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Post by Hannes Vilhjalmsson on Jan 11, 2009 10:19:29 GMT -5
Hi everyone, This is our first discussion thread for the Virtual Environments course. We'll start by introducing ourselves. I teach this course and this is one of my favorite topics in computer science. I got interested in it while I was studying computer science in University of Iceland back in 1991 and found a stack of conference paper proceedings in the library from the ACM conference on computer graphics (SIGGRAPH). The papers were full of computer generated photos that were attempts at imitating various natural phenomena. This task seemed like the perfect blend of science, technology and art. I got my PhD in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in 2003 and worked as a research scientist at UCS's Information Sciences Institute for 3 years before joining Reykjavik University. Here I'm doing research in the Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents (CADIA), where my focus is creating more lifelike agents and avatars for social game environments. I'm also on the board of Alelo Inc., a company that develops virtual environments for social training. Now I would like to hear more about you. Briefly state something about yourself (e.g. relevant background) and why you are drawn to the topic of this class. I also highly recommend that you add a photo to your forum profile (just go into "profile" above and provide an URL to a 100x100 photo of you). Your participation in these forums counts towards your "participation grade", so get some "cheap" points by being visible here ;-) Cheers, - hannes högni
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Post by kristjanbb02 on Jan 12, 2009 7:00:48 GMT -5
Hi,
I'm very interested in graphical representations of all sorts. I'm also taking this course to further my understanding of graphical environments and related technology.
I'm taking this as a MSC course and I prefer to use Linux if possible and have used python+opengl before, for shake of group finding.
p.s. I'll add picture and more details later if post editing is allowed.
-Kristjan Bjorn Birgisson
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Post by gudleifur05 on Jan 12, 2009 9:17:15 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
I´m on my last semester as a BS student in Computer Science. My interest in this field of study arose last semester while taking the course Natural Language Processing. I have always been fascinated about the human-computer communication especially through visualizations and art.
Guðleifur Kristjánsson
ps. I couldn't post a picture but will do so when that option will be available
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thors
New Member
CS Dweeb
Posts: 23
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Post by thors on Jan 12, 2009 11:18:39 GMT -5
Hi all.
I'm on my second term of my M.Sc. studies where I aim to focus primarily on A.I. and Virtual Reality.
I've been an avid user of VR environments through the years, and I have seen many practical (and some less practical and more humorous) implementations of VR in my former work as a sysadmin (for 13 years).
One humorous implementation is prDoom, where you play "Doom", literally shooting the active processes of the system (rather pointless).
I'm still more on the path of searching for knowledge, rather than already having that one "Great Idea™" leading to nirvana. This path seemed abvious since I had already invested time in getting to know the social aspects of VR.
Oh, since people are commenting on platforms, I'll be using Mac OS X.5 with version 1.6 of Panda3D, in case someone needs assistance or wants to team up.
/Þór
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Post by Eirikur Ari Petursson on Jan 12, 2009 17:11:35 GMT -5
Hi
I have always been interested in computer graphics and virtuality though this is on of my first course´s in the field except for computer graphics and i´m on my last semester as Bs student in Computer Science.
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Post by ellioman on Jan 12, 2009 17:55:05 GMT -5
What's up, Doc? My name is Elvar Örn Unnþórsson and this is my fourth semester here at RU. Since I was little, I've always been fascinated with graphics despite never being good at drawing and so forth. Not long ago I was playing with Flash and found more and more that programming graphics/animation was something that really appealed to me and finally decided to study computer science with the intent of going in the graphic direction of it I've been trying to take courses which guide me more and more to where I wanna be, linear algebra, computer graphics and now virtual environments. So this course will hopefully be another step towards where I want to be later on. I'm using Mac OS X.5. thors, your help would be greatly appreciated, can't seem to find a version 1.6 of Panda 3D. How can I reach you? I have ellioman@gmail.com and MSN: ellioman@hotmail.com. And for those interested, the book 'Dive into Python' can be downloaded here : www.diveintopython.org/Anyways, I'm really looking forward to diving into the 3D world ;D ps. Hannes You talked about in your introduction lecture that we should mention to you topics you could lecture about if we have any ideas. I'm very interested in things like rain, snow, wind, fog, mist, sunbeams and how it interacts with the environment/user and was wondering if you could cover that topic if not already on the schedule?
