Hello, I would like to tell all of you about a paper and shared AG application that I wrote based around the idea of a shared application launcher.
I needed to include a "closed application" (i.e. I was not going to modify the source code of the application to integrate it into the Access Grid) named ImmersaView (a stereo-capable VRML viewer...more information can be found at: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/agave/immersaview). By itself, ImmersaView is a collaborative application that allows the changes made to the camera of the scene at one site to be propagated to all other sites in the session. After struggling awhile with the idea of what to share, I eventually realized that there was an action and a state that should be shared. Specifically, whenever I started or stopped ImmersaView, I wanted the option of propagating this event/action to everyone in the session. Additionally, I wanted to be able to indicate which VRML file (the state) we would all share. Eventually, I made a shared application called ImmersaView Launcher that served as the graphical user interface to send the start/stop event and to indicate which file to share. However, writing the shared application in this manner did not completely solve the problem. Since ImmersaView is stereo-capable, that means that a stereo display like the GeoWall (http://www.geowall.org) is not directly part of the Access Grid node. So, since ImmersaView would run on the PC attached to this stereo display, I needed a way to send and receive start and stop events to that PC. ANL (Justin Binns?) recommended that I use Python's XML-RPC package to write a lightweight XML-RPC server that would process start and stop actions which would trigger shell scripts/batch files that would start ImmersaView on the non-AG PC. This was the final piece of the puzzle. So, if you have a closed application that has functionality useful to an Access Grid session, all you need to do is the following: - Determine what events and states need to be shared - Write an AG shared application that serves as the GUI to send the events and set the states to remote participants - Write a Python XML-RPC server (lightweight) to launch scripts that will start/stop/configure your "closed application" which could run on the same PC as the venue client or on a PC separate from the Access Grid To read more about the Shared Application Launcher, please visit: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/rg/20031022_spale/ (other preliminary research from EVL can be found at our Research Gear home at: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/rg). A demonstration of ImmersaView Launcher will occur at this year's SC Global '04. I am still looking for remote sites to participate in this session, so please e-mail me if your site would be interested in participating in this session. If you would like more information about ImmersaView, ImmersaView Launcher, or the Shared Application Launcher idea, please send me e-mail. Allan EVL @ UIC Research Assistant
