Our meeting SL Business Communicators meeting last Friday with UCI professor Crista Lopes a.k.a. Diva Canto flew by - literally. We got the chance to see the coolest rezzing process ever -and it was the SL prototype of the RL magnetic levitation transportation pod project, SkyTran. Below Professor Lopes explains the project and how she is using SL to inform the RL engineers and planners.
We're aiming at organizing an upcoming meeting with Unimodal who is driving the RW transportation system in California.
Introduction
Diva Canto: I gave everyone a landmark for our workshop in the sky
Znetlady Isbell: Got it.
Diva Canto: we'll move there in a bit
Csven Concord: Gracias, Diva.
Brandon Catteneo: OK
IYan Writer: ty Diva
Znetlady Isbell: Diva, maybe I should introduce you? Should I do that while
we wait a moment?
Csven Concord: Speech! Speech!
Diva Canto: yes, you're the master of ceremony!
Znetlady Isbell: LOL!! Diva Canto is an associate professor at University of
Calif., Irvine.
Znetlady Isbell: She came to UCI via Xerox's PARC
Diva Canto: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes
Znetlady Isbell: and she is the headmaster here at SkyTran, helping the RL
company Unimodal bring it to life in the RL.
Znetlady Isbell: She'll tell you more about that, AND..
Znetlady Isbell: she is the developer of the new SLBrowser SL search engine
Znetlady Isbell: which is both a HUD and a web-based google-ish SE.
Znetlady Isbell: I use it all the time - a fast way to locate things out of
world.
Znetlady Isbell: She's been written up in the the Orange County Register about
this project and she tells me it is getting a lot of attention.
Znetlady Isbell: Diva, what did I miss?
Diva Canto: that's right, lots of web publications picked that up
Diva Canto: oh, that's about right
Znetlady Isbell: She's a fast typist too. lol
Diva Canto: :-)
Diva Canto: ok, so let me talk first about skytran, ok?
Znetlady Isbell: Please!!
SkyTran Project
Diva Canto: this is a prototype of a PRT system that's being designed by a
company here in Irvine
Diva Canto: PRT = Personal Rapid Transit
Diva Canto: it's the kind of transportation system that we see in sci-fi
movies :-)
Csven Concord: Maglev?
Diva Canto: they have developed a magnetic levitation technology yjay yjey
believe will enable that to happen
Csven Concord: *shuts up
Diva Canto: :-)
Diva Canto: np ask questions, interrupt me
Diva Canto: anyway
Diva Canto: they are looking to deploy a small prototype, proof-of-concept,
somewhere in California
Diva Canto: within the next couple of years
Diva Canto: they needed some help with the control software
Csven Concord: Attractive or repulsive?
Diva Canto: what do you mean?
Diva Canto: maglev?
Csven Concord: Yes
Diva Canto: oh, I'm afraid I don't know enough about maglev technology
*lughs*
Csven Concord: Just curious.
IYan Writer: isn't it repulsive by definition? otherwise it'd stick to the
track
Csven Concord: No.
Diva Canto: you can ask them or check their web site
Diva Canto: anyway, we helped them on ghe control software
Diva Canto: that's not the low-level control, but the logic control of the
cars
Diva Canto: -- when cars start and stop moving, their velocities, etc
Diva Canto: background --
Diva Canto: real-world systems have two or more levels of control
Diva Canto: the lowest one is very close to the physics of the system
Diva Canto: so, making sure thaty when the upper layers says "go at 100 mph"
it stays at 100mph
Diva Canto: stuff like that.
Diva Canto: but above that there are more layers of control
Diva Canto: so, we ignored the low level layers -- because SL's physics
sucks
Brandon Catteneo chuckles
Diva Canto: we made some emulations of the low level behavior, and proceeded
to study the higher-level logic
Diva Canto: the controller here controls the scheduling of the cars
Diva Canto: plus we did, as you see, 3D modeling of their system.
Diva Canto: this is actually very accurate, it was dsone according to their
specs
Diva Canto: and during the process, we found several bugs in their design,
which they promptly corrected
Bruce Voight: can you descrie, if any, safety features that are or will be
installded.
