2011 Overview and plans for 2012

Posted on by Lexa

This is my first yearly review for this blog in which I will provide a summarized overview of the, nearly gone, 2011 year. I will also give an overview of my goals for the next, 2012, year.

Current projects

Currently I am working on two projects. One is XSnooker game, my final year project, and the second is Asteroids3D, an assignment for CE318 module.

Academic

Academically it was a successful year I must say.  Got a ‘first’ for my last year, and have started this year with success. All my assignments/reports/projects marks are ‘first’ (mostly 80%+with one 71% for my report), which is not bad. I know I could probably do better, but I am more personal satisfactory oriented, which not always means highest possible mark (i.e. I often research the field for too long, trying to find the best possible solution, which gives me a very satisfactory result, but often means that I run off time to complete all the required bits).

What’s left is to finish is this academic year (one more teaching term plus revision and exam term); with preferably, a first honours degree.

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Google Warehouse Explorer for Open Wonderland

Posted on by Lexa

 

Hi everyone, my name is Alexios, and I am (was) a member of Frontrunners project for Open Wonderland (OW) at Essex University under the supervision of John Pisokas.

My project was to develop a module for OW that will help ‘virtual world’ designers to quickly and conveniently browse 3D objects from Google Warehouse (GW) and manipulate them in the ‘world’. Some of the functionalities of the module are:

  1. Easy search and page navigation within Wonderland client.
  2. Download and install 3D objects in Collada format (Google SketchUp not yet supported)
  3. Save and browse 3D models locally
  4. Model details available on selection
  5. Search history

The interior design of the module is very simple. GW provides an RSS feed that is used inside the module to search for the models and all their info (e.g. author, description, download url, and etc.). Once this info is available, the software displays it in a nice format for the user, and allows easy manipulation (e.g. download, install) of the models.

The only major drawback of the module at the moment is that Google SketchUp models are not yet supported. This may change in the near future, when I, or someone else, may develop a ‘SketchUp to Collada’ independent (light) converter, or support to the SketchUp format directly from OW.

I am planning on uploading the source code of the module to repository in the next couple of days. I am pretty sure that the module will contain few small bugs that I missed, plus some improvements that I am planning with the next version. Please do not hesitate to let me know of any errors found, any improvements, and/or additional futures that you think will make it more useful and user friendly.