alice-teacher Alice VR and More

Thu Sep 19 07:13:57 EDT 2019

Hi,
I think that mobile as an IoT is a too small device to teach and learn. I
give them a quiz on mobile for checking their knowledge and nothing more
than that. That's just my opinion.

Matjaz

---
Matjaz Marussig ME
ISV
Oracle Silver Partner

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On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 at 12:55, Eric Brown <ewbrown at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> That is a great question and we do understand the price challenge of VR.
> We do hope to port to further platforms including mobile and stand alone
> VR.  We are initially targeting desktop in our timeline because it is the
> natural first step and for mobile we will need to build out an
> infrastructure to publish the app including a web platform to support a way
> for students to upload and access their worlds on the device (it will also
> require some performance and application size optimizations).
>
> We do hope that classes could get access to devices that have input
> devices (so even google daydream) so that the worlds can include
> programming events and interactivity.  We will definitely try to
> promote/share available grants to get hardware when we hear of them and
> please share them (if initially there are ways we can partner to do so we
> will also let everyone know).  We hope that since students can work
> normally and then use the same world in VR that even having access to just
> one device that could be used by all of the students would enable this
> exciting functionality or even taking their saved world to a library or
> some other community resource that might have hardware could be an option
> in the beginning.
>
>
> > On Sep 18, 2019, at 10:42 AM, Garth Flint <gflint at mcsmt.org> wrote:
> >
> > This sounds incredible!  My only question is will it port to an Android
> phone so we can use Google Cardboard?  Google Cardboard fits the school
> budget.  Oculus is well beyond the budget.
> >
> > Garth Flint
> > Technology Coordinator
> > Missoula Catholic Schools
> > (406)-531-7497
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 11:35 AM Eric Brown <ewbrown at andrew.cmu.edu>
> wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > In response to the last couple posts here is a quick outline of the
> Alice VR initiative as well as some other updates:
> >
> > The Alice VR initiative will work through a standalone (compiled) unity
> player application.  This will be used to run the students projects without
> them having to do anything in Unity itself.  Students will continue to
> author their worlds in the same Alice IDE you are using today with the
> addition of an export button in the file drop down (this is what we used
> for the demos we showed at the conferences).  They will then launch the
> player and select load world, browse to their save file, and run.  This
> same player will work to run Alice worlds in the unity player on desktop
> without VR.  If the player detects VR it will launch there.  Our first
> iteration will support Oculus (rift and rift s) desktop VR.  Here is our
> current release schedule and some more details on the goals:
> >
> > 1.  Alice stand alone player: We are excited about the initial launch of
> just the Unity player because we think some of the performance improvements
> in rendering will help support some of the larger and more complicated
> worlds students have been creating.  We also think it will make for a
> better presentation method as it will go full screen without the tool bar
> and will allow people to play worlds without having to first launch Alice
> and load from the editor.  We should be launching this in October. The more
> exciting features that we will continue to work on after that include:
> >
> > a.  A process that students can wrap their world individually in the
> unity player so that they can share and distribute their projects as stand
> alone applications.  This may require that they take our unity project (we
> will be open sourcing the code), loading up our code in Unity, and make a
> build with their saved world input in the right location.  Release TBD
> >
> > b.  A web hosted player.  We have tested a webgl version that seems to
> indicate that we will be able to create a process where students could host
> their worlds on a web server and serve their creation through a web
> browser.  To be determined will be if we host the platform and the ability
> to upload to our servers or if we make the full project with directions on
> how to host available or both.  Release TBD
> >
> > C.  Alice to Unity:  To be clear this player makes use of Unity but will
> not be used like netbeans to allow students to begin work on their projects
> in Alice and then transfer them into unity and modify them easily in
> Unity.  While we will explore ways that they could potentially tweak the
> output in Unity this work was not intended for this transition at this
> time.  We are working on lessons to help students translate what they have
> learned in Alice into early Unity projects separate from this initiative.
> >
> > 2.  Alice VR integration:  This work extends the unity player to make it
> work with VR cameras and input devices. We currently have the very basic
> integration working that translates the camera object to the VR headset.
> Worlds run in VR will display all of the Alice animation functionality but
> we have not tied in different input devices yet.  We plan to begin this
> work in earnest once the base unity player described above is completed in
> October (crossing fingers).  The tentative schedule for full integration
> including the ability to author vr inputs through events,  interface
> updates to incorporate VR event language, and the ability to preview active
> area for VR camera areas is January.  After the initial release we will
> continue to work on supporting further platforms including stand alone vr
> headsets.
> >
> > 3.  VR Beta:  We did demo this already at the conferences and do want to
> get it out as soon as we can with limited functionality because we think it
> is super cool.  We are currently working to clean up the current version
> that would allow Alice to run all of the base animation functionality in VR
> (and you can drive user inputs with the keyboard).  We will put in a small
> temporary hack to enable toggling to use a moveable camera with the
> joystick similar to the future functionality of programming an object move
> for camera event.  To use the beta you will need to download a beta version
> of Alice that will include the export function (it will save out a .a3w
> file format).  You should be able to open existing worlds in this version
> and then save them out.  You will also need to download the beta of the
> player.   Our initial development has made use of Steam VR so you may need
> to also install Steam and Steam VR.  We just made a push for this version
> and used it at Oracle Code 4!
>   K!
> >  ids in San Francisco last weekend.  We are doing a little more clean up
> and plan to make this available next week.
> >
> > 4.  Alice 3 Bug Fix Updates - We are also working on incorporating a
> couple bug fixes and new features into our next release.  We may put this
> out before the player release as these items may be helpful for those that
> would like to have earlier access to them:
> >
> > - Print code - we know that this functionality would be useful for
> student submissions for the Create task of CS Principles and also for you
> teachers who may want an easier way to quickly scan program code.  We have
> been working to implement this feature in Alice 3 and are cleaning up the
> output format now.
> >
> > - Billboard textures - We have had a bunch of reports on different bugs
> ranging from crash bugs to texture and scaling issues and we have been
> working through billboard functionality to clean a bunch of this up.
> >
> > - Built in joint arrays - for those of you using the railroad pieces we
> accidentally introduced a bug on our last release that broke this
> functionality.  We have fixed this issue.
> >
> > We hope to have more firm dates and ongoing updates as we start to roll
> out these exciting new features.  So stay tuned.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Eric
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