The design of WiFiOS was such that it could be easily shared using an OAR file. This required that no modifications were made to the underlying Open Simulator source code. Since there is no restriction on the number of islands available, a whole island was dedicated to WiFi. The island, named Aeolus, hosts the WiFiVL and a large range of supporting materials.
The island was designed with a centre circle with signposts that direct to different parts of the island. The signposts use the osTeleport [293] command to transport avatars immediately to different parts of the island. A more open approach such as open exploration is also encouraged as Avatars are free to fly around the island. An example screenshot of the island (Figure 90) shows the centre building with links that connect the different areas.
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Figure 90: Screenshot of the WiFiOS island Aeolus
With an entire island available to WiFi, supplementary materials were designed, similar in nature to the support materials available on the WiFiVL I host site. The support materials constructed ranged from traditional lecture slides to more interactive frame format displays.
Several of the building designs are taken from the OpenVCE [294]. Only their structure and not content has been used in this dissertation. The OpenVCE buildings have retained their banner where applicable. The materials were made available as the OpenVCE had distributed an island using an OAR file.
A lecture hall was created with a range of lectures available, a screenshot of which is shown in Figure 91. The lecture theatre has components to move slides forward, back and reset the lecture. Underneath the podium are a range of primitives that represent different lectures from a range of sources [295-296]. By clicking on one of these primitives, a new lecture is loaded onto the main display. The lecture theatre code is written entirely in LSL and can easily support new lecture slides. Slides can be created from Microsoft PowerPoint by choosing “Save as JPEG”.
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Figure 91: Screenshot of the lecture theatre with a range of lectures available for selection by the avatar
A WiFi museum was designed which displayed the history of wireless communications. The museum is split into time periods, from 1887 – 1915 to 1916 – present. A timeline is presented in three parts, with display boards showing information on important people or inventions. The museum starts with Heinrich Hertz and the advancements of Nikola Tesla and finishes with the publication of the IEEE 802.11 standard and WiMax.
An area of the island was also dedicated to the novel display of influential documents. The first is a patent awarded to a famous actress, Heddy Lemarr, for a Secret Communication System [297]. The second document is the influential paper by Shannon on a Mathematical Theory of Communication [298]. The third document is the IEEE 802.11 2007 standard [158] with bookmarks to relevant parts such as the frame structure, RTS/CTS structure and mechanism. All the pages could be viewed from within the island and links were also provided for viewing in external PDF readers. The documents each had a page up and down button as well as a home button.
An interactive frame format display was developed; a screenshot is shown in Figure 92. The IEEE 802.11 frame was subdivided into parts. Each part had a size representative of the number of bits used. Where a part of the frame is subdivided (e.g. Frame Control with sub sections of Protocol and Type etc.) the components are made visible to the user. When the user clicks on a part of the frame, a display board provides information on that frame section.
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Figure 92: Screenshot of the interactive IEEE 802.11 frame display on the island Aeolus
A rich mixture of media was used on Aeolus, an example of this is the inclusion of video lectures. To enable videos, a suitable storage place had to be used. To facilitate this FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE was installed on a separate server named minervamedia. The media server uses Darwin Streaming Server [299]which is an open source RTP/RTSP streaming server [300]. Video lectures have been incorporated into Aeolus through the WiFi cinema section. The video lectures are taken from MIT Open Courseware [301]. To play a video, the land must be partitioned as only one video per parcel is possible. As such, each video display is stored on its own parcel. The parcel’s media URL is set to the URL for the video stored on minervamedia. Once the user clicks on the display, the video is shown. There are two other videos currently on Aeolus that demonstrate how to use the WiFiVL.
Another multimedia approach to the education of WiFi networks is the use of stock animations and display boards. These boards, as shown in Figure 93, are used to animate and describe features of wireless networks. The students can walk through the introduction of Carrier Sensing Multiple Access, the Hidden and Exposed Node Problems and their ultimate solution in RTS/CTS with data exchange. The animations are rendered using the same equipment as the WiFiVL uses and helps to build familiarisation with the colour coding of particular packet types.
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Figure 93: Example demonstration of the interactive education display for the Exposed Node Problem