VastPark Platform 0.98 Released
Along with a fresh look for www.vastpark.com, the 0.98 versions of the Player, Creator, Publisher and Server have been released. This will be the final DirectX only version of the platform as we move towards 1.0
What’s included in 0.98?
Drag and Drop
Drag and Drop allows the user to drag an Item from the Items list into the 3D space. This Item can then be interrogated via script or plugin and an action can occur based on the developer listening to the DragEnter, DragDrop, DragLeave triggers in IMML.
The benefits of this can be extensive, from dynamic presentations with multiple presenters able to drag out their presentation on demand to injecting new content into the scene.
Note: This Items list is populated by the Metaforik index. You can get content into this index using the Publisher application (you must have a publisher account!) which supports Models, Video, Audio, etc, but currently doesn’t support the type “Document”.
Simplified UI
Feedback was received that the UI for the Player was a little complex, so we’ve introduced a menu and removed much of the clutter from the tray area. All of the functionality previously accessible from the tray is now found under the menu at the top of the application.
The address bar now has back, forward and refresh buttons as well as a new icon that indicates the health of the current document and an icon that appears when content is loading in the background.
The debug dialog has been slightly tweaked and simplified also, note that debug rendering options now appear under the menu View -> Render. By default, the LoadQueue tab is now displayed which is useful in working out what is occurring while you are waiting for a document to complete loading.
More of a focus on capture
Along with the support for Continuum capture, the Player now supports capture of screenshots.
Screenshot and Continuum captures default to being stored in your Documents folder under the subfolders “Continuum” and “Screenshots”. This can be customised by visiting the Options menu (Tools -> Options) and selecting a new capture path.
In a future release video capture support is likely to make an appearance as we aim to provide a variety of ways to capture the experience within the Player.
Search Syntax
Some slightly more advanced searching ability is included in the Player’s Item list and follows this syntax:
Some valid searches that follow this syntax are:
Crate type:Model publisher:craigomatic
- Finds all Model items published by craigomatic that have a name like “Crate”
Crate
- Finds all items that have a name like “Crate”
type:Document
- Finds all items of the type Document
0.98 Platform Changelog
- Improved reliability and performance in all libraries that use threaded queueing
- Improved reliability of connection code in server libraries
- DragDrop, DragEnter, DragLeave events added to IMML
- Handle property added to IRenderEngine, plugins can now mix winforms/WPF overlays into the experience
- Added access to CacheProvider, ContentAcquirer and ContentLoader via ParkEngine. Plugins can now download content using the common download system and take advantage of the user’s cache
- Added concept of NetworkChannel, shifted mutex acquisition to a dedicated channel
- Added concept of Behaviours to IMML
- Fixed bug where texture source change didn’t work during runtime
- Fixed bug where video source change didn’t work during runtime
- Changed behaviour of Groups property in script scene.user:groups, now uses cached data. Use scene.user:GetProfile(“alias”) for live data
- Added support for constraints between bones on separate models
- Misc. bug fixes
Download link: http://www.vastpark.com/resources/downloads.html
VastPark Platform – Intro Video Series
We’ve recently put online an introductory video series that gives an excellent overview on VastPark and a brief intro to the concept of an Adaptive Web.
The videos were created and edited in record time by myself and our team of ninja video editors and will likely have extra polish added early in 2010.
Check out the series at: http://vimeo.com/channels/71694
Virtually Speaking
VastPark CEO, Bruce Joy speaks about the future of Virtual Worlds, virtually, at NUS in Singapore:
VastPark CEO Bruce Joy – NUS Presentation from VastPark on Vimeo.
You can take a look at the presentation in world using VastPark (the quality is much better) by first downloading the latest Player snapshot from here: http://www.vastpark.com/dev-snapshots
Then, download the PIMML (portable IMML) from here: http://vp.pimml.s3.amazonaws.com/nus-brucejoy-presentation.pimml
Army of Craig
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have an army of clones that I could send out to do my bidding…
VastPark OpenGL “Army of Craig” Demo from VastPark on Vimeo.
Yes. It is a little strange.
VastPark Masterclass 1
Here’s the video of a recent lecture I spoke at which was given in-world:
VastPark Masterclass1 from VastPark on Vimeo.
VastPark tools go public!
Very recently the entire toolset for VastPark went live over at www.vastpark.com!
Included in the current toolset:
Creator 0.9 Beta 3
– Like Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG for HTML, the Creator is the WYSIWYG for IMML. Allows users to create virtual experiences very rapidly and deploy them in a variety of ways
Browser 0.9 Alpha
– Used to view the virtual experiences (parks) built in the Creator and hosted on VastServer
VastServer Alpha
– Hosts IMML for consumption by the Browser, manages multi-user interaction, uses very little resources and can be hosted on any Windows PC (XP SP2 and above)
Viewer Alpha
– Used to view ParkPak files, which are self-contained virtual experiences. Want to do a 3D presentation using VastPark? Use a ParkPak to remove the risk that internet access may be down where you are presenting 
Asset Publisher Alpha
– Finally, those eagerly awaiting being able to use their own content can do so! The asset publisher allows content creators to publish content online quickly and easily.
Multi-User Stress Test #1
After our recent stress test (which stressed a number of things, including the devs!) we finally have the chat transcript available. Take a look at the official VastPark Team Blog for the full overview here and the pdf of the transcript here.
Openly-Social VastPark
As was recently announced to quite some fanfare, Google’s OpenSocial looks to be an interesting development…except it seems that they forgot one slightly important thing! The domain name, www.opensocial.com, happens to be owned by none other than VastPark.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent update to the VastPark front page explaining our involvement:
“Two years ago we formulated a vision for the future of social networks. It was a vision of distributed and connected communities where users could share and build relationships across multiple sites and social networks. We did not believe that any one social network would remain siloed.”
The art of making a user click
After allowing a sizable portion of users in to have a taste of VastPark, it was interesting to analyse the first batch of “in the wild” crashlogs that were submitted (thanks again to everyone for hitting the submit button!).
In all, it was pleasing to see that so few crashes were making their way to my inbox, but the ones that did may have revealed the greatest marketing secret of all time, the word monster. The single most consistent error that made up 85% of the logs over 2 days was due to a dodgily published model lurking in the web service, going by that name!
The lesson in this for the team at VastPark is to make sure that enticingly named content in the system will not crash the application when a user clicks on it and for everyone else; if you want someone to click on something, the word monster is a good option 
The new VastPark.com goes live
The new VastPark website is now live!
As well as providing a lot more information on VastPark than has previously been available, it brings with it the first members of the invite list gaining access to the software. This also means that I can begin writing up scripting examples again 