[Opensim-dev] a region module to visualize the state of a software project (Re: [opensim-dev] interfaces to opensim for sensor network data)

[Neil Canham]

I thought this was a great use of OpenSim so I've written a brief summary
along with the video here
http://blog.knowsense.co.uk/blog/_archives/2010/12/20/4707937.html

Neil Canham


On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 4:28 AM, Toni Alatalo <antont at kyperjokki.fi> wrote:

> On Nov 27, 2010, at 4:13 AM, Justin Clark-Casey wrote:
> >> I am working on a project to create abstract 'data worlds' based on
> structures in a relational database. Justin's
> >> proposed approach would be great! If there is anything I can contribute
> (testing, documentation), please
> > Lo-fi public visualization in OpenSim is an interest of mine.  There has
> been some interesting stuff done via scripting on the Linden grid but I
> think there's also a lot of potential for the server-side approach (because
> of the advantages outlined previously).
>
> There is one quite new example out there btw, which originally came from
> the idea of thinking how we could 'eat our own dogfood' in opensim
> development .. visualizing the state of software projects as virtual worlds,
> to facilitate interdeveloper communications etc.
>
> It was developed against the Naali viewer codebase data, as an Opensim
> region module, but is general enough to work against any software project
> basically. The code is in http://code.google.com/p/rexprojectspace/ . It
> creates a quite rich scene on the server entirely from the code in the
> region module, using data it fetches from various services with http.
> There's a downloadable video on the project site,
> http://code.google.com/p/rexprojectspace/downloads/detail?name=rex_beta5.m4v.. demonstrates all these features:
>
> It pulls information about the code itself, mainly the module / directory
> structure, from the version control (on github in this case). And shows
> commit information, the latest commit msg to each dir. And has an object
> representing each dev, placed where the previous commit from that dev came.
> And shows bugs as a kind of flying bugs in the air, it gets that info from
> the tracker we have at google code .. unassigned bugs have different colour.
>
> Additionally it polls a buildbot to show build/test status -- if tests
> fail, the tree that shows the commits starts burning .. when tests again
> succeed, there is rain, and the tree stops burning :) And if someone makes a
> new branch to git, new branch grows to the tree. And you can click on a
> commit in the tree to open the info about that commit in a webbrowser (the
> github commit web view).
>
> Markus made it as a his diploma thesis work, after found my writeup of the
> idea in a wiki, and the thesis is finished now .. the writeup is in Finnish
> though. I think we should write at least a short English article about it
> too, perhaps have time for that in January or so.
>
> Plan is to set it somewhere to run and to actual use, and perhaps opensim
> can adopt it for opensim code too .. and run it on osgrid somewhere :) . So
> far I've been just running it locally sometimes, but am looking forward to
> having it always on as a kind of a painting at our studio, so can easily see
> the status in a nice way :) The visuals etc. are not the greatest, plan is
> to improve, but it works and is in some way complete .. as a first step, I
> hope.
>
> Perhaps also works as an example for the original poster (Richard
> Hackathorn) for how to create a scene from external data in a region module.
> It uses modrex 'cause it uses meshes, but the vanilla opensim API to create
> new objects and assets and to place them etc. It is written in Python, using
> the IronPython Opensim region module loader Erno wrote a while ago, but the
> .net API of the Opensim objects is identical with c# usage. Py region
> modules are nicer to dev 'cause you don't have to restart the simulator
> while devving your module (I think MRMs have this advantage too?).  The py
> opensim loader is nowadays hosted by Melanie in some semi official opensim
> addons repo.
>
> Markus was quite happy to develop the module, actually said that didn't
> encounter any bugs. He learned using Blender to model the tree and the
> leaves etc. for this project too from scratch, and didn't know anything
> about SL or Opensim or reX before this, so quite an achievement I'd say :)
>
> ~Toni
>
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