Testing

I have tested the nearly-finished project on two groups, one in the 20-40 age bracket and one in the 60-70 age bracket. 

A female tester aged over 60 really liked the project; she thought the landscape and models were impressive. She also found the controls very simple to use, an issue I had been worried about. She suggested that there were not enough objects to click on and look at; this is a valid criticism, but for purposes of this project it was necessary only to have one working object as making more would be repeating work already done. I would definitely expand the amount of objects if continuing work with the project, however. She also suggested the landscape was too sparse and that I should add trees and vegetation, a suggestion borne out by members of the 20-40 group.

A male tester aged over 60 thought the project was useful from a historical point of view. However, he had no interest in learning to use the controls and asked that I navigate around it for him. This could be a problem, as many people of this age group will not have  used similar applications such as video games and may not be interested in trying. It may be necessary to make more intuitive controls of a click-and-drag nature. This was my original plan but time constraints did not allow for it. He also wanted to get inside the crannog, which was part of my original plan but I did not follow through on it due to my decision to make the museum open air. In later incarnations I would be willing to make explorable architecture, which will involve significant work with lighting and baking textures. Again, time constraints do not allow me to do this at the moment, but it is something to think about. Both members of this group wanted the Unity player to be smaller, so that the whole player is viewable as you click into the homepage, so I will attempt to do this.

There were four testers in the 20-40 group, 3 male and 1 female. All enjoyed the project, but many were curious about what would happen if they went off the edge of the terrain, so it will be necessary to add more barriers to prevent this. One expressed a desire to explore the lake, but this goes beyond the scope of the project, as there is no facility at Lough Gur to explore beneath water level. One male, aged between 25 and 30, thought the texture on the crannog needed work. I agree, but this is again something I would do in conjunction with making it explorable.

During the testing process, some of the browsers were more suitable than others. Safari is currently my preferred browser for this project. It works well on Firefox as well, but many people use very restrictive pop-up blockers when using this browser, making it impractical. I will advise my users on the best choice of browser on the homepage, perhaps in the splash screen on the web application.

PHP

Unfortunately the project has hit an obstacle; my PHP knowledge combined with Unity is insufficient to get the museum working the way I had envisaged. I'm looking at other options at the moment but wary of going down blind alleys with so little time left. It may be a case of using the database to call to small sections of navigable museum space, but I'm not quite sure how that's going to work yet. It's frustrating but there will be a way around it!

Meeting with Lough Gur and research

I went to Lough Gur today to speak to Kate Harrold, the manager of Lough Gur Development. She is really enthusiastic about my project, as they are at the moment refurbishing the heritage centre and making a new website, and she feels that my work ties in well with that. It should be of great benefit to me to be working on this at this particular point in time, as I will be able to see the work Tandem Design are doing on creating an interpretive centre using the latest interactive media.

I have created a very basic mockup of what I expect the 3D museum to look like. The colour scheme will change, as will the design, but it's useful to get some of the ideas onto paper right now.

 

Unfortunately, the objects to be displayed in the new Lough Gur heritage centre are in storage at the moment and must be taken out to be photographed. I will have to wait until they are doing this for their own new website, which could take up to a month. This is a long time for me to wait. However, I can start modelling the museum itself, as well as the surrounding area which I have already photographed, and Kate let me borrow a book about Lough Gur so there may be some useful images and information there that I can work with.

Inka 3D

I spent most of this weekend attempting to get the Inka 3D plugin working on my computer and loaded into Maya, in order to start exporting in WebGL. It did not work. I followed all the instructions, I then made substitutions where the instructions seemed unclear, I posted on online forums for answers, all to no avail. I checked with a classmate who went through the same process; it initially didn't work for him, and then it seemed to arbitrarily appear in his plugin menu in Maya. This did not happen for me, despite following all the same steps and examining the minute details of what I have done. Unfortunately it just won't work for me. As we don't have Maya on the college computers, I don't think using this technique is going to be an option, and I might have to use Unity.

I'm actually very disappointed by the whole process. I really would have liked to try out using WebGL as it seems like an amazing use of technology. All the projects that I have seen online that use it made me want to learn more, and it's very frustrating that my computer (or the software, who knows) will not co-operate.

That said, Unity seems like a really good alternative. The videos I have seen documenting its functionality make it seem very well suited to my project, so hopefully the failure of this stage in the research will open a new and interesting chapter :)

Valentino Garavani 3D Museum

I've just been looking at this fantastic example of 3D used within a website. This is Valentino Garavani's virtual fashion museum ( http://www.valentinogaravanimuseum.com/enter-the-museum ) which provides an overview of the designer's career. (In my initial research I thought that this was just a downloadable application but it can in fact be viewed from the browser.)



While it uses Unity and I plan to use WebGL, its overall feel is similar to what I would like to achieve. Obviously it is on a much larger scale than mine will be, but in terms of navigation it is quite similar to what I had envisaged - the user clicks on an object to retrieve information about it (see the second image above) and can click in the direction they wish to travel as a means of navigating through the different rooms. Sometimes the navigation can be glitchy; there were a few times when I tried to navigate in a particular direction but the trajectory was too far so I ended up getting stuck behind a staircase or in a corner, but I imagine there are always going to be issues like this in any similar application. I hope to avoid them but time will tell how the finished project will work.

I love the overall aesthetic of this application, and it is definitely the best example of an online museum that I have found so far.

Research

Virtual art galleries and museums are not a new thing; they've been around for quite some time in the form of a website where someone can browse images of the objects within a museum. Many of the existing ones are very basic; this one, for example, is simply a barely-designed website where you can click on images of the artworks and see a larger version.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/

There are more sophisticated applications available; a good example would be the Smithsonian Museum virtual tour:

http://www.mnh.si.edu/panoramas/

In this, the user can navigate through high quality photographs of the rooms within the museum and see the way the museum is laid out and what is contained in each room. The user clicks on the blue arrows on the floor of the museum to move from room to room, and then there are controls to view all angles of the room in a panoramic style. The National Museum of Ireland also has something similar, on a much smaller scale, available here:

http://www.museum.ie/en/list/360tours.aspx 

I like the Smithsonian's website, but I want my user to have more control - the user should be able to choose their own path rather than walk on a path set by the application, and the user should be able to interact with the objects, for example picking them up and turning them around. I also plan to have a feature whereby the user clicks on the object and an information window opens where they can learn more about the object.

My plan is to create a 3D experience where the user can browse the objects of a museum, pick them up and examine them in detail without having to visit the actual site of the object. I plan to use 3D Studio Max to create the environment and embed it within a website.

One good example of what I would like to achieve is this interactive film, which uses 3D graphics with Web GL to create an interactive experience for the user.

http://thecarpandtheseagull.thecreatorsproject.com/

I hope to be able to use this kind of technology and apply it to the field of digital access to cultural heritage.

http://www.ro.me/tech/

This is a great example of innovative use of WebGL. The creators also provide lots of useful information about the technologies used. They have added interactivity when the user clicks the mouse, which is very much what I'm aiming for. The user can also add to this themselves - there is a section on the site called 'Add to the dream' which allows you to create block creations (similar to Minecraft).