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Post by David H. Brandt on Jan 12, 2009 19:30:39 GMT -5
Howdy y'all I originally started my B.Sc. in 1991 at the University of Iceland, but left school to work as a programmer for Traffic Software after a streak of extreme poverty (and even more extreme religion, but that's a different story). I quickly discovered that money was good, food was better, sanity was a good deal more important than salvation, and vowed never again to return to a life of unadorned spaghetti and instant noodles. During my servitude at Traffic Software, I worked my arse off like a madman, driven to prove my worth and overcome the weakness of not having a degree to my name. After 4 years of gruelling work I had come to realize that I had more than compensated. All was well... It was then that I had my own first personal run-in with virtual reality, beyond the typical gaming experience. In a Eureka moment the Zen of Cyberspace was revealed to me... the true meaning behind the vision that Gibson had teased us with... so I headed back home to Iceland and made my first attempt at a startup, which of course was entirely stillborne. Luckily I came to my senses quickly and was subsequently recruited by OZ in 1998. At OZ I was given a simple task: To build a proprietary, multi-platform, RPC system based on the service-oriented-architecture paradigm on par with Corba and DCOM, in a couple of months. Here my lack of formal education came to haunt me... nobody had ever taught me that this was utterly insane, so I just did it. As a result, the next few years at OZ were highly interesting and I became more and more specialized in the field of distributed computing. Eventually the dot-com bubble went dot-bomb, and shortly after that (in 2002) I was headhunted by Hilmar to CCP to scale EVE to 20.000 concurrent users, which was 10 times the industry standard for MMOs. What Hilmar had failed to mention during our talks was that the scheduled launch date was less than 3 months from the day I would start at CCP and that EVE could at the time handle at most 120 concurrent users. A couple weeks of probing the source code further revealed that EVE was effectively one vast, single-threaded, global variable. It took about 4 months to unravel the goo and replace the architectural foundations of EVE, and we could only handle about 6.000 concurrent users initially, but the day EVE started on a roughly 60 CPU "monster cluster" was the proudest day of my life. The next few years I kept working on scaling, securing and stabilizing EVE. I also decided to finish by B.Sc. alongside work, to prepare for an eventual "retirement" in research & teaching . EVE evolved further, eventually achieving 20.000 concurrent and far beyond (40.000 in the China beta launch), but at a great price to the handful of working class heroes that did most of the firefighting, including myself. Eventually my family could take no more, so I jumped ship in December 2006. In 2007 I joined forces with a bunch of ex-comrades from OZ who were forming Marimo, a generic software consultancy company. A few more CCPers followed in my footsteps and Marimo's goals were quickly realigned. We remain blood-sucking consultants by day, but at night we storm the walls of Virtual Reality once again, and this time at their highest point: the fantasy MMO market itself...
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peter
New Member
Posts: 10
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Post by peter on Jan 12, 2009 19:52:55 GMT -5
Hi
I'm an exchange student from Vienna University of Technology, where I am in my Master's programme specializing in computer graphics, media technology and human computer interaction. Some university-related projects I have done previously were in the fields of game design (my bachelor's project) and procedural graphics generation (an internship at a visualization research center). I have also worked with OpenGL before, mostly in C++.
Since before I began to study computer science I have been interested in how computers can be used as creative tools... I think that creating a convincing virtual environment is a highly challenging task because it requires experience in a number of very different fields (graphics, AI, interaction design...). I'm looking forward to extend my experience with this course.
I'll be using Mac OS X 10.5 and I'm taking this course as a Master's course.
- peter
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Post by Stefán Freyr on Jan 12, 2009 21:48:18 GMT -5
Hi.
I'm a M.Sc. student here at RU and currently working along with that as a sort of a systems administrator for the School of Computer Science. My work here is mostly focused on the cleanup of the IT infrastructure, deployment of large non-Windows systems (clusters) and developing of services that make my life (and hopefully others too) easier.
I finished my B.Sc. here at RU in 2001. Since then I've been TA-ing here, mostly in the "Software Design and Implementation" course but also in some basic programming courses and I've also been an instructor in the B.Sc. final projects.
I guess I don't have much experience with virtual environments. I took the 3D graphics course in my B.Sc. studies but not much other than that. I would say that my most enjoyable experience with virtual environments to this day were the old Sierra Quest games. I really miss those... and I mean the ones where you actually had to type in all your actions... none of this point and click crap! Sure, the graphics weren't as good as today but I'd argue that the whole experience was more captivating than anything I've seen recently, but hey, maybe that's just me. Besides, those games are where most of my English skills come from so I guess I owe them.
In my M.Sc. project I'm looking at image processing and combining depth information from a way too expensive range camera with regular images from a webcam. Through this work I've come across plenty of interesting stuff regarding image processing. One of these projects that captivated me is the PhotoSynth project (currently being developed at Microsoft) where public image collections such as flickr and Google's Picasa web are used to automatically create 3D virtual environments. I'm also very interested in an underlying technology called SeaDragon which I guess doesn't quite fit into the virtual reality category, but it helps cope with the vast amount of data (mostly visual data) that make up the environment. All this has sparked an idea that I have for my final project in this course and it just so happens that it may very well be a great fit with a project that is already being developed here at RU.
So, that's me and my journey here in a nutshell.
