Changing the VastPark cache settings

Wishing you could control the cache settings for your VastPark applications? Never fear, there’s a way to do it.

Items are currently set to expire in 5hrs. To change this, go to Windows Start > Run

and type in %localappdata%\VastPark\Browser\config\

Hit enter, then edit settings.xml in notepad.

Change:

<ItemCacheExpiry>FiveHours</ItemCacheExpiry>

To:

<ItemCacheExpiry>Never</ItemCacheExpiry>

...to make it never expire. Perfect if you want to demonstrate things offline.

Or:

<ItemCacheExpiry>Always</ItemCacheExpiry>

...to make it always expire (useful if you want to ensure you get the latest content).

Hope that helps a few of you.

LA in November

I will present VastPark’s Immersion player demo at the LA XMediaLab in November. The event is run in conjunction with the AFI.

After that I’m off to Sydney and Melbourne to spend some time with my baby daughter and to work with the VastPark team who are hard at work developing a very early version of the Immersion player for release this year.

Cheers, Bruce Joy

VastPark P2P Closed Beta

After a number of internal tests working closely with the guys from NICTA we’re now ready to begin accepting registrations for the closed beta of the VastPark P2P networking code.

We plan to run a number of multi-user tests over the next few months, so be quick to register and get in on the action!


Visit the P2P Closed Beta registration page here.

Immersion Player demo - Ted’s adventure

We are busy developing our new Immersion Player and we created a preview demo of how an end user could quickly create their OWN WORLD (private or public) out of premade favorite elements that they'd previously found or had received from their community. We reused a lot of the content we already had to test out the theory. Thus Ted went on an adventure. See the images below and click on them to see large full screen captures. No touchups etc, of course - all real time. If you have an existing community and your own IP, we'd love to hear from you so we can talk together about how you can deliver your content to your community via the web!

You can also check these images out at here at Flickr.

0.94 Preview Releases Online

After a somewhat hectic last few months which has seen some interesting new uses of VastPark, super-optimistic release dates slide past and a trip to a warm Los Angeles with not one, but two announcements, we’ve decided to open up our development snapshots to the public. 

These snapshots are the builds we use internally for development work and contain goodies from the coming 0.94 release. The links are ‘hot’ meaning that the files they link to will be updated regularly and without notice.

Note: Parks created in prior versions of the toolkit will likely require some minor changes to make them work as expected in these snapshot releases. Stay tuned for an article on migration or if you can’t wait that long, come say hello in the forums.

Get your snapshots from http://www.vastpark.com/index.php/dev-snapshots/

LuaInterface also google-coded

Some of you may know that I’ve recently added the role of LuaInterface maintainer to my repertoire and after some minor changes to the codebase, it’s now available over at google code for your viewing pleasure:

http://code.google.com/p/luainterface/

VastPark uses LuaInterface as the bridge for Lua scripting, which is our scripting language of choice. Its proven to be a great option for scripting for many game development houses worldwide and we have to agree, its flexibility and speed are much appreciated

I can see your Seoul

I will be speaking at XMediaLab in Seoul and then at both major London events in October.

If you have a project or proposal to discuss and want to meet in Seoul or London, let my team know so we can look to arrange a time. I’m looking forward to the events! If you haven’t heard of XMedialab, then you ought to do yourself a favour and attend one. It’s different from most conflabs because you really get the opportunity to get to know people and develop worthwhile relationships.

Added a GoogleGroup to VastServer Core

Last week we uploaded our open source server code to GoogleCode: code.google.com/p/vastserver-core. Today we got around to adding a GoogleGroup that developers can join to discuss issues with VastServer Core: groups.google.com/group/vastserver-core.

Open source client & server!

We’re announcing today that we’re developing an open source web-based virtual worlds player and that our open source virtual worlds server is now online. The web-based player will combine our current Browser and Viewer software along with exciting not-yet-released features and allow anyone to run and embed immersive virtual worlds inside of their web pages just like videos are being embedded into web pages today.