Diva Canto: oh there's all sorts of safety controls. we haven't simulated
those yet
Diva Canto: what you see here is just the beginning -- the scheduling --
making sure that the cars don't collide
Diva Canto: with each other, that is
Diva Canto: the engineers at Unimodal think this has been a super-valuable
tool for them
Bruce Voight: and also earthquake and power outtage features I assume.
Diva Canto: oh yes, lots and lots and lots of safety issue here!
Control System: The Guideway Brain
Csven Concord: Could you explain the control system a bit?
Diva Canto: safety will basically account for most of the code
Diva Canto: hmm, I'm afraid I can't go into the details of their control
Diva Canto: that's been NDA'ed
Csven Concord: So, if I were to ask if there are any levels of autonomy, you
couldn't answer - ?
Diva Canto: I can answer that.
Bruce Voight: will the controls be controlled by the driver or a master
steersman.....Like a rollercoaster?
Diva Canto: the autonomy is in each station controller
Diva Canto: the cars are relatively dumb
Csven Concord: ok
Diva Canto: I measn "passive" -- that's a better term :-)
Diva Canto: the guideway is the "brain" in a way
Diva Canto: it's also the guideway that makes the cars move
Diva Canto: that's part of their maglev technology
Diva Canto: so the staion controller sends signals to the guideway bricks
Diva Canto: if you zoom in, you'll see that the guideway is made of small
bricks
Csven Concord: Did you emulate it in SL?
Diva Canto: there's over 500 of them
Csven Concord: I mean, code-wise.
Diva Canto: yes -- everything
Diva Canto: there's a lot of "talking" between the bricks and the controller
Brandon Catteneo: So those are all scripted to align to each other?
Csven Concord: So each brick is "sensing" the train.
Diva Canto: yes. I wanted to show you the rez of the guideway, cos that's
really cool to see
Diva Canto: but this guideway down here is not responding to my commands --
my studemts must have messed it up yesterday
Diva Canto: let's go to our worlshop, shall we?
Diva Canto: it's it on the clouds.
Diva Canto: I gave most of you the landmark
Diva Canto: for the others, please pull up the map, notice a platform on the
upper left corner of this sim, and TO there
Diva Canto: or fly -- if you have a device that allows you to fly above the
clouds
To the SkyTran Workshop in the Sky
Bruce Voight: OK....The TP is too close...Have to TP somewhere else and then
to your shop.
Pebbles Hannya: It won't let me TP to the landmark.
Brandon Catteneo: I have the LM I can give it to whomever needs it
Csven Concord: fyi, @IYan, an "attractive" system has a T-shaped rail.
Magnets are under the "t" arms, and the attraction raises the vehvicle above
the top of the "T"
IYan Writer: ty csven, checked it out on wikipedia in the mean time :)
Csven Concord: Kind of a wrap-around.
Csven Concord: Ah. That'll work.
IYan Writer: but thanks :)
Csven Concord: I'd originally planned to get into maglev design after the
military.
RezTrackV29: Resetting Bricks
RezTrackV29: Resetting Virtual Points
Csven Concord: Not much in the U.S> unfortunately.
Diva Canto: ok, I made the whole thing disappear :-)
Diva Canto: Let me try to pull those other people up before I show the demo
Diva Canto: oh, try not to click on the objects!! :-)
Rissa Maidstone: / I'm sorry I got here late, this may have been covered. Is
this a project for CalTrans?
Diva Canto: this is an active workspace, you'll probably mess things up :-)
Znetlady Isbell: Hi, Rissa!
Diva Canto: no, not caltrans. This is Unimodal Inc. -- SkyTran
Brandon Catteneo: Just looking at the properties
Rissa Maidstone: Hi Znetlady :)
Brandon Catteneo: But thanks for telling me
Znetlady Isbell: I think it's what you are looking for Rissa!
Diva Canto: Anyway
Rissa Maidstone: Unimodal must be planning on "selling" this to
someone--it's a huge initiative.
Diva Canto: there's still one person down.
