I was recently interviewed by Draxtor on his highly informative and entertaining radio show “The Drax Files Radio Hour.”
Check out the full show and hear me chat about Second Life, Jibe, Unity, WigglePlanet, and the role of community development in multiuser virtual world platforms.
Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
If you’re looking for a powerful system that allows you to easily change in-world surface images/textures, make live modifications and add customized web-links within your Unity-based Jibe multiuser virtual world, then you might be interested in a new product from ReactionGrid.
It’s called ACES, and it’s now on sale in ReactionGrid’s Online Store.
Watch the above video for a complete walkthrough. Here are some screenshots from it.
Everything looks better with Wiener Dogs.
This beautiful 3d store model is made up of many high quality 2d surface images/textures, and I could modify any of them with ACES.
Use the in-world menu system to change surface textures and weblinks.
I just changed the junk food aisle into one containing healthy fruit using ACES!
What is ACES?
Live Demo:
http://demos.jibemix.com
Demo Accounts:
ACES Admin / password
Demo User / demodemo
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at pathfinder@reactiongrid.com.
Take care,
– John “Pathfinder” Lester
The OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC) is an annual conference that focuses on the developer and user community creating the OpenSimulator software. Organized as a joint production by AvaCon and the Overte Foundation, the virtual conference features two days of presentations, workshops, keynote sessions, and social events across diverse sectors of the OpenSimulator user base.
Last year’s conference was a fantastic experience, and I’m thrilled to be both attending and presenting again this year. All the inworld venue tickets are sold out, but if you can still register for a free streaming ticket and watch all the presentations live on Ustream.
Here’s what I’ll be presenting this year:
“You Only Own what you can Carry: How to backup and move your content between Second Life, Openim and Unity”
Saturday Nov 8 from 9:00am – 9:45am PST
In this hands-on workshop, I’ll be demonstrating exactly how to export your own user-created objects (both prim and mesh based) and move them between Second Life, Opensim and Unity. Attendees will watch my desktop via a live TeamViewer screenshare and follow along on their own using freely-available software.
Requirements: Inworld attendees should be using the OSCC recommended 32-bit Singularity viewer and have pre-installed both the free version of the Unity Editor and the free TeamViewer application. No previous technical expertise required, just a willingness to learn.
The crux of my workshop will be a live demonstration of me creating something in both Opensim and Second Life and then walking through exactly how to get it into a scene in Unity. I’ll also be demoing how to move content between Second Life and Opensim. If you’re worried all this might be overly complicated, I promise it will be a lot easier than you expect. Plus you’ll have the fun and “excitement” of watching me do all this live on my own desktop (what could possibly go wrong?). The key takeaway will be that the whole process is easy enough for anyone to learn how to do, regardless of your level of technical expertise.
If you can’t watch it live, no worries. My session will be recorded so you’ll be able to watch it later. I’ll update this blog post with a link to the recording once it’s online.
[UPDATE – Nov 9 2014 – Here’s the full video of my presentation]
I’ll also be a panelist later in the day on “The New Era of Content Protection in OpenSim” where I’ll be sharing my thoughts about DRM versus content licensing.
Hope to see you there!
Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
The 1st International Conference on e-Learning, e-Education and Online Training is being held September 18-20 in Bethesda, Maryland. This conference will assess a wide range of progressive ideas for the future of e-Learning, focusing on the idea of technology as a means to education rather than an end in itself. The conference organizers have lined up a wonderful range of interdisciplinary speakers and are planning to attract a wide group of heterogeneous scholars and practitioners.
I’ll be attending the entire conference, and I’m honored to be giving the opening keynote presentation. Here’s what I’ll be talking about:
“Augmented Mind: The Evolution of Learning Tools
from Language to Immersive Reality”
Innovative educators are constantly facing the challenge of matching pedagogical goals with complementary technological tools. Unfortunately, given the wide range of technologies and devices that vie for consumer attention, the right choices are not always clear and are typically obscured by media hype. In this presentation, John Lester will describe how focusing on the way the human mind interacts with the world and other human beings can help identify the right tools for the right jobs. From a mind-augmentation perspective combining constructivist and behaviorist approaches, John will explore web based tools ideal for knowledge management, augmented reality based self-animated autonomous agents, and finally the unique (and sometimes over-hyped) affordances of perceptually immersive multiuser 3d virtual worlds for collaborative learning.
