Research - Mayan Puzzle

Did more research to figure out the puzzle for the Mayan age. Tried to find a common thread that would connect it with the Greek period.

Also, went to get our wireless controller from CompUsa. After holding the Saitek and the Thrustmaster one more time, we decided to purchase the wireless Saitek. Happily it was on sale.

More Work on the Solids

Worked on sanding down the Perfect Solids to create even/hard edges that appear stonelike rather than claylike.

Platonic (Perfect) Solids

Contructed a set of perfect solids from polymer clay for possible use as our "tool" objects.

More on gamepads

Song found a few other options that looked good. However, in the end they didn't have what we wanted in a controller. This sparked us to keep looking. We ended up back at our first two choices. We're going to schedule another trip back out to see them to make our final purchasing decision.

Spent the rest of the day determining how we will power the AR viewer. Looked at different battery packs and discussed how much power we'd need, how we'd connect it, house it, charge it, etc. The thought occurred we could use a standard laptop battery and we could swap these out with Song's G4 battery, but this may have connectivity issues as well as management issues (i.e. is the other battery charged, where's the laptop to charge it, etc.). Stephen is leaning toward a barebones battery pack for cheap and having a few for swapping out and charging. Song said she'd try to find a suitable connector for the laptop battery before we make a decision.

Wireless gamepad Research

Spent the entire day looking at more gamepad options. Since we're going PC now, we no longer care if the controller is Mac compatible or not. We honed in on two main options. We drove out to a few retailers to see and feel these controllers. We're going to sleep on it.

AR Camera (never get tired of this topic)

To a certain degree we're having to just jump in and buy this camera. It's the closest we can tell to what we want, when one considers the possibility that it appears some misinformation or errors about its specs were posted. We're leaping in and buying this one, however we have a back-up plan with regard to its FOV--we have found a vendor for replacement pinhole lenses which we could use to match our specs if needed.

Also stopped by Al Lasher's and picked up a CR2477 battery to complete the parts needed for our cube lighting.

AR Camera (never get tired of this topic)

We made the trip out to Concord to visit Fry's. It wasn't "all that". But we did buy our cube lighting resistors and a little board to possibly mount the LEDs onto.

Did more research on AR Camera options. After much math, we think we might have the camera we want picked out already but we want an email confirming a few things from the seller.

UHF video transmitter purchase

Did some final research for our UHF transmitter and selected one. Purchased this for about $30. It can transmit over a number of possible channels between Ch. 14 and 26 (or something like that). Point is, we have options.

Another Modern Symbol

I had the idea that dna would be a good symbol/marker for the modern age. I drew a dna helix that is unraveling on the end.

More camera research

Needing to get our technological equipment together, we did more camera research for our AR Viewer.

Apollo Through the Ages

Stephen and I discussed not using the Apollo animation for the Greek time period, but instead as a finale that plays once the puzzles have been solved. It could be used like a movie sequence in a video game, and Apollo can ride through the ages tying them all together.

Window Treatment Practice

Song and I did a full treatment of a large piece of glass to practice applying the film and to see if results were better with our ProtoTUI when the surface was more uniform. Viewing the table from below (camera angle), we saw that shadows on the table surface cast by the overhead projector itself may be interfering with the marker identification. We also saw how direct light projections of any significant intensity would disturb the camera's auto-exposure/auto-gain settings and throw the marker tracking off.

These observations led to a few ideas. First, due to the sensitivity from shadows, lighting for our table exhibits should come from slightly behind the exhibit table (in front of the viewer) to minimize shadows cast across the surface with the markers caused by the participant (for example, if the light were behind the participant toward the table exhibit). Second, multipoint lighting should be used to eliminate harsh shadows across the tabletops. Third, an opaque area placed in the center of the table directly between the camera and the projector could prevent bright, high-contrast lights that are moving across the table from sending too much light directly into the camera's iris and causing settings to change and marker tracking problems. We may also want to determine the EXACT manual settings we'd need to use though some camera chips are made to do their own auto-adjustments anyway.

Horse Gallup...Success

Worked on the horse again today, it now looks mostly convincing as it leaps into action from a trot cycle to a gallup. I will turn this in tonight. We also have our thesis review tonight.

Horse Gallup

With Stephen's help I got the animation for the horse started.

ProtoARViewer & ProtoTUI

Spent time today putting together the demonstrations for the committe review of our AR Viewer and TUI technology progress. Researched some of Phil's work for demo content and added music from Carl Sagan's old show "Cosmos"--beauty, eh!

With Song's help, we finalized the puzzle-piece type object tracking designs and incorporated them into our TUI prototype. Got it all running. We discussed some other content scenarios and Song did some concept drawings of some of the Age puzzles. Song suggested the idea of doing a Mayan temple model ON the calendar wheel of the Mayan Age puzzle.

Animating the Horse

Started animating the horse using the modified savekey scrip that andrew made to aid in the animation of the biped. Results were less than stellar. The horses legs move wildly and in slow motion. I will erase the key frames I created tonight and start fresh tommorrow. I think a keyframe every three frames will be better than every ten (so he won't be in slow motion).

Review Documentation

Song and I sat down and put together a summary of the work we did over the Fall term and went over what we would show to the committee.