Rissa Maidstone: Me too Znetlady
Znetlady Isbell: Let me see if I can go help. Please go ahead Diva
Diva Canto: ok, I'll rez the track
Diva Canto: Is the machinima person here?
Diva Canto: Hi John and Rissa, aren't you guys from the Dr. Dobbs events?
John Zhaoying: Yup.
Rissa Maidstone grins.
Diva Canto: I thought I knew you
Rissa Maidstone: Part of what we do
John Zhaoying: How are you, Diva?
Diva Canto: Linda, are you here?
Pebbles Hannya: I think she went to try to find the missing person.
Diva Canto: ok, I'll wait a bit for her, cos the rezzing of the track is
really cool to see
Diva Canto: any questions?
Diva Canto: oh there she is
Znetlady Isbell: I think we have everyone.
Diva Canto: ok. zoom out everyone!
Rezzing and Riding SkyTran
Csven Concord: Do the track elements receive speed info and relay propulsive
commands to the vehicle?
Pebbles Hannya: Is there some sort of emergency button in the cars? For example, what
if someone is in one and it's already set to go somewhere and they have a
heart attack?
Diva Canto: I'll answer all of those questions in a bit. Let me create the
system
Diva Canto: look now!
Diva Canto: zoom out
IYan Writer: cool!
Diva Canto: really out
Post Wylie: neat indeed!
Diva Canto: the engineers wish they could do this in real life :-)
Rissa Maidstone chuckles.
Pebbles Hannya: Even in SL it's a neat trick!
Post Wylie: wont be too long....
Diva Canto: so, these bricks -- their size, position, rotation -- are made
according to the specs
Csven Concord: Imported track geometry data?
Diva Canto: "import" is a strong word :-)
Csven Concord: Granted.
Diva Canto: it was done manually
Diva Canto: the guideway has sections
John Zhaoying: Neat rez process.
Diva Canto: we were able to codify each section into an algorithm
John Zhaoying: Do the tracks form based on a call signal from the red
spheres?
Diva Canto: there ar ethe vehicles
Diva Canto: and some decoration
Diva Canto: now three of you can ride
Diva Canto: one at a time
Diva Canto: anyone wants to sit on the first car?
Central Station v87: clock start
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned logical vp: 20
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned physical vp: 20
Vehicle_1 shouts: Bogey got LVP: 20 brick calc starting pos: <67.99619,
238.45389, 260.97198>
Diva Canto: yuo can only ride to the car in front
Diva Canto: you have to wait
Vehicle_1 shouts: starting pos: <65.85220, 238.43889, 260.97198>
Diva Canto: off he goes!
Diva Canto: second person?
Brandon Catteneo: lol
IYan Writer: let's see if he comes back safely first ;)
Brandon Catteneo: I was unsuccessful at that
Diva Canto: lol
Rissa Maidstone: laugh!
Diva Canto: just sit on the first car
Znetlady Isbell: anyone?
Diva Canto: I can send it off empty too
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned logical vp: 4
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned physical vp: 4
Vehicle_1 shouts: Bogey got LVP: 4 brick calc starting pos: <67.99599,
238.45399, 260.97198>
Vehicle_1 shouts: Be Patient, bogey is waiting to start
Vehicle_1 shouts: starting pos: <65.85200, 238.43900, 260.97198>
John Zhaoying shouts: Hey! I can see my house from here!
Diva Canto: you can't sit on the car unless it's in the front of the line
Znetlady Isbell: lol
Rissa Maidstone: laugh!
Pebbles Hannya: In RL will there be one single route, or will cars branch off to go
different places?
Brandon Catteneo: maybe its my AO
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned logical vp: 16
Central Station v87 shouts: Station Assigned physical vp: 16
Vehicle_1 shouts: Bogey got LVP: 16 brick calc starting pos: <67.99599,
238.45399, 260.97198>
Vehicle_1 shouts: Be Patient, bogey is waiting to start
Diva Canto: in real life there are two phases for this project
Vehicle_1 shouts: starting pos: <65.85200, 238.43900, 260.97198>
Rissa Maidstone: The red and black balls are acting as a traffic
control/signal system?
Diva Canto: Rissa: yes. it's a visualization of our control system
Rissa Maidstone: Great.
