[Opensim-users] Hoping for a fearless comparison of opensim vs unity 3D

Mon Jul 21 08:01:02 UTC 2014

Hi Ramesh,

I did not mean to drop a comment and disappear - focusing upon writing avoiding distractions. Doug captured my meaning in that I do not disagree with involvement or adapting for the student; quite the opposite. Synthetic environments are good interactive and collaborative environments - use them.  I also agree with Doug that what you have displayed could be done in Unity but it might involve a lot of extra work for you. I do hope that grant bodies do not limit themselves to unity only solutions or just using professional graphic designers. Some of the amateurs in SL and OpenSim are either very skilled or in fact hobby professionals, working within its constraints. I also get the impression that even now a lot of academics are trying to fit in development work on the side though so the in-world design tools help here. Whether this is sensible use of an academics time is another matter. 

Your and Kay's research look fascinating. I am not sure to what extent you mean by built in to the core? Do you mean that different scenarios can be readily set up by the instructors? Unity, SL, OpenSim all have their constraints and limitations. In both unity and Opensim avatars have limited scope for emotional expressions and translating external movement and gestures although OpenSim and SL has a lot of flexibility in terms of dress and attachments helping with the formation of identity. I am not sure about the rigging in Unity though. 

I seem to recall the SGI in a school fire awareness game were able to download and change some textures e.g. warning signs (not sure about other assets on the fly) downloaded from an external WikiMedia using Unity to cope with changes associated with different languages and countries in the EU.  Daden I think using OpenSim and SL developed a scenario editor. It might be nice if an easier front end to the OpenSim database would do the same. I came close to developing one in my Heritage business but could not see a way to make a financial return and pay the bills. Decided to do a PhD instead! 

