So now the dome is back up and running I could show my 4d project.
Here are a few videos of it, be warned they are very dark (it’s pretty much pitch black in the dome so filming is difficult) you may need to squint!
That’s it handed in now, my final year project. A while years worth of work!! Fingers are firmly crossed, just got the presentation next week to go – wish me luck!
made me chuckle!
hehe, these bird’s eye adverts with the polar bear make my breaks for project work that bit more entertaining!
brilliant!
Today was presentations day for the final 4d projects. Unfortunately as my project required the dome – and it’s out of action at the moment. All I could do was present the project and explain it, and then once the dome is up and running I’ll show the project to who ever is around.
The presentation can be found here
Been playing with blender this afternoon and found the stars background setting. If you look closely there are some subtle white stars on a black background, which I’m hoping will look really effective in the dome. Adding to the whole space/ time thing i have going on, chaos of course is some would argue is the beginning of space and time.
I quite like the metallic look of the lorenz attractor, but I’m undecided about perhaps changing the texture of the lorenz attractor to a smooth white plastic style. I think it might look a bit naff, so am contemplating staying with the metallic look.
Went back up to the dome today and with Luke’s help managed to get the MouseLook script to be less sensitive to the mouses movements which in turn made it less sensitive to the glovePIE script I’d written – yay!! So now I have a much smoother navigation of the 3d lorenz attractor controlled by the wii balance board.
While i was there i had a go at changing the glovePIE script to see if that made any difference to the control of the balance board, but i went back the the original as it seems the most responsive in the end.
So now I have a much smoother navigable object, just need to tidy it up and get it dome ready 
Here it is, my dissertation: ‘The Affordances of Technology on Interaction‘
The best part of a years hard work all finished and handed in.
I’m keeping my fingers very firmly crossed
Popped up to the dome this afternoon while my dissertation was being printed and bound to see how easy or difficult it was to get the wii balance board to hook up to the pc running the dome. To my surprise it was easier than i’d thought.
All I needed was:
- the bluetooth dongle
- wii blance board
- blender file i’d been working on
So everything running, this was the first chance to see what the model looked like on the dome’s screen and to see how easy it was to use the balance board to navigate the model on screen.
This is what the model looks like on my laptop.
This is what the lorenz looks like when it’s got a fisheye lens, i know it looks odd here, but when shown on the dome screen it looks fine as that’s obviously spherical.
The model looked fine however controlling it with the balance board was another matter, it went crazy when i stood on the board! The sensitivity of the mouse is up far too high. So… i need to look into either adapting the python MouseLook script or finding a way of making the mouse less sensitive using the control panel (or something similar).
That’s this weekends fun! All in all though a well spent 20 minutes, before i had to rush off and get my dissertation handed in.
I’ve spent ages playing with glovePIE, and I think I’m finally getting somewhere with it. The interface isn’t particularly user friendly, or at least I don’t think it is. Anyway having spent a while trying pretty much every combination available on screen to get the wii balance board to act as the mouse, i may finally have found a combination which does just that!
So this is what the interface (GUI) looks like with the code for taking the x mouse movements and y mouse movements.
This is the output looks like. Click to enlarge and see the code.
The best part is that it works! You can control the mouse using the balance board. I tried to make a video but it’s so difficult to show that the movement on the board moves the tiny mouse cursor on screen, so please take my word for it
Next step, take all of this and go over to the Dome and see what’s what.