Diva Canto: so they want to build a prototype first
Rissa Maidstone: You work for Unimodal Diva?
Znetlady Isbell: No, Rissa UCI
Diva Canto: the first prototypes will be exactly like this
Rissa Maidstone: Ok
QueueManager v10 shouts: vehicles_id:
QueueManager v10 shouts: curVehiclesInQueue: 0
QueueManager v10 shouts: last in queue vehicle id: 0
Znetlady Isbell: Professor Crista Lopes
Diva Canto: one single loop, one single statin
Diva Canto: but the idea is that there will be branches and lots of stations
Diva Canto: that's where the fun starts, fromthe control perspective
Central Station v87 shouts: Station freeing logical vp: 20
Rissa Maidstone: What is the advantage/cost compared to existing light rail?
Diva Canto: welcome back John
John Zhaoying: Wow, neat.
John Zhaoying: I hadn't realized I'd been unseated.
QueueManager v10 shouts: vehicles_id: 0
QueueManager v10 shouts: curVehiclesInQueue: 1
QueueManager v10 shouts: last in queue vehicle id: 0
Csven Concord: Frictionless
Diva Canto: you'll have to ask that to the Unimodal people, and people who
are into PRT. But from what OI understand
Pebbles Hannya: So the person would stay in a single car for their whole journey rather
than having to change to a different track at a station like on a subway?
Rissa Maidstone chuckles at John.
Diva Canto: yes -- this is a point-to-point system
Diva Canto: no need to go in bluks of people
Brander Heron: ETA for a working prototype?
Central Station v87 shouts: Station freeing logical vp: 4
Diva Canto: theoretically this is a lot more efficiently
Brandon Catteneo: This must've been dirt cheap for them.
IYan Writer: very cool!
QueueManager v10 shouts: vehicles_id: 0, 2
QueueManager v10 shouts: curVehiclesInQueue: 2
QueueManager v10 shouts: last in queue vehicle id: 2
Diva Canto: ETA: according to Unimodal, 2 years
John Zhaoying: Is there something about the track construction or other
details that doesn't make point-to-point incredibly wasteful of resources?
IYan Writer: /ao on
Diva Canto: I guess it's their maglev technology
Rissa Maidstone: Frictionless--smoother ride, lower maintenance costs, lower
energy usage?
Diva Canto: they say they can do it relatively cheap
Central Station v87 shouts: Station freeing logical vp: 16
John Zhaoying: Well, that's the engine. But you can do maglev for 'subways'
too. I'm talking about the logic of providing a capsule per person, vs. a
capsule for many people.
Csven Concord: I'd expect maintenance to be higher initially; new tech is
usually full of surprises.
Diva Canto: to give you some context -- I'm not a magle or PRT expert. I
think it would be great if we could hav ethe Unimodal people here too, so
they could answer those questions better than me
Brandon Catteneo: I mean this mock-up, doing it in SL, must've saved them a
good deal of money.
Design Problems Identified Through Simulation
John Zhaoying: Absolutely. Plus, with more moving parts, you have way more
points of failure.
Csven Concord: Tho the Japanese and Germans have been working on it for
quite a while now.
Diva Canto: yes that was the point of the simulation
Diva Canto: they were able to detect some design problems
Rissa Maidstone: Could you give an example?
John Zhaoying: i.e., the intelligence in each car, here, is equivalent to
the intelligence required to drive a whole subway train. So you have a point
of failure per person.
Diva Canto: and we're able to show this to a wide audience -- press, VCs,
potential partners
Csven Concord: Diva, are you moving this to Havok 4 anytime soon?
John Zhaoying: Whereas on a subway train, you take extra processors and
cheaply provide redundancy to your limited points of failure.
Diva Canto: no, not anytime soon. I want to focus on the high-level control
first
Diva Canto: physics is another whole thing
Diva Canto: there's another group
Diva Canto: in another UC campus that may do that part
Rissa Maidstone: Are they planning on carrying more than 1 person per "car"?
Diva Canto: I think it's a 2-people car
Rissa Maidstone: And back to design flaws, can you be more specific on
how/what was discovered?
