Virtual More is a simulation and visualisation project in 3D at the Aalesund University College. This blog is intended to document our project and may describe recent work, progress, achievements, but we may also write about anything that might interest us at the time, such as good ideas, events, problems we may suffer, and so on.
The Virtual More project’s official website is currently located at www.vrmore.no but is in Norwegian only. The website you are currently looking was originally designed for internal and informal purposes but tend to be more often updated and is presented in English.
Feel free to spread the information on these pages, and please leave any comments that you might have.
Our domain is split into the following components:
While Mail, Calendar, and Documents are not accessible externally, the other parts of our website are publically available as read-only (some largely inactive as of yet). We will continually develop the site, in particular the wiki and this blog.
Virtual More has published a 6 min video on their YouTube channel that demonstrates how to import terrain and add water, sunlight and texture in Unity.
Virtual More will appear on Norwegian broadcaster TV Sunnmøre today 9 February 2010. TV Sunnmøre will show a 25 min programme that includes a visit to Ålesund University College and the Virtual More team. The programme will run in loop all night. It is also possible to watch the programme on TV Sunnmøre’s website starting from tomorrow.
Update 11 February 2010: The revised article can be viewed only at Sunnmørsposten’s website and includes a link to our YouTube video demo of AIS.
Norwegian newspaper Sunnmørsposten today 28 January 2010 published an article about Virtual More, detailing our work on 3D ship traffic in real-time. You can download a copy of the article here: PDF.
Unity has released a new version of their asset server, which is now compatible Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux (now deb in addition to rpm). The server solution uses the open source PostgreSQL database. Note that there have been some problems installing the server on Windows machines, thus you should probably stick with OS X or Linux for the moment.
In an effort to reach a broader audience, the Virtual More team has decided to take advantage of today’s social media sites. We have created profiles at Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and will use these channels in addition to our websites to publish material. You can visit our new profiles here:
We recently published our Unity demo application of 3D ship traffic in real-time here. Now we have created a small video about Virtual More and our AIS demo in particular:
Update 1 February 2010:An article about our application and Virtual More in general appeared on p. 8 in the Norwegian newspaper Sunnmørsposten on 28 January. You can read a facsimile of the article here.
Update 26 January 2010: AIS data appear to be slightly delayed and not true real-time. We have made an inquiry about this with the Norwegian Coastal Administration, which supply us with AIS data over IP. Because the AIS stream of data is updated immediately in our application, this does not change the fact that our application is a working proof of concept.
Update 25 January 2010: An article about our application has appeared on the Aalesund University College website. Note that the article is in Norwegian only.
AIS ship traffic data
Any ship of a certain size is required by international law to transmit data about its position, speed, destination, and so on. The data are transmitted using an automatic identification system (AIS), which is an international standard for the radio message format being used. Ship data are received by radio base stations and decoded into human-readable information. In Norway, the Norwegian Coastal Department uses AIS for coastal surveillance and sea traffic services.
Existing applications
Several newspapers, including the Ålesund-based Sunnmørsposten, offer a web-based service where users can access AIS data through a 2D map interface. In this map, ships are plotted in real-time. By clicking on a ship, AIS information about this ship is displayed. Yet other service providers have been able to link AIS data into Google Maps or Google Earth applications. However, although Google Earth is a 3D application, to our knowledge, no such application exist where an actual ship is represented as an accurate dynamic 3D model. Usually, these applications offer a 2D clickable point or object only, and there is no 3D animation of ships moving around.
Virtual More’s AIS application
At Virtual More, a simulation and visualisation project at Ålesund University College, we have developed a 3D world of Ålesund and surroundings that spans 15 x 15 km^2 using the game developing software Unity. In this virtual world, we are able to integrate live AIS data in real-time (courtesy of the Norwegian Coastal Department). We have developed a web player where users can move around in the landscape, observing 3D models of actual ships. The position, speed, and direction of these ships are based on the AIS data. This means that users situated in Ålesund can look out the window to see actual ships moving around that at the same time are being displayed on the computer screen in the Virtual More world! As mentioned, our model is limited to a 15 x 15 km^2 square. We have included only four different boat models (cargo ship, fishing vessel, passenger ship (the well-known “Hurtigbåt” in Ålesund), and a generic model that we use for all other boat types). For the town of Ålesund we have included a number of buildings, including the restaurant Fjellstua and the Color Line stadium. 3D worlds like this can always be improved by including more models and increase accuracy. However, in this project, our main goal has been to get things to work. We can always expand our 3D world later with more models and features.
Download
The current version of our 3D world may be termed “pre-alpha” and is available both as a web player in your browser or as a downloadable standalone program:
The mouse control is quite sensitive and it is highly recommended to rightclick the application window and choose fullscreen!
User interface and instructions
The application starts with an introduction scene where the camera flies over Ålesund and surrounding while displaying instructions. After the introduction scene, the interactive scene begins. Here, you can move around using your mouse and A, S, D, W on your keyboard. To move around fast, keep Shift pressed down. Click on boats to read AIS data in a popup window. Press 1 to remove the popup window.
Unity has released version 2.6.1 of their 3D game developing software. There are several things to note (see here for what’s new):
The software is now free of charge (standard version, not Pro), which makes classroom integration a breeze.
The animation tool that was removed in version 2.5.x is now back and improved.
A profiler that shows CPU usage and rendering information has been included which helps in identifying bottlenecks.
Version 2.6.x is not backwards compatible.
All project members should upgrade to 2.6.1. When old projects are opened in version 2.6.1, they are automatically upgraded. This process cannot be reverted, therefore it is important to backup your projects before doing this.
Unity removed their animation creation system when releasing their 2.5 version, but will include this feature in Unity 2.6 (see here for information). A nice alternative is the AniMate script provided on the Unify Community Wiki. It is very easy to use and allows interpolating position, rotation, colour, or other parameters. There is a selection of easing options (linear, quadratic, cubic, sinusoidal, circular, etc.).
For example, to create an intro camera that pans over your terrain, you could create a list of positions and rotations, and use the Ani class to interpolate sequentially through the list. I have provided an example of using the Ani class like this on the Virtual More Wiki.
The result can be seen in the intro of our Virtual More “state-of-the-art” model (web player).
