Having been an enthusiastic user of Flight Simulator for the PC  since the mid 1990s, its been nearly 10 years since I last used Flight Simulator 2002... I skipped FS2004 (a.k.a "A Century of Flight" or FS9), and did not get FSX when it came out in 2006. But I returned recently as the Microsoft ESP (Environment Simulator Platform) is now being licensed and extended for serious simulations from underwater, to land, to air and near space by Lockheed Martin as Prepar3D. I had also previously created a number of science fiction vehicles based on the TV shows of Gerry Anderson, and especially Supercar for Flight Simulator, so I wanted to test if they were still operational and performing well. As the MSc in e-Learning Game-Based Learning course come to an end, and a new PC with much improved Nvidia GTX580 graphics card was acquired, it was timely to look back at Flight Simulator and see how it has progressed.

With a new copy of Flight Simulator X, now relatively cheap compared to its original release pricing, and the two service packs installed (SP1 and SP2) which were necessary to correct black parts on some add-on craft (including Supercar), I was ready to fire things up. And things look good with high frame rates at ultra settings for the displays. Its nice to see 3D models that improve over time in new releases of Flight Simulator without change to the basic visual model.

I have always liked the Lockheed Martin SR-71 "Blackbird" and North American X-15 rocket plane and am amazed that these craft designed and built in the 1950s could achieve such performance.  I take every opportunity to see the real craft at museums in the USA. An X-15 is in the Smithsonian in the Mall, and an SR-71 can be found in the Smithsonian at Dulles Airport and at the Intrepid Museum in New York for example.

Reasonably good free add-on craft are available for the SR-71 and X-15... but the improved visuals prompted me to try a paid for add on X-15 which is reported to be one of the best Flight Simulator add-ons.. and it really does look very good indeed...

J.K. Rowling has created an on-line experience for fans of the Harry Potter series of books... to accompany a site which is the only on-line source of Harry Potter e-Books... a potentially vast market.  The pottermore.com site has been in beta test for some months with over a million beta registrations, but has just now become available with open registrations.

The experience itself runs through in a chapter by chapter format for each of the books.  Myst style graphical elements are overlaid and respond to mouse clicks and interactions as the various features and artifacts are gradually exposed. Items can be collected into a "trunk".  After you discover Diagon Alley, and open an account at Gringotts Bank with an initial 500 "galleons", further gold galleons can be found in various places and saved in your account to purchase necessary supplies. Then you must explore Diagon Alley to get all the required items for your first year at Hogwarts.

Your wand will choose you at Ollivanders - makers of fine wands since 382 B.C. - via a set of questions and choices.

The its off via Platform 9 and three-quarters to Howarts.  And term starts.  Points can be earned for you and your "house" as you go along. The Great Hall shows the progress of all four school houses, your Common Room shows the progress for your own house, and your own profile area maintains all the information about your progress, skills acquired and artifacts collected.  You can also make friends and pass around gifts.

The currency used in the experience is all provided and does not require real money to play.  The e-books do cost real money. 

The University of Edinburgh Moodle Virtual Learning Environment is now available at https://www.moodle.is.ed.ac.uk

A playground for experimentation with Moodle for the School of Informatics distance education initiatives is now available with course name "Playground Informatics" (pginformatics).  The UoE Moodle is currently only available for such distance education courses as the service is built up.

People who would like to participate as a course teacher or student should initially contact Austin Tate and provide their EASE UUN, as all users are currrently being added manually.

Note that we also have our own experimental Moodle setup, running in Appleton Tower on an AIAI server... for testing use only as its on one of our manually managed windows desktop servers at http://virtual2.aiai.ed.ac.uk/moodle/

For my MSc in e-Learning IDGBL Game Design exercise I have created an exploration style game with a Na'vi/Avatar theme.

The web site for the game information and links to allow access to the areas in which some elements of it can already be played in Second Life are at:

• http://atate.org/mscel/gbl/MoonBloom/

More details of the elements that went into the design are in this blog entry - Game Design Preliminaries.

The University of Edinburgh has chosen Blackboard Collaborate as its virtual classroom. It provides Adobe Connect style tools with multi-way video and audio teleconferencing, particpants lists and profiles with hand raising and AFK indicators, and text chat with emoticons. A tools area can be used as a whiteboard with slide upload and markup by