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Virtual
Anthropology Lab
The
NDSU Virtual Anthropology Lab will be an integral part of
the Digital Artifact Archive software, harboring an interface
similar to that of the Virtual
Cell, and will be employed to allow scholars to meet
and collaborate.
We
envision a system wherein scholars will join each other online,
in a visualized context similar to the Virtual Cell laboratory.
They will be able to see avatars of each other, and will be
able to converse in real-time using the mechanisms described
above. We imagine these scholars will have a research agenda,
perhaps to inspect a small set of hominid endocasts for comparative
purposes.
Using
the searching and retrieval interface described above, they
will agree to select a few artifacts. These will appear on
their lab table in reduced format, so they can be seen side-by-side.
Then, by clicking on the reduced model, they will be transported
together to an enormous navigable space containing a single
high resolution fully rendered 3D artifact. They will be able
to see each other in this context, will be able to "fly around"
the artifact, and will be able to gather together in 3D space
in order to see particular features from a common point of
view.
Each
scholar will be able to record their own measurements and
observations, and will be able to discuss these in real-time
with the others. We have preliminary plans for recording text
and visual transcripts of these sessions, so that others can
review these scientific "moments", perhaps as a late-joining
colleague, or perhaps as a way to "publish" these experiments
for the benefit of the profession.
The
interface for both the virtual lab and archive applets will
be constructed from Java2/Java3D technologies instead of Java1.1
and CosmoPlayer. Again, the MOO projects already under developmentVirtual
Cell and Geology Explorerwill provide the models for that
project, which will be after the research version has been
worked out.
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