Monthly Archives: June 2009

Carnival Craze, a 3D iPhone App

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Carnival Craze is the first iPhone application I had worked on, and I hope it won’t be my last. iPhone game development and flash game development, in my opinion go hand in hand.  Many other flash game developer are jumping onto the iPhone after having a successful flash game. I hope I can follow 😉

This is the flash version of the game which was made after the iPhone game, and was given to the Family Channel for use on there website.  It has the general look and feel of the game, except its NOT 3D.

Play Carnival Craze!!

The text below is the press release for Cranival Craze, which caught some buzz at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Press Release

Canadian kids’ broadcaster Family Channel, the Sheridan Visualization Design Institute and Spatial View Inc. have collaborated, through an Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) project, to create a glasses-free 3D mini game for the Apple iPhone.

The result of the collaboration is a proof-of-concept mini game, unveiled today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Carnival Craze can be played and viewed in natural 3D, without glasses, on an Apple iPhone, equipped with a 3DeeShell from Toronto-based Spatial View.

“Spatial View Inc. is extremely enthusiastic about our participation in the OCE project with the Sheridan Visualization Design Institute and Family Channel,” said Brad Casemore, Spatial View’s Vice President Business Development. “It’s exciting to be able to work with these two great organizations on this project that advances our technology. As a result of this project, Spatial View will be able to identify improvements for the software and visualization tools we provide to 3D game developers and content creators, helping to reduce the costs and time-to-market associated with visually compelling content that can be viewed naturally in 3D.”

“We are excited to extend Family Channel’s engagement with young Canadians to include the development of innovative gaming on this highly interactive platform,” said Barbara Bailie, Director, Interactive, Astral Television Networks. “Gaming remains the most popular activity on our website, Family.ca, so we’re keen to extend our reach into gaming by having our Ontario-based Interactive team work closely with cutting-edge developers to deliver Family’s Never A Dull Moment experience to kids on the move.”

Spatial View provided its 3DeeShell, a protective iPhone case equipped with a special 3D viewing lens, as well as a software development kit (SDK). Spatial View also provided advisory and collaborative support to the project.

The Sheridan Visualization Design Institute designed and developed the game and refined the SDK working collaboratively with Spatial View’s development team. Family Channel provided sponsorship, creative and brand direction based on their team’s expertise in game-play for audiences aged eight to 14.

“This applied research project aligns Sheridan’s research goals with the business objectives of industry partners” said Director, Julia Walden. “By leveraging collaborating companies’ investment of cash and expertise, OCE has the right strategy to ensure that funding is available so that Sheridan’s students can apply sound academic methods to practical industry projects.”

“The project’s success also required three dimensions,” said John MacRitchie, Director of Business Development for OCE’s Centre of Excellence for Communications and Information Technology. “Spatial View, Family.ca and Sheridan Visualization Design Institute each bring unique expertise to the table to build a leading edge, 3D digital media experience. OCE is proud to seed a project that fuses innovative technology, creative content and the skills to integrate them into an exciting, new application.”

About Family Channel
Family Channel is a premium, commercial-free network offering the best in family television entertainment in 5.8 million homes across Canada. With nearly a million unique visitors a month, Family.ca is one of the most popular kids’ sites in Canada. Providing frequently updated, high-quality content, Family.ca is an online destination for kids and families. In addition to its games pages, Family.ca features contests, full-episode streams, video podcasts and program mini-sites.

Family Channel, an Astral Media Television Network; Astral Media is a leading Canadian media company, active in specialty and pay television, radio, outdoor advertising and iMedia. Astral Media’s solid and dynamic presence in the country’s major markets rests on its commitment to offer a unique combination of high-quality, targeted media for all its audiences.

About Sheridan Visualization Design Institute
Sheridan Visualization Design Institute conducts applied research within the Sheridan Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, and is dedicated to innovation in computer visualization specializing in deploying game technologies to create 3-D, real-time, environments. Situated within the Sheridan high tech animation teaching environment in Ontario, Canada, the research team has a ten-year track record of collaboration with industry and academic partners.

About Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE)
Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Inc. drives the commercialization of cutting-edge research across key market sectors to build the economy of tomorrow and secure Ontario’s global competitiveness. In doing this, OCE fosters the training and development of the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs and is a key partner with Ontario’s industry, universities, colleges, research hospitals, investors and governments. OCE’s five Centres work in communications and information technology, earth and environmental technologies, energy, materials and manufacturing and photonics. OCE is funded in part by the government of Ontario and is a key partner in delivering Ontario’s Innovation Agenda.

About Spatial View Inc.
Spatial View, Inc. (SVI) is a pioneer in 3D image processing and auto stereoscopic displays. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Spatial View has offices in San Francisco, Hong Kong and Dresden. With the registered consumer brand Wazabee, the international team develops products that transcend the boundaries of 2D imaging, opening new dimensions and interactive solutions in medicine, engineering, advertising, gaming and entertainment. The company’s vision is to make 3D more accessible, affordable, versatile, and inspiring. With the SVI family of software and a variety of high quality glasses-free 3D displays, Spatial View offers a wealth of adaptable solutions enabling the presentation of 3D rich content of all types for specialty as well as the consumer mass market. The first Wazabee products: 3DeeShell, 3DeeFlector and the 19-inch-Gaming Display, will be presented in early 2009.

IPlayer FLV Player

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IPlayer is a web-base FLV Player, which I created in 2006 for a project done at VDI, it has been modified over the years gaining more functionality. IPlayer was coded originally in Actionscript 1.0, then upgraded to Actionscript 2.0, future versions may look at implementing Actionscript 3.0.

Download IPlayer
File Version Date Downloads
IPlayer_v1.1.zip 1.1 11.11.2008
[downloadcounter(IPlayer_v1.1.zip)]
Installation

To install IPlayer simply put the IPlayer.swf file into a web directory on your server. Then do the same with the IPlayer.js file, they don’t have to be in the same directory for example one could be in the js directory and the other could be in the flash directory the choice is yours. The rest of the files in the download package are source files and example movies, they are not needed to use IPlayer only if you are interested in modifying it.

Using IPlayer

To get IPlayer working is pretty simple, there are a few steps needed to get it working I will go through them now.

Step 1 (Adding Javascript):

Basically in this step we need to add the IPlayer.js file to the HTML page we want to display our movie on. Let’s assume that our IPlayer.js file is located in a fold on the web root called js and your HTML page is located on the web root. Remember this is an example you may change directory names, and locations to suit your needs. Now simply add this code to your page between the HEAD tags:

[code lang=”html4strict”]

[/code] That is it for the step 1, now on to step 2.

Step 2 (Calling js function to load the Player)

Here is where we will implement the player on the HTML page, IPlayer uses a simple javascript function to add the flash object, and it also takes a few parameters to configure the player. Here is the code, copy and paste it between the BODY tags of the HTML page.
[code lang=”html4strict”]
[/code]
The function loadplayer has 7 parameters:

  1. Player Location: This parameter indicates where IPlayer.swf is located, in this example it is located on the web root, but as stated before it can be located anywhere in your web directories e.g. (/flash, /player, /flash/IPlayer…)
  2. Width: The width of the flv file.
  3. Height: The height of the flv file.
  4. Position: Where IPlayer will be placed on the page, values for this are ‘left’, ‘middle’, ‘right’
  5. Background Color: disabled in this version.
  6. Movie: The web directory where the movie is located along with the name of the movie. Once again this value is anywhere you want your flvs to be located, and remember that the path must be relative to the HTML page.
  7. Buffer: The amount of time the Movie will buffer before being able to start playing. In this version of IPlayer the buffer time is always 10, later version will have control of how much buffer time is used.
Step 3: More Functionality

IPlayer also has the ability to reload itself to play another movie, this is done by calling another javascript function called reloadplayer(). The function reloadplayer() is similar to the loadplayer function with less parameters. Below we will implement reloadplayer() using anchor tags.

