Spatial Media: previz

Started to put together the initial visualizations of the data flowing between the “cloud” and the potential devices on the table. The central area is the router, or the network conduit to the internet; each node around the periphery is a device on the table. In this rough demo the red and blue streams are outbound and inbound packets respectively. This version is using modified flocking code from dan schiffman’s “nature of code” examples. I’ve tried another version using a particle system instead; it has a different look which I’m not quite happy with.

I’ve already hit some performance issues, even using openGL in java. It’s likely that my code isn’t that efficient, but unless I find something glaringly wrong I may have to rewrite this in C++. So it goes. Next is to get various packet types identified by color.

Animated demo applet here.

Ameya has been working with the interface for the web side of the initialization process. We’re planning on using an open wifi network with a proxy server to handle devices on the table. This should provide some built-in constraints to make the process manageable. All devices will connect to the table’s network. They will then be walked through a brief process to spatially locate the device on the table. Afterwards, the traffic will be passed on to the internet as expected. Here are his sketches.