GiANT plan

At the moment my group have been able to see our idea become clearer technically and visually. I am sure we have had this idea in the back of our minds for the past week but now that we have thought through it and understand what result we want out of it, we are able to look at the detailing and complexity involved. I think it also showed from a practice of the production how much we were interested in developing this idea. I can say I still find it intriguing with what we are using and can see myself being pushed by the practicalities of this project after a few full days of trying things out. This idea of ours will not be finalised or foolproof as we will expect changes, some being as far as changing the type of setting or theme. We do plan though on sticking to the practical parts of our project to not fall into the same problems we had a few weeks ago.

We will be creating a unified network within a virtual reality installation. There will be 3 people moving around in a physical space as well as virtual, each only seeing and (potentially) hearing in the virtual world.

They will be part of the imitation of life as a worker ant, which work together to bring food back to the colony and leave trails of their paths using pheromones. 

The ants following a pheromone path to food

We will be using the video glasses to immerse the users into the virtual world and the game engine Unity to display the virtual world. We will map out the trails of the users to show our network by radio frequency trackers. The users will also be carrying out own designed laptop holders on their backs. The laptops they hold will be connected to the video glasses and receiving data from a server that converts the data from the ultrasonic radio frequencies into something Unity can read.

Unity game engine symbol

We have been looking at the concerns of the project and will be heavily focusing on the tracking part. There were other options we have considered like linux with 3 cameras, but for the moment the support we have had and the easiest to start testing is with the radio frequency trackers. Most likely our group will split into its own sections so we can produce all parts of the project simultaneously allowing us to not have last minute problems as well as giving each person a good amount of work so no one is left out.

I have gained back my initiative for our project. I can see the final product and lots to gain from this personally and psychologically. I think I will be able to get into a set frame of mind and stay focused as long as my group can support me. A lot needs to be done and now is the time to start.

References

“MUTE: Simple, Anonymous File Sharing”, n.d. http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml.

People Detection and Tracking Multiple Cameras. Method 2, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmed-RBqpXg&feature=youtube_gdata_player.

“UNITY: Game Development Tool”, n.d. http://unity3d.com/.

Wikipedia contributors. “Unity (game Engine).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., May 1, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unity_(game_engine)&oldid=490194181.