IYan Writer: if you want to go "backwards", do you have to traverse almost
whole of the track? ie, is it one-way?
Diva Canto: @rissa, let me answer that
Rissa Maidstone grins.
Diva Canto: first, we found problems with their calculations of the
positions and rotations of the bricks
Diva Canto: so they fixed that
John Zhaoying: iYan -- yeah, that's interesting. A system without
T-junctions would compel a lot of backtracking. But can you do a T-junction
in maglev?
Diva Canto: then we found a serious design problem with the station
Diva Canto: on their first design, they had the upper track right on top of
the lower track at the station/
Diva Canto: in their concept drawings it looked good. let me get you a
picture
Rissa Maidstone: Great and this is next queston since I already typed it :)
Interesting--and this was all brought in from AutoCadd? or how was the
conversion to SL performed?
John Zhaoying: So you guys came in and fixed an SL design-in-progress, then?
Diva Canto: but when we made it here and looked at it in this immersive
manner, it didn't look so good
Diva Canto: it looked quite unsafe to me
Diva Canto: so I told them, brought them here, and they agreed that it was a
bad idea
IYan Writer: RL design, john
Rissa Maidstone: Makes a big difference to be able to "see" the conceptual
design.
Diva Canto: they went back to the drawing table and produced this other
layout
Diva Canto: where the station if horizontally offset
Csven Concord: What tools *are* they using?
Diva Canto: there was yet another design problem
Diva Canto: when they rode the car and used the mouselook view
Diva Canto: they realized that they had to be very carefull with the roof of
the car
Diva Canto: it must cover the sight of the track above
Diva Canto: because people prone to eppileptic attacks may have one :-)
Rissa Maidstone: Are you doing noise simulaton too?
John Zhaoying: Because they're seeing a rapidly-flickering pattern?
Rissa Maidstone: That's got to be part of the concern with this type of
infrastructure.
Diva Canto: no, no noise simulation
Diva Canto: @john - yes
John Zhaoying: Maglev is very quiet
Diva Canto: here: http://www.unimodal.com/
John Zhaoying: It's levitative, so no friction to produce noise.
Diva Canto: that's how their original concept was
Rissa Maidstone: I'm sure, but it's likely it went through some kind of
"hush house" or noise simulation in order to become very quiet.
Diva Canto: they changed it to pull the station out
John Zhaoying: No, it's just that when there's no contact between any
physical component, there's no noise.
Csven Concord: There are no "touching" elements.
Diva Canto: right. you know what? maybe Linda can invite the SkyTran people
here one day
Diva Canto: PRT is really interesting in itself
Diva Canto: and their technology too, obviously
Rissa Maidstone: Yes, and I'd love to talk to them if they come in.
John Zhaoying: Your worry in systems like this is EMF. The Gauss on maglev
magnets is huge, and you have all sorts of power going to maintain flux.
Rissa Maidstone: Agreed
Diva Canto: yeah, there are all kinds of problems. They think they have good
solutions for them
John Zhaoying: Component hum might be - almost certainly is - an issue if
there's anything conductive in the tracks besides the magnet coilbars.
Diva Canto: anyway, we're focusing here on the logic control and failures at
that leve;
Diva Canto: this has been quite useful for everyone
Rissa Maidstone: I'm only asking these questions because it's interesting to
see how a project like this is incepted here and how far you can take it to
simulate
John Zhaoying: So what's the logic architecture, Diva?
Pebbles Hannya: Speaking of that, will you do the next stage of simulation here too --
where different people want to go different places?
John Zhaoying: All asynchronous state machines talking to each other?
Diva Canto: the part that controls the scheduling of the cars and their
speed at any point of the track
Csven Concord: You could simulate the noise. Each brick could trigger a
sound event as it was propelling the vehicle.
John Zhaoying: Is it controlled deterministically from toplevel?
Diva Canto: I'm afraid I can't go into details, I'm NDA-ed on that
Rissa Maidstone: Understood :)
John Zhaoying: Or are the cars smart enough to figure out the world on their
own?