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sikm
New Member
M.Sc. student in Computer Science at Reykjavik University
Posts: 6
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Post by sikm on Jan 13, 2009 6:40:38 GMT -5
Hi all! I graduated with B.Sc. in Computer Science 2001 with Stefán (stfs). I started working for the National Bank of Iceland (Landsbanki) programming their online bank. In the fall of 2008 I decided to go back to school to start my Masters degree and I took two courses with 100% work. Then the big financial crisis came up and I lost my job and then it was even more reason to focus on the school. Now I am a full time M.Sc. student and got a new job at VÍS insurances where I work 50%+ (It is very tempting to get a little money when I have gotten addicted to it in the last 7 years I signed up for this class because I have heard so many good stories about it, being challenging but fun and has a very good teacher. I have allways been interested in Virtual Environments especially the social aspect of it. I have played few online multiplayer games in the past, Eve Online when it first came out (The Collective), Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Quake I II III (played this one aggressivly from 1998-2003, competing alot with a clan called hux) then I got stuck with Everquest II for few years MMORPG. These games were mainly played because of the social aspect of it. It gets bored if you can't talk to somone or share experience with. I found Everquest II doing a good job making a real like environment, like the NPCs and players could do all kinds of gestures, rich and lifelike environments. But it costs lots of time to play these games and I think I will wait until I'm done with my Masters - Sigurður Karl Magnússon
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Post by eirikurn on Jan 13, 2009 12:04:31 GMT -5
Hi everybody,
This is my last semester of bachelor studies and I'm hoping to make it a fun one. I have always loved messing with real time computer graphics, and have played with many different levels of APIs in creating graphics, including blitting, OpenGL, DirectX, XNA, WPF, and even System.Drawing in C#.
My most fun project was modding Warcraft 3 to do things it wasn't created to do. That introduced me to smart gaming architecture and all kinds of graphic concepts.
- Eirikur H. Nilsson
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Post by Birna Íris on Jan 13, 2009 18:24:16 GMT -5
Hi I am on my second semester towards a Masters degree. I finished my Bachelors degree from the University of Iceland in 2003 and was working at Skýrr before I came here. My entrance to Computer Science was through Industrial Design so I am very graphically oriented. I did a graphics course in my Bachelors studies and developed a 3d version of Pac Man using OpenGL and C++. This made me addictive to the brilliant Pac Man game for a while Otherwise I am not really the "game type" and am totally against violence in virtual life as well as real life. I chose Reykjavík University for my Masters studies because of the work in the field of Artificial Intelligence here and entered this course because I see the possibility of doing research and implementation of AI with Virtual Environments. I also think usability of computer systems is very important and interesting to look into Virtual Environment in that context. I am looking forward to diving into this course Birna Íris
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Post by franzeric on Jan 14, 2009 5:49:30 GMT -5
Hi,
My name is Franz Eric and this is my last semester of B.Sc.
I chose this course because it sounded exciting and I wanted to learn to program in Python. After taking the course Computer Graphics last semester I have been taking more attention to the virtual enviroments and graphics in the games that I have been playing, I hope I'll get more understanding how this all works in this course.
Franz Eric
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Post by adalsteinnb05 on Jan 14, 2009 7:45:00 GMT -5
Hi everyone, my computer interest started in the year 1983 when I got mine first computer Sinclair Spectrum 48K www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zxspectrum/zxspectrum.htm which was great for such as a enthusiast as me. I got some magazine and books with source code (Basic) for it. The very first program I entered into the computer was "Union Flag" (UK), that was just painted on the TV screen My next serious attempt to computerize was to buy Atari 520 STFM (1988) with a whopping 520 Kb RAM memory and OS integrated on a ROM chip. I had to pay 40.000 ISL kr for it. One year later I bought used Epson LQ800 dot matrix printer (24 needle) for 50.000 ISL kr. However I entered the PC zone much later in the year 1992 (when I finished Rafeindavirkjun). I bought used Atlantis Ergo PC(8086) for just 20.000 ISL kr. The computer was quite interesting because it was produced here on Iceland Since that time I have been involved in the PC industry more or less, surely there are margins by other interests but I got a good kick from my wife (in a good sense) and went to RU. I'm contracted to Icelandic Bank Data Center (Reiknistofa Bankanna). AI is one of the hot topics and cover material to uncover the beast of the CPU Surely it is necessary to gather some additional information about physics and graphics to do the fancy stuff every programming nerd needs to be familiar with. That is enough, cheers, ABB
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Post by flassari on Jan 14, 2009 10:50:19 GMT -5
Hi there!
So my name is Ari, often called Flassari because of my line of work, which is creating interactive content such as games and websites using Adobe Flash.
This is my last semester of the B.Sc. studies, and I chose to take this class because making games is my life, and I know that this will be an invaluable experience for me for its close connection to games.
-Ari-
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