My goal will be to tell an interesting story with examples and demos of technologies that I think really leverage how our minds naturally embrace the world around us. One such technology that I’m currently exploring and that you’ve probably never heard of are Wiglets.
Visit Wiggle Planet to learn a lot more about Wiglets.
Wiglets are autonomous, evolving, self-animated and self-motivated agents that can exist in both completely virtual and augmented reality environments. They exist at a wildly creative intersection of artificial life, art and gaming. And perhaps best of all, you can interact with them directly through touch and gestures.
Another topic of discussion will be the affordances of multiuser 3d virtual worlds, especially how one can reduce the barrier to entry for people interested in leveraging them for educational purposes. ReactionGrid has recently developed some new tools that integrate with the Unity3d-based Jibe platform to provide on-the-fly content editing in a simple yet powerful way. I’ll be giving a sneak preview during my presentation.
Want to easily change this web-based 3d environment on the fly without having to muck around in Unity?
Now you can. I’ve got some new tricks with Jibe to show you.
I’ll also be discussing and giving examples of innovative uses of commonly used virtual world technologies such as Second Life, Opensimulator and the Oculus Rift. If you plan on attending and would like to connect with me at the conference, please drop me a line on Twitter or email. And if you’re looking to interact with the organizers and other attendees and speakers, be sure to check out the e-LEOT LinkedIn Conference Group.
After my keynote I’ll be updating this blog post to include my slides and links to any recordings.
UPDATE Sept 19, 2014
Here are my slides:
Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
On Monday April 7 at 6pm PDT I’ll be giving a Virtual Worlds Lecture in Second Life.
The title of my talk is “Finding the Balance between Pedagogy and Technology.” Here’s a summary:
One must always seek a thoughtful match between pedagogy and technology. Different virtual world platforms are suited for different uses, ranging from collaborative work environments to immersive goal-oriented simulations. The speaker will discuss current virtual world technological trends involving specific gaming technologies like Unity3D and the growth of Open Source platforms such as OpenSimulator. A discussion will focus on helping educators choose the right tool for the right job, matching pedagogical goals with technological affordances.
My presentation is part of an ongoing series of talks hosted by the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. Here’s more information about the colloquia, and here’s a SLURL for where I’ll be speaking.
Part of what I’ll be doing in addition to showing slides and speaking will be a live demo of some of the content import/export tools in the Singularity Viewer. You’ll get so see how you can easily backup content you’ve created in Second Life or Opensim to your hard drive and how to get that content into other 3D platforms like Unity3d and Blender.
Hope to see you there!
Howdy folks,
I’ll be attending these two upcoming conferences. If you’re planning to attend either of them or if you just happen to be in town when they occur, please contact me via my about.me page if you’d like to meet up and chat about learning in virtual worlds!
4th Global Conference – Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds
March 22-24, 2014
Prague, Czech Republic
The main aims of this conference are to increase our understanding of experiential learning in virtual worlds, both formal and informal, to share experiences and best practices, and to debate future possibilities for learning in virtual worlds. For full details, please see the conference website.
My panel presentation will be “Finding the Balance between Pedagogy and Technology.” Here’s my abstract:
Next Generation virtual worlds will be tightly coupled to many other emerging technologies, leveraging modern knowledge management processes and providing platforms for broad use among teachers and learners. As the technological landscape grows, it is becoming increasingly difficult for educators to identify the right platform (or mix of platforms) for their specific immersive learning needs.