[code lang=”html4strict”]
Movie 1
Movie 2
[/code]

Here is a description of the parameters used in reloadplayer:

  1. Movie: This is the path to the FLV relative to the HTML page. In the example above a variable was used to represent the path to the movie. You may use a string variable if you want e.g. “movie/move.flv”
  2. Buffer: Same as the loadplayer function 10 is the only acceptable number.
  3. Width: The width of the flv.
  4. Height: The height of the flv.
In Conclusion

That’s it for the walk through, as you can see its pretty easy to implement a simple page with a movie player on it.

The download of IPlayer contains the exact same HTML code used in the above example called example.html, it also includes all the source files as well as 2 flvs for testing purposes.

If there is any other questions please feel free to leave a comment below and I will try and help out to the best of my ability.




Collision Investigation Skid Marks

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This series of lessons contains animations and simulations designed to teach police officers how to estimate a vehicle’s speed from four different types of skid marks.

Each lesson begins with a tutorial and a 3D movie showing a collision and the type of skid mark it produces. A second movie shows how the police officer should measure and record the length of the skid mark.

Next, a simulation lets the learner explore the effect of different road conditions by generating skid marks for the learner to measure, record and estimate the vehicle’s speed.

The final module in each lesson provides police officers with a math tool to apply the appropriate formula to estimate a vehicle’s speed from skid marks.

These materials were produced for the Justice Knowledge Network, a five-year research and development project to develop e-learning for Canadian police forces.

Suspect Apprehension Pursuit

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SAP is a basic refresher-training course that focuses on pursuit regulations and techniques based upon the Ontario Police Service Act’s Suspect Apprehension Pursuits Regulation. It provides a review of basic pursuit training, current pursuit regulations and provides an overview of various pursuit situations.

The course consists of eight lessons, most of which are presented as tutorials followed by practice quizzes to test the students’ understanding of the lesson. Two lessons also contain animated movies that illustrate various techniques officers use to pursue and stop a vehicle.

The regulation itself is presented as a missing-word game where students gain or lose points depending on their understanding of the regulation. This is done so as to encourage the students to read the regulation carefully.

The course concludes with a final exam that provides students with a self-test of their knowledge. The exam can be repeated as often as desired, each time with some different questions randomly selected from the lesson quizzes.

This course was produced for the Justice Knowledge Network, a five-year research and development project to develop e-learning for Canadian police forces.

Transfusion Medicine Online Learning

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The object of this educational research project was to determine if a case-based, self-directed e-learning module could effectively supplement core learning objectives in the health sciences program. Our partner was the Faculty of Health Sciences of the McMaster University.

The VDI team worked with Doctors Anthony Levinson, Sarah Garside, and Kathryn Webert from McMaster to create a web-based e-learning course to teach principles of transfusion medicine. This is an interdisciplinary topic that frequently “slips through the cracks” of the curriculum.

The project integrated elements of learning theory and instructional design that were consistent with new MD curriculum goals. These included:

  • Literature search and expert consensus to identify content objectives and core concepts.
  • An e-tutor to promote guided discovery within a tutorial mode.
  • An interactive interface to promote active learning.
  • Pre-tests to orient learners and measure their prior learning as well as measures of their confidence.
  • A problem-based/case-based approach.
  • Interactive elements such as clinical pearls and key facts.
  • Animations of key concepts and mechanisms.
  • Mini-cases to buttress learning through elements of deliberate and mixed practice.
  • Practical clinical issues to aid integration into practice (e.g. Writing orders, obtaining informed consent).
  • Post-tests for self-evaluation of the learner’s new knowledge and level of confidence in that knowledge.
  • Funding for this research project was partly supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Bayer Healthcare.