We are calling this new player the Immersion player. Why?  Because it reads and renders the Immersive media markup language (IMML) that we have developed as an open specification for developers to adopt royalty free.

In the last few hours people have been very curious when we plan on releasing the Immersion player. We’ve scheduled the first release to come out this year as a desktop version with source code and we plan on demonstrating the web-based version in March 2009.

You can read our press announcement here: www.vastpark.com/index.php/press/.

Earlier this year we talked about releasing an open source version of our server code. Just an hour ago we have put the VastServer Core source code up and available for download on GoogleCode: http://code.google.com/p/vastserver-core/.

We’re glad to get this release out the door as this marks a major milestone for the whole platform, which has been significantly remodelled since our initial software release in April. I’m very happy to say that version 0.94 of the VastPark Platform features a truly elegant architecture that hard core developers will appreciate. Now we’re working on preparing the Creator, Browser and Viewer for the v0.94 release. Still lots to do as we’ve got a lot of new features such as the first release of 3D widgets and our powerful new plug-ins system.

Just to be clear: We expect this release will be the last significant release of the Browser and Viewer. You’ll find that the Immersion player is a big step forward.

Come see us at VW Expo in LA

See VastPark in action at booth #317 at the Virtual World Expo in Los Angeles:

3rd and 4th of September at the Los Angeles Convention Center. If you’re attending be sure to stop by and say hello. We’ve got a number of announcements and Timtam chocolates!

We’re showing the latest unreleased work for VastPark v0.94 that should be available later this month. 3 of the VastPark team (Bruce, Craig and Steve) are here in LA for the event and we are sticking around for a few days afterwards, so get in touch and arrange a meeting with one of us.

Apply VW conference video

Here’s the 4minute video presentation which ran at the Apply Virtual Worlds conference run recently in London…

It begins with some general predictions on what will happen in the virtual worlds market over the next 12 months and then gives an intro to what we’re releasing soon with VastPark version 0.94. All 3D footage is inworld footage from VastPark demos. Enjoy.

Publisher Beta 1 Released!

Today marks the first of the v0.94 powered applications surfacing online, with Beta 1 of the Publisher released.

With this update, the Publisher is now closer to being a convenient content management hub, enabling media to be published, previewed, deleted and metadata to be edited.

New Features
- Preview content before publishing
- Preview existing content from the index
- Edit existing Item metadata
- Delete existing Items
- Preliminary publisher group support

Visit the download page for the installer and let us know what you think!

VPWS down for maintenance later today

Update 21st June, 4.30pm All done! Users with Publisher accounts will find the Publisher is temporarily broken, a fix is on the way shortly.

Update 21st June, 3.30pm Entering into another maintenance window now...

Update: Everything is back up and running, there will be another maintenance window occurring at a similar time on Monday.

The VastPark Webservice will be temporarily offline for an upgrade later today from 3pm GMT+10 for around 30 minutes. During this time the Creator, Publisher and Browser might behave slightly erratically. VastServer and the Viewer will not be disrupted.

Apologies for any inconvenience, this is one of the few remaining hurdles before we can get the next release out the door

Congratulations!

We would like to say a big congratulations to Andrew Burrell and Trish Adams for being awarded financing from The Australia Council for the Arts for their MMUVE IT project.

This is The The Australia Council for the Arts second virtual worlds arts initiative and Andrew and Trish’s project explores brainwave activity and body movement. 

More info on the MMUVE IT project

Steve: Stabbing update

Just spoke with Steve Eagle. He’s doing well considering how lucky he is to be alive.

If he hadn’t been only about 3 blocks from a hospital he would have most likely died from loss of blood. Also the hospital had a helicopter available to take him to emergency surgery at a top hosipital in Canada where they were able to stabilize him. He lost his spleen and half his pancreas. The knife passed through nearly every organ in his chest apart from his right lung, his heart and his intestines.

He is now able to take in liquids and he no longer needs oxygen tubes and fluid drainage from his lungs. So he’s recovering well. Thankfully he was very fit and healthy when this happened.

You can read about Steve’s stabbing