Tom

On 20 Jul 2014, at 19:54, Dr Ramesh Ramloll <r.ramloll at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Kay,
> 'Even the online courses that utilize extensive instructor- or institution-created materials always simultaneously utilize a textbook (to insure the transmission of the relevant portion of the course-specific common body of knowledge).  In turn, the textbooks I utilize in all of my courses change each year.  Sometimes the textbook changes simply involve a [maddening] re-sort of the chapters (to enable the publisher to change the edition and sell more new copies of the text).  Still (and more importantly), it is often the case that the material in the textbook changes (and these changes need to be reflected in the course materials and activities).'
> 
> This observation is spot ON. Actually we have to face exactly the same issues for hazmat emergency response courses and I suspect this is true for most fields.
> 
> R
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Dr Ramesh Ramloll <r.ramloll at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Doug,
> 'Collaboratively manipulating things that already exist is much easier, and the basis of almost every multiplayer Unity game. You work with or against your collaborator to whack the head off of some villain or uncover the secrets of the story.'
> 
> Just a note here, the system RezMela has already allowed instructors to create a wide diverse range of stories, so there is not one story. The malleable linkset does not contain a fixed number of parts, in fact, it grows and shrinks, so it is not just direct manipulation. The 3D molecule model kit I mentioned earlier for e.g. is in fact like a 3D editor, where atoms can be created, duplicated, connected joined ... in another example, you could use the same principle to teach garden design for e.g. where the task would be to great various plants instances and rearrange to create new garden experiences and so forth... 
> So again, when I talk about malleability, it is really well defined and specific. I see it is being stretched too far so that it became meaningless.... and I probably should coin another term.
> Glad Unity is working great for you. Point to us some clips, your success is worth sharing absolutely, and will be very useful to me as I continue to explore.
> Ramesh
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Kay McLennan <mclennan.kay at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Tom <tom.willans at bessacarr.com> wrote:
>  
> ...For many educational uses adapting and changing objects is not needed...
>  
> While it is true that some types of educational simulations are well suited for static simulations (like a virtual tour of the inner workings of a human body part or a historic recreation of a city), static (Unity platform-like) builds are completely ill-suited for the types of online economics and business studies college courses I teach.  
> 
> Even the online courses that utilize extensive instructor- or institution-created materials always simultaneously utilize a textbook (to insure the transmission of the relevant portion of the course-specific common body of knowledge).  In turn, the textbooks I utilize in all of my courses change each year.  Sometimes the textbook changes simply involve a [maddening] re-sort of the chapters (to enable the publisher to change the edition and sell more new copies of the text).  Still (and more importantly), it is often the case that the material in the textbook changes (and these changes need to be reflected in the course materials and activities).  For example, social media marketing is now one of the most important components in the field of marketing but was barely mentioned in textbooks even as recently as a few years ago.  Similarly, the cases in business ethics textbooks continue to change at an almost exponential rate owing to the abundance of new real work examples of unethical behavior (think GMC, BP, the financial meltdown, GMOs, fracking, and more!).
> 
> Further, college students (including traditional and non traditional aged students) are pressed for time and require course-specific learning simulations only.  That is, students do not have the time to explore virtual world simulations that are only tangentially related to the course learning objectives.  Rather, the virtual world learning simulations have to be graded activities that are worth their time (in the sense of being detailed and expansive enough to contribute specifically to their understanding of the course material).  Again, in the same way high quality college textbooks and online course sites require continual updates and upgrades, high quality virtual world simulations need to be updated and upgraded -- to contribute specifically to students' understanding of the course material.
> 
> Also (and this is a BIG item), I am constantly thinking up (and testing) new types of virtual world learning simulations.  In other words, my view is that it would be too limiting to be only be able to create a simulation once.  In contrast, right now, I currently have about 40 or more different types of virtual world learning simulations "in play" [read:  that I collect student feedback data on (based on student -- Likert scale-based -- views on the interactivity, engagement, and contribution to learning outcomes for each simulation -- see some of the early data collected at:  https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan/student-survey-data-2)].  Note:  Over the years, students have provided excellent and surprising feedback.  For example, in the basic economics course I teach, I thought students would be keenly interested in the Free Trade Game I built (with each student the president/king/queen/dictator of their own island nation).  However, the in-world PP slides (from my lecture notes that are also uploaded into my course site) and the in-world vocabulary flash cards were rated markedly higher than the Free Trade Game in every category.
> 
> Note:  My college-level students almost universally [first] say they need asynchronous virtual world learning activities ONLY (in keeping with how all of my online courses are asynchronous).  However, after the students get some experience with the virtual world learning activities, they almost universally request real time meet-ups in-world!  That is, one of the main attractions of virtual worlds continues to be the ability to interact with others in-world.
> 
> Finally, while I keep trying all of the different available virtual platforms, to date (and for the reasons detailed above), I believe the OpenSim platform is the best fit for my online college-level virtual world learning simulations.  [Still, I will confess to being particularly taken with the genius and intuitive "ease of use" of the smartphone control panel or interface feature in the Cloud Party virtual world viewer.  That is, while the Firestorm or Singularity or other OpenSim viewers work perfectly for me (and I do NOT think a virtual world viewer has to be browser-based!), I wonder if a second type of OpenSim viewer (that is geared for a beginning user only) might be needed (?)...]
> 
> Best,
> Kay
> 
> Kay L. McLennan, Ph.D.
> Professor of Practice
> School of Continuing Studies
> Tulane University
> kmclenna at tulane.edu
> e-Teaching in Virtual Worlds @ https://sites.google.com/site/fvc13mclennan/ and https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan/
> e-Course Teaching Schedule & Syllabi @ http://www.tulane.edu/~kmclenna/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at opensimulator.org
> http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 'Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin.'
> Rameshsharma Ramloll PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC, Affiliate Research Associate Professor, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 Tel: 208-240-0040
> LinkedIn, DeepSemaphore LLC, RezMela, Google+ profile
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 'Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin.'
> Rameshsharma Ramloll PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC, Affiliate Research Associate Professor, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 Tel: 208-240-0040
> LinkedIn, DeepSemaphore LLC, RezMela, Google+ profile
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at opensimulator.org
> http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-users/attachments/20140721/8505d2fc/attachment-0001.html>