Diva Canto: no the cars are relatively passive in this system
Diva Canto: the stations are the brains
Diva Canto: the stations "talk" to the guideway bricks
John Zhaoying: Oh, interesting.
Diva Canto: and the bricks are the ones that make the cars move, slow down,
speed up, etc
John Zhaoying: So it's like routers talking to each other about
packets-in-transit on an out-of-band connection. MPLS for concrete and
steel.
Diva Canto: "routers" is a great keyword!
Diva Canto: this is, in fact, a physical object network
Diva Canto: not unlike the internet
Central Station v87: clock pause
Diva Canto: but, of course, we can't "drop" packets here :-)
Farley Scarborough smiles
John Zhaoying: No ... that would be bad. (grin)
Rissa Maidstone chuckles.
John Zhaoying: But you can _stop_ packets here.
Diva Canto: yes, indeed
John Zhaoying: the lines are the input buffers.
Diva Canto: so there are similarities and differences
John Zhaoying: So in that sense, you can produce 100% QoS on all
connections.
Diva Canto: the model of the internet is a good one to look at, but there
are differences that cannot be ignord
John Zhaoying: In terms of packet retention. Not delivery.
Diva Canto: yes - retention must be 100% :-)
Pebbles Hannya: Unfortunately I need to go, but this has been really interesting.
Thanks Diva, and you too Z.
John Zhaoying: It's really more like an MPLS network. Where you have a fixed
channel architecture.
Austen Scanlan accepted your inventory offer.
Diva Canto: let me know if you have more questions about this, Feel free to email me or call me
Diva Canto: lopes@ics.uci.edu
Diva Canto: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes
Introducing SLBrowser
Diva Canto: I have another cool project to talk about, but I'm not sure we have time?
Farley Scarborough is all ears
Znetlady Isbell: Please go ahead = SLBowser?
Diva Canto: yes, it's a search engine
Post Wylie: shoot, Luke, your faded....
Diva Canto: http://slbrowser.com
Csven Concord: Out of curiousity, why SL instead of... for example... a game engine (where the physics would allow lower level investigation)?
Diva Canto: @Csven
Diva Canto: that was because I wanted to find out if SL could be used for these kinds of things
Diva Canto: the immersion factor is a great thing to have
Csven Concord: Makes sense.
Diva Canto: so I wanted to find the limits of a tool like SL
Diva Canto: there are limits, of course, and not all modeling should be done here
Diva Canto: anyway, sens more questions by email. let me talk a bit about my bots :-)
Diva Canto: slbrowser is a search engine like google
Diva Canto: it works like this: we have 14 bots that crawl the grid twice a week
Diva Canto: right now they look like snowmen :-)
Diva Canto: they go around looking for objects on sale
Diva Canto: and we store that information on a server outside.
Diva Canto: We then index it and serve search.
Diva Canto: the indexing has some notion of relevance
Diva Canto: we use an relevance method that is quite unique
Diva Canto: since the bots can see who created the objects inworld, we then compute the statistics of who are the main builders of SL
Diva Canto: there's about 50,000 people who have built SL, essentially
Znetlady Isbell: ah - the 1% rule.
Diva Canto: :-)
Diva Canto: so then we crawl Linden Lab's web pages and scrape the Top Picks of thode 50,000 people
Diva Canto: then we use that to boost those places and their products
Diva Canto: so it's a recommendation-based relevance, where we choose the recommenders very carefully
John Zhaoying: There's a level, though ...
John Zhaoying: ... at which, at first blush, you'd think corporations in SL would _fear_ that.
Znetlady Ibell: lol
John Zhaoying: That's a hard system to game, right?
Csven Concord: And you haven't had the kind of *polite* feedback which other search engines received?
Diva Canto: yes, very hard
Diva Canto: hard to game
Diva Canto: oh...
Diva Canto: actually, the amount of complaints has been really really low
John Zhaoying: But in another sense, they shouldn't. Because (I guess) the search would inevitably be weighted heavily to the picks of the most prolific builders, all of whom are metaverse developers, mostly in the employ (direct or indirect) of corporations.
