VMs: Virtual Voynich Museum

["CDA" <claudio_antonini@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nick and everyone,

What about a virtual mini-conference inside the 'Virtual Voynich Museum'? I
have been experimenting lately with Adobe Atmosphere, a tool to create
virtual worlds, where one can walk, look at posters (paints,
graphs--anything that can be textured on a surface), chat with other avatars
(digital representations of people), and listen to audio or see videos
'projected'.


EXAMPLES
As an example of the complex structures that one can build, albeit with
another program, I have found www.activeworlds.com, which seems to have
constructed large worlds and buildings, with lots of interaction. They have
their own programs, different from Adobe Atmosphere, but it gives an idea of
the complexity that these worlds can attain. Related to our purposes, for an
European health insurance company they had an avatar continuously giving a
conference every 10 minutes, with slides simultaneously projected in the
background, 24/7.

You can find one example built in Atmosphere in
http://www.adobe.com/products/atmosphere/showcase/show_cathedral.html

You can navigate with the mouse and use the Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys. Right
click on the figure and, in Navigation, click on 'gravity', so that you can
float and see any feature in detail. Another way of removing the effect of
gravity is with 'Preferences', down in the bar.


THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT
In our case, the simplest arrangement could be to build a large rectangular
building with a few rooms, as many as presentations are required. One more
level of complexity would be to add more permanent rooms and/or different
floors. One with all known pages of the VMs, and still other rooms for
specific projects (history of the VMs before its recent discovery by
Voynich, history after Voynich, attempted and claimed translations, ...).


REQUIREMENTS
I imagine that the bandwidth requirements would be similar for a webcam,
with the added benefit of the flexibility (i.e., the recording of the audio
or audio + video has to be done once) and can be shown 'virtually' forever.
The only other disadvantage--besides the need to design the world--is the
cost of running it in a server. I might have a way of using a friend of
mine's server, but I would ask only after it is decided that the virtual
world will be designed and used. The software, so far and as far as I could
see, is free, both for the user and the designers.

I include the system requirements below, both for the design and the
players.


Comments?

Claudio



     Adobe Atmosphere System Requirements.

                  Atmosphere
                  . Intel® Pentium® III or faster processor

                  . Microsoft® Windows 2000, Windows XP Home and Pro

                  . 128 MB of available RAM (256 MB recommended)

                  . 50 MB of available hard-disk space

                  . 1,024x768 screen resolution

                  . 16-bit color (32-Bit Color recommended)
                  . Graphic Card Support: Radeon 7500 or higher, GeForce 2
or higher

                  Atmosphere Player
                  . Intel Pentium II or faster processor

                  . Microsoft® Windows® 98SE, Windows Millennium, Windows
2000, Windows XP Home and Pro

                  . 64 MB of available RAM (128 MB recommended)

                  . 14 MB of available hard-disk space

                  . 16-bit color (32-Bit Color recommended)

                  . 56K or faster modem

                  . Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.00.2614.3500 and above.

                  . Graphic Card Support: Radeon 7500 or higher, GeForce 2
or higher




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Pelling" <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 9:06 AM
Subject: VMs: Remote presenters... any volunteers?


> Hi everyone,
>
> Here's another idea - our mini-conference could have a number of remote
> presenters (ie via web-cam) projected onto one screen, with some fiendish
> mechanism for controlling the slides (perhaps as web-pages?) on another
screen.
>
> Then, anyone here with a webcam and broadband could be a remote
presenter -
> and if your setup doesn't have both, then you could either temporarily
> hijack a friend's PC which does, or even go to an Internet cafe and give
> your presentation from there. We'd also set up a back (return) channel so
> that we could get some kind of interaction going - it wouldn't be
> presenting completely "blind".
>
> Technical concerns aside, who here would be interested in giving a
> 15-minute paper / presentation remotely?
>
> Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
>
> PS: while going 100% virtual might be where we end up - perhaps for
> VMS2004? - I think we'd need to get there one step at a time, as the
> technology involved is still relatively flaky. :-o
>
>
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