John Philip McCaffery

Exploring canons & cathedrals with Open Virtual Worlds: The recreation of St Andrews Cathedral, St Andrews day, 1318

St Andrews Cathedral is located on the East Coast of Scotland. Construction started in 1160 and spanned Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles. It was consecrated in 1318, four years after the battle of Bannockburn in the presence of King Robert I. For several hundred years, the Cathedral was one of the most important religious buildings in Europe and the centre of religious life in Scotland. During the Reformation, John Knox himself lead reformers in divesting the Cathedral of all its finery. Thereafter it fell into disuse and decline. Today the remains hint at its former glory. Here the use of Open Virtual Worlds (OVW) to support new modes of engagement with cultural heritage is presented through the example of St Andrews Cathedral. Open Virtual Worlds offer an extensible collaborative environment for developing historical scenes against which background material and intangible aspects of cultural heritage associated with a site may be explored. They offer the potential to reconstruct within a 3D computer environment both the physical structures of the past and important aspects of the lighting, sounds and lifestyles that once existed within those structures. Bringing together architecture, sculpture, illumination, stained-glass, music, procession and lighting into a scene, which can be explored from multiple spatial perspectives enables holistic appreciations to be developed.

Exploring Heritage through time and space supporting community reflection on the highland clearances

On the two hundredth anniversary of the Kildonan clearances, when people were forcibly removed from their homes, the Timespan Heritage centre has created a program of community centred work aimed at challenging pre conceptions and encouraging reflection on this important historical process. This paper explores the innovative ways in which virtual world technology has facilitated community engagement, enhanced visualisation and encouraged reflection as part of this program. An installation where users navigate through a reconstruction of pre clearance Caen township is controlled through natural gestures and presented on a 300 inch six megapixel screen. This environment allows users to experience the past in new ways. The platform has value as an effective way for an educator, artist or hobbyist to create large scale virtual environments using off the shelf hardware and open source software. The result is an exhibit that also serves as a platform for experimentation into innovative ways of community co-creation and co-curation.

Towards the 3D Web with Open Simulator

Continuing advances and reduced costs in computational power, graphics processors and network bandwidth have led to 3D immersive multi-user virtual worlds becoming increasingly accessible while offering an improved and engaging Quality of Experience. At the same time the functionality of the World Wide Web continues to expand alongside the computing infrastructure it runs on and pages can now routinely accommodate many forms of interactive multimedia components as standard features - streaming video for example. Inevitably there is an emerging expectation that the Web will expand further to incorporate immersive 3D environments. This is exciting because humans are well adapted to operating in 3D environments and it is challenging because existing software and skill sets are focused around competencies in 2D Web applications. Open Simulator (OpenSim) is a freely available open source tool-kit that empowers users to create and deploy their own 3D environments in the same way that anyone can create and deploy a Web site. Its characteristics can be seen as a set of references as to how the 3D Web could be instantiated. This paper describes experiments carried out with OpenSim to better understand network and system issues, and presents experience in using OpenSim to develop and deliver applications for education and cultural heritage. Evaluation is based upon observations of these applications in use and measurements of systems both in the lab and in the wild.

The Virtual Museums of Caen: A case study on modes of representation of digital historical content.

In the early 19th Century much of the Strath of Kildonan was cleared of its people who were replaced by sheep farming. This pattern was repeated across the Scottish Highlands. In 2013 Timespan, Helmsdale Heritage and Arts Centre, hosted a program of activities to mark the 200th anniversary of the Clearances. The centrepiece of these activities was a community excavation of the Caen township in the Strath of Kildonan. Based upon the evidence of that excavation a digital model of the township was created using the Virtual Time Travel Platform. The Virtual World of Caen can be explored as part of an installation in Timespans storytelling room. Visitors can experience what life would have been like in the Strath of Kildonan in 1813. This paper reports how the model has been deployed in different settings and on various digital platforms. These include showcasing the model at the Helmsdale Highland Games where visitors could explore the township of the past on stereo head mounted displays, or a Virtual Museum website that welcomes visitors from around the globe, as well as using Google Cardboard to allow visitors to explore Caen today, the virtual reconstruction of Caen simultaneously whilst on the site.

