From ADL Team Member… Robert Chadwick: 3DR Updates – February 2012

Robert Chadwick

Rob Chadwick is a 3D programmer and artist who has been working in the 3D content field for more than ten years. In that time, he has designed custom game engines, managed render farms, and written productivity tools. He has taught entry level video and photo editing, and offered courses on advanced 3D animation. He has designed simulations for the FBI and the US Navy using custom and off-the-shelf game software, and animated virtual spaces for architecture and interior design companies.

As a contractor with Katmai, Robert provides support to the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of ADL.

Open Source Status

I am happy to announce a major milestone for the 3D Repository (3DR) project: The ADL 3DR is now completely open source. This means that the community of users and other interested parties are completely free to review the technology and to modify, remix, and improve it. We hope that this step will lead to broader adoption and deeper collaboration between those interested in sharing and reusing digital content. The project is hosted by GitHub, the largest online code hosting service in the world. You can download the source code at: https://github.com/adlnet/3D-Repository.
You can also file bug reports, read documentation, communicate with the developers, and get copies of the installer files.

New Feature for 3DR Installer

A major step in the 3DR development is the first version of the 3DR installer that can update an existing installation without losing previously uploaded content. This important feature is necessary to allow partners to keep up to date with new developments. In the future, you’ll always be able to download an executable that will upgrade your installation to the most recent version.

New 3DR Instance

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Simulation and Training Technology Center (ARL STTC) has installed a private 3DR instance, with plans to create a public-facing instance sometime in the future.

Development Report: Stage3D Viewer, Configuration Tools

We have two major development efforts running simultaneously. First, we’ll drop support for the Google O3D plugin. This feature has been with us since the very beginning, but the technology behind it has been overcome by events in the web programming world, and is no longer a suitable choice for delivering 3D content to browsers. Removing this feature will streamline the technical architecture under the hood, as we previously relied on deprecated tools no longer supported by Google. We’ll continue improving the WebGL viewer, and replace O3D with a viewer based on Flash’s Stage3D. Importantly, this viewer will parse the same JSON representation that WebGL does, further simplifying the server side code. Expect the Stage3D viewer in the next few weeks. The basic work is complete and simply requires integration.

Second, we’re continuing work to make setting up and maintaining a copy of the 3DR software easier. The majority of the settings that previously required an administrator to edit config files manually will now be accessible through a web interface. Should configuration errors arise, the system will be smarter about aiding the admin in fixing them – even going so far as to detect database connection errors, and will fall back to a recovery state that allows configuration changes even when the database is offline. Here’s a sneak peak at the configuration tools.

We hope these new features will continue to make the 3DR valuable to the training community. Please consider becoming a contributor to the project by downloading the source and improving it. As always, please let us know how we can serve you better.

Tags 3D Repository, 3DR, Search and Retrieval | February 6th, 2012 | Posted in Blog Post |