Here at ReactionGrid, we love it when people ask us questions about Jibe (our multiuser virtual world platform based on Unity3d).  Jibe is a rapidly evolving platform, and the most innovative ideas for both using and improving Jibe always come directly from our users.  Which is why we encourage everyone to submit questions and new feature ideas via the ticket system on our support portal.

Today I saw a ticket from a new Jibe user asking if it was possible to create a flying camera tour in their Jibe world. They wanted people to be able to click something and have their avatar’s camera fly around on a predefined tour path through their Jibe world.

We include in our Jibe platform a Presentation Screen System that lets people automatically set their camera view when they sit down to watch a slideshow or video presentation.  And with a few tweaks, you can use the scripts from this system to easily create a flying camera tour experience.

Here’s how to do it.

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Jibe 1.1 is now being rolled out!  Here’s more info on what’s new.

We’re very excited about the update.  In addition to some other new features and lots of bugfixes, we’ve expanded how the camera works in Jibe.

To try out our new camera controls, just visit my Jibe world and look for the big sign and big chickens set up near the default landing area.

No chickens are being harmed in this test. I swear.

The chickens are all making chickeny sounds, and you’ll be able to hear them more clearly as you zoom your camera in on them (your “ears” are attached to your camera).

Please send us a ticket if you have any feedback or notice any bugs.  And for more info about camera controls, be sure to read this page on our wiki.

Thanks, and have fun!

-John “Pathfinder” Lester

I recently wrote about some of the affordances of having a multiuser virtual world displayed in a webpage.  To illustrate this, here’s an example:

Left to Right: Twitter + Jibe + Dabbleboard

A multiuser Jibe world can be embedded in any webpage.  So what you see in the above screenshot is a webpage that has a Twitter widget on the left, my Jibe world in the middle, and a shared Dabbleboard on the right.  If you’re wondering how I did this, you can simply visit my Jibe page and take a peek at the HTML source.  Pretty simple stuff.

I’ve just started learning how to use a great tool called iTween.  It’s a powerful and easy to use animation system for Unity created by Bob Berkebile, and you can pick it up for free in the Unity Asset Store.  I’ve also been using another free Unity tool called the iTween Visual Editor, created by David Koontz.

These tools allow you to animate and move anything in the Unity editor, which can then be uploaded into a multiuser Jibe world. You create waypoints in the virtual environment and can see lines connecting each waypoint so you can easily visualize the exact path that an object will move along.

I’m a total newbie at all of this, so I love meeting people to discuss ideas and brainstorm.  Recently, I was in my Jibe world and wanted to show someone else my ideas for different pathways I was planning to lay out for my flying dragons.  We walked around my Jibe world together, checking out what I had already set up while talking on voice.

Then I had an idea.  I pulled up an aerial screenshot of my Jibe world’s terrain.  Dropped it into the Dabbleboard.  Drew some lines on it to show my plans for some new pathways.  The person I was meeting with then added some lines and waypoints of their own to the Dabbleboard to illustrate their own ideas.  You can see some of the results in the above screenshot.

Bingo.  Collaboration.

It was a great experience for me to be able to walk and talk with someone while we explored my Jibe world and simultaneously sketched out new ideas.  Really simple, and really powerful.  And a fun way to learn, too.

If you know of any other web-based tools that might integrate nicely on a webpage with Jibe, please let me know in the blog comments or join our conversations in our Jibe-Unity3d Google Group.  Thanks for sharing your ideas!

-John “Pathfinder” Lester