An immersive platform for collaborative projects

In the recent past 3D and immersive technologies were not supported by standard business and educational computers. Yet new generations of Intel and AMD processors and improved networking provide a basis for the spread of immersive technologies, into all aspects of education, business and leisure. Consequently, it is critical that computer science and IT degree programs facilitate the graduation of professionals with an understanding of and experience in working with immersive technologies. The work reported in this paper addresses the need to support learning about how to develop, engineer, use and evaluate 3D and immersive systems. The Apollo Virtual World GRID [1] provides a platform designed to support collaborative learning and exploratory project work with 3D technologies. Apollo provides an environment for the creation of 3D content, a framework for the development of 3D systems and a platform for the delivery of distributed immersive systems. It is built around the open source and freely available OpenSimulator project and extends it by providing educational content, a rapid application development environment and a measurement infrastructure. Using the Apollo GRID student projects have expanded the scope of experiential learning by creating interactive 3D environments that simulate specific learning contexts. For example a Virtual WiFi laboratory supports exploratory learning and experimentation with WiFi network protocols and the LAVA virtual fieldwork resource supports archaeologists in learning how to manage archaeological excavations. This paper reflects upon experience in using Apollo for 30 collaborative projects involving more than 100 students over a period of four years.

Measurement of immersive technology for historic scenes

This paper investigates the creation of historic scenes through engagement with community archaeology and historical investigation. The approach presented here enables both tangible and intangible culture to be explored through the proxy of an avatar controlled by a user. This gives rise to an engaging and interactive experience. Through utilising and developing a flexible open source software infrastructure the historic scenes may be deployed in a range of of scenarios: over the Internet, in mobile multi user exhibitions suitable for public events, as an immersive museum installation and through on site cross reality exploration. The use of commodity hardware, open source and open standards underpins a collaborative creative process that enables the deployment of installations which articulate interpretations relevant to the locality. This in turn encourages a sense of ownership and dynamic engagement with cultural heritage. A measurement study of the quality of experience delivered by virtual world systems reveals the client as the critical system component. System performance and the quality of presentation measurements provide system insights which enable user experience to be improved.

Augmented learning roads for Internet routing

As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility, like power, transport or water, it becomes increasingly important to provide an engaging educational experience about its operation for students in related STEM disciplines such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Routing is a core functionality of the global Internet. It can be used as an example of where theory meets practice, where algorithms meet protocols and where science meets engineering. Routing protocols can be included in the Computer Science curriculum in distributed systems, computer networking, algorithms, data structures, and graph theory. While there is a plethora of computer networking textbooks, and copious information of varying quality about the Internet spread across the Web, there is still an essential need for exploratory learning facilities of the type that support group work, experimentation and experiential learning. This paper reports on work using open virtual worlds to provide a multiuser interactive learning environment for Internet routing which exemplifies the capabilities of emerging immersive education technologies to augment conventional practice. The functionality of the learning environment is illustrated through examples and the underlying system which was built to support the routing simulations is explained.

Immersive Installation: “A Virtual St Kilda”

This paper discusses a Virtual Histories project, which developed a digital reconstruction of the St Kilda archipelago. St Kilda is the most western part of the United Kingdom. It is a world heritage site for both built and natural environment. The Virtual St Kilda acted as a focus for the collection and presentation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It was on show as an exhibition in the Taigh Chearsabah museum (Fig. 5) located in North Uist Scotland. The exhibition is built around the OpenSimulator Open Virtual World server, using commodity hardware. The simulation covers some 4 square km of virtual space, and models both tangible and intangible culture. It is integrated into the exhibition, which articulates an interpretation of the St Kilda legacy through the prism of contemporary North Uist life.