that either there is some as yet unknown chemical reaction going-on to create methane – or it may just be the result of outgassing from Martian microbes.

Possible sources of methane on Mars
Possible sources of methane on Mars

The amount of methane in the Martian atmosphere has never been particularly high; even the best analyses over the years have placed it at a peak of around 70 parts per billion, However, the TLS on Curiosity is a very sensitive piece of equipment. So sensitive that any trace amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere must be below 1.3 parts per billion (around 10,000 tonnes in total throughout the atmosphere) in order for the TLS to miss it.

Responding to the findings, published on Thursday September 19th in Science Express, NASA has pointed out that the chances of future missions finding evidence of microbial life on Mars, past or present, aren’t entirely dashed. “This important result will help direct our efforts to examine the possibility of life on Mars,” Michael Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist for Mars exploration, said in a press release accompanying the report’s publication. “It reduces the probability of current methane-producing Martian microbes, but this addresses only one type of microbial metabolism. As we know, there are many types of terrestrial microbes that don’t generate methane.”

TLS forms a part of the Sample Analysis at Mars package of instruments, one of the most comprehensive and compact science experiments sent into space, shown here being installed into Curiosity

Continue reading “Of methane and waypoints” →

Kitely opens their marketplace for business

Posted on by Inara Pey

Kitely-logoIlan Tochner, CEO of Kitely, dropped me an e-mail on Friday August 30th to let me know the Kitely Marketplace is now open for business.  There’s also an official announcement from the Kitely team on their blog as well, which is recommended reading for those interested in the Marketplace.

First announced at the start of the year, the Kitely Marketplace has taken eight months to reach the point of launch – and with good reason. The Kitely team have been working to develop an online experience which is initially available within Kitely, but which can be expanded in time to support other OpenSim grids.

The new Marketplace can be accessed directly from the toolbar displayed on the Kitely website
The new Marketplace can be accessed directly from the toolbar displayed on the Kitely website

The Market combines features familiar to those used to using the SL Marketplace or markets such as the (now defunct) Apez and Metaverse Exchange: items can be browsed on-line, then purchased (using Kitely Credits (KCs) or US dollars), prior to being delivered directly to the purchaser’s in-world inventory in a similar manner to SL’s Direct Delivery mechanism. Additionally, the Market functions more like e-commerce sites such as Amazon, where items can be searched for using attributes as well as a category hierarchy, making the search process and drill-down easier and more flexible for both merchants and consumers.

The Marketplace allows for flexible serach using a combination of category, attribute and filter-based searches
The Marketplace allows for flexible search using a combination of category, attribute and filter-based searches

In addition, the Kitely  Marketplace allows for multiple versions of a product to be listed as a single item, thus simplifying the listing, viewing and reviewing of products. So rather than having five individual listings for an outfit which is available in five different colours, a merchant can create a single listing for the outfit, which includes the 5 different colours, allowing consumers to buy any of the five from the one product listing.

Products can include multiple variations in a single listing - in this case five versions of the same mesh dress
Products can include multiple variations in a single listing – in this case five versions of the same mesh dress

A further aspect of the Marketplace is that demo items can be “built-in” in the main product listing, eliminating the need for additional, separate listings to deal with product demos.  Where a merchant offers a demo (indicated in the product listing), the potential buyers can try it by adding the item to their Shopping Cart, where they’ll  get a link called “Try demo”. When they click this link, the demo version is immediately added to their inventory.

There are other subtle touches as well, some of which may be familiar to users of virtual world marketplaces  – such as the ability to click on a store name either in a list of multiple products or within an individual product listing, in order to display and browse the contents of that store. Other touches aren’t so obvious, but are nevertheless pleasing to find – such as rolling the mouse cursor over the thumbnails of any variations of an item to see each of their full-sized images displayed in the product listing.

In developing the Marketplace, Kitely have focused not only on the usability / functionality aspects of the system, but also on optimising the servers and putting in place strong automated capabilities and additional safeguards.

Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner (via Google+)
Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner (via Google+)

“We spent a lot of time optimizing the backend so it will be able to provide a snappy user experience even thou each page returns multiple dynamic counters (the number of results given the existing filters in each category and attribute that contains relevant search results),” Ilan informed me in announcing the launch. “Kitely Market remained fast even when we tested it on databases of more than 1 million different products and many concurrent bots (and this is without starting to scale up the hardware we use for the marketplace or distributing it to multiple servers).”

Continue reading “Kitely opens their marketplace for business” →

Crossing the unknown

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityOn Sol 376, August 27th 2013, Curiosity  achieved another mission milestone: the first use of the autonomous driving capabilities to fully drive itself through a potentially hazardous zone.

The autonomous navigation software – autonav – was uploaded to the rover following the April 2013 period of solar conjunction. It is designed to allow the rover to decide how best to handle driving safely on Mars, rather than constantly relying on command updates from Earth – something which can severely limit the rover’s daily progress if there are significant obstacles in the rover’s path or if the mission team want the rover to drive beyond the limits of what the  Navcams can see at the start of a day’s drive without routes having to be constantly re-plotted from Earth.

The drive of August 27th saw Curiosity successfully use autonomous navigation to cross ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive. While the drive team were able to establish a “bounding box” in which the rover was expected to keep during the day’s progress, a significant depression in the ground some 10 metres (33 feet) across could not be imaged in advance of the rover’s arrival, and so autonav was enabled in order for the rover to make its own way through the depression.

“We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between,” said JPL’s John Wright, a rover driver.

The road ahead: a mosaic panorama captured by Curiosity's Navcams after the Sol 376 traverse. The rise on the left of the image is part of "Mount Sharp"; the most distance highlands are the walls of Gale Crater
The road ahead: a mosaic panorama captured by Curiosity’s Navcams after the Sol 376 traverse. The rise on the left of the image is part of “Mount Sharp”; the more distance highlands to the right are the walls of Gale Crater (click to enlarge)

Crossing the depression required the rover to take several sets of stereo images of the terrain, compare them, determine potential routes to reach a the designated way-point, and then select the safest course to take.

While autonav has been used a number of times already in recent weeks, these have always been under controlled conditions and limited in scope. The Sol 376 traverse marks the first time Curiosity has been left entirely to its own devices to cross what has essentially been unknown ground for the mission team.  The drive means that the rover has now travelled about 1.39 kilometres (0.86 miles) since departing “Glenelg” and “Yellowknife Bay” early in July, and has a little over 7 kilometres (4.46 miles) to go before reaching the lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”.

Rapid Transit Route

To assist the rover’s progress, NASA have marked-out a “rapid transit route” using images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This plots a rough course for the rover from “Glenelg” to the designated entry-point into the lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”, and which runs alongside a dune field which lays between the terrain the rover is on and the slopes of the mound itself.  Several potential waypoints have been identified along the route where the rover may stop for a few days at a time to allow further science work to be carried out.

The “Aeolis Mons expressway”: NASA’s “rapid transit” route Curiosity is following in order to reach the lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”, with potential science waypoints marked. The mound is towards the bottom of the image and the black diagonal band is a dune field which runs along the foot of the hill

Continue reading “Crossing the unknown” →