In my current position at ReactionGrid and my previous work at Linden Lab and Harvard Medical School, I have explored the use of a wide range of gaming and virtual world platforms to augment education. Today there are a number of very interesting virtual world technological trends involving specific gaming technologies like Unity as well as the growth of Open Source platforms such as OpenSimulator. My ongoing work involves finding the right match between educational goals and technological affordances as well as identifying key synergies when virtual world technologies are interwoven with existing social media and web-based educational content.
Above all else, there must be a thoughtful match between pedagogy and technology. Different virtual world platforms are suited for different uses, ranging from collaborative work environments to immersive goal-oriented simulations. One of the most important and challenging goals for any educator exploring virtual worlds is simply finding the right tool for the right job. Likewise, it is critical for virtual world platform developers to keep a firm focus on well established knowledge management principles when designing new technologies intended to advance the field of immersive learning.
I’m particularly thrilled about this panel because I’ll be participating with Dr. Bryan Carter from the University of Arizona. Bryan is a true pioneer in using virtual worlds for experiential learning, and he’s been working with virtual environments since his dissertation project in 1997 when he created a virtual simulation of Harlem, NY as it existed during the 1920s Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance. Virtual Harlem was one of the earliest full virtual reality environments created for use in the humanities and certainly one of the first for use in an African American literature course. The project continues to grow and evolve as Bryan explores new virtual world platforms.
1st International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training (e-LEOT)
September 18–20, 2014
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
This new conference will assess a wide range of progressive ideas for the future of e-Learning, focusing on the idea of technology as a means to education rather than an end in itself. The conference organizers are lining up a wonderful range of interdisciplinary speakers and are planning to attract a wide group of heterogeneous scholars and practitioners. For full details, please see the conference website.
I’ll be giving a keynote at this conference. And if you’re looking to interact with the organizers and other attendees and speakers, be sure to check out the e-LEOT LinkedIn Conference Group.
Be seeing you!
ye olde prim
[Update: You also do this with the Firestorm viewer. Just Export your prim object using the Collada format. Details here on the Firestorm wiki.]
This is pretty cool.
The most recent version of the Singularity viewer (version 1.8.1) adds a particularly interesting feature:
This means you can now take a prim-based object from within Second Life or Opensim and export it to your hard drive as a mesh object (either .obj or .dae file format).
In Jibe 2.0 we’ve included an easy system that gives you the power to use iTween to create multiuser networked events. This allows you create shared experiences between avatars using interactive and complex object animations.
Watch my tutorial to learn more!
Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.
Here’s a short tutorial video that will show you how to create avatar sit locations on any object in your Jibe world. It’s a very powerful and flexible system where you simply drag and drop sit locations onto anything in your multiuser Jibe world, allowing you to easily create collaborative meeting environments that encourage avatars to gather together in groups.
In this video, I also review how to avoid the accidental misuse of a script that could potentially cause your Avatar to fall through the floor. Safety First!
Creating Sit Locations in Jibe and Unity3d from John Lester on Vimeo.
You can also find this tutorial video in our Knowledge Base.
Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer, ReactionGrid
I’m eagerly awaiting my own developer version of the Oculus Rift, which should arrive in about a month.
My plans are to immediately start working on how to best integrate it with Jibe and Unity3d.
In particular, our newly released Jibe 2.0 has a built-in 1st-person perspective mode that is ideal for things like virtual reality headsets.
Exploring a multiuser Jibe 2.0 world in 1st-person perspective.
Keep an eye on this blog for future details.
Needless to say, I was very excited to see the folks at iFixit posting a great teardown of the developer version of the Oculus Rift headset.
If you have an Oculus Rift and would like to brainstorm with me on how it can be integrated with multiuser virtual world applications, please drop me an email (john.e.lester@gmail.com) or post in the comments.
Perhaps we can also schedule a Team Fortress 2 game while using our headsets!
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer, ReactionGrid Inc.
P.S. ReactionGrid’s Lead Developer Matthew Bertrand is also getting an Oculus Rift dev kit. He’s pretty psyched about it, and we all expect amazing things from him!
Be Cunning and Full of Tricks 