Diva Canto: some people have contacted me, sometimes very annoyed. I simply do whatever they want
Diva Canto: if they want me to delist their products, I do that in a couple of hours
Diva Canto: so, it has been a relatively smooth ride
Znetlady Isbell: so, basically though it is weighted against a newcomer or less frequent builder?
Brander Heron: What's the rationale for a delist?
Diva Canto: yes
Diva Canto: only if people ask to be delisted
Brander Heron: What reason do they provide, I mean?
Diva Canto: oh, they have all sorts of fears
Csven Concord: What about the freebies? They're sometimes everywhere.
Rissa Maidstone: Diva, Znetlady, thank you, this has been great. Must go get ready for our noon event with the Sci-Fi Writer coming in.
Diva Canto: some people think that our bots are copybots
Diva Canto: other have fears about other people stealing their texture
Csven Concord: (which they might have stolen)
Znetlady Isbell: lol
Brander Heron: Indeed.
Znetlady Isbell: Where can we get the HUD?
Znetlady Isbell: Is it all over SL?
Diva Canto: oh, there's a HUD-giver downstairs near the other guideway
Diva Canto: but you can also use it on a web browser AND...
Diva Canto: you can hook it up to the search window in the SL viewer!
Diva Canto: Here, if you;re interested: http://metaverseinik.com/OpenSearch
Diva Canto: it's really great to be able to use 2 search engines in world
Brandon Catteneo: Link didn't work
Diva Canto: oh sorry
Diva Canto: http://metaverseink.com/OpenSearch
Brandon Catteneo: OK, got it ty :)
Znetlady Isbell: Has LL had any input on the SE?
Diva Canto: well....
Diva Canto: yes and no
Diva Canto: they know about it very well
Diva Canto: but officially they ignore it, because they don't really know what to do of it :-)
Znetlady Isbell: :-)
Diva Canto: we don't make waves eithers
Brandon Catteneo: I think they are realistic about this platform becoming more and more open
Diva Canto: so far, we've been focusing on figuring out how to do google-like search in virtual worlds
Csven Concord: How will you deal with Hetgrid?
Diva Canto: our search technology will scale to OpenSims
Znetlady Isbell: It does not search groups - only locations and objects, right?
Diva Canto: right -- we stay away from Linden Lab's person-related DBs
Znetlady Isbell: of course..
Brandon Catteneo: Is it able to crawl 100% of the Grid?
Diva Canto: it doesn't go into protected sims
Brandon Catteneo: (other than closed sims)
Diva Canto: but other than that, the bots go everywhere
Diva Canto: about 13,000
Diva Canto: bots are really fun
Brandon Catteneo: I mean, has it been successful in doing so wiht lag and all?
Diva Canto: yep
Brandon Catteneo: Cool
Diva Canto: I mean, there are failures here and there
Diva Canto: but overall, it collects most of the information
Diva Canto: it's not 100% deterministic, but it works relaly well
Znetlady Isbell: We should probably wrap up.
Diva Canto: yep -- I need to go to a class
Znetlady Isbell: Thanks so much, Diva!
Brandon Catteneo: The reason I ask is that more lag may cause lower results, so some vendors would be disadvantaged unless they get their stuff out of laggy sims
Diva Canto: thank you for inviting me!
Znetlady Isbell: This has been fascinating.
iAlja Writer: thanks Diva, very informative!
Brandon Catteneo: OK, Diva, thanks a lot
Butch Dae: Thanks.
IYan Writer: this was very interesting, thank you Diva
Znetlady Isbell: I will follow up with Unimodal and perhaps we can have them come into SL a well.
Diva Canto: thank you all. Feel free to contact me
Csven Concord: Enjoyed this. Thanks. Appreciate your time, Diva.
Farley Scarborough: Yes, thanks so much.
Post Wylie: Thanks, Diva.....well done!
Znetlady: Thanks, everyone.
Diva Canto: bye all!
February 5, 2008
Come join us at University of California, Irvine on Tuesday evening from 6:00 -8:00 for what promises to be a truly fascinating "metaverse" panel discussion. We've gathered four stellar people - all working on enterprise initiatives in virtual spaces (two of which will be just returning from Virtual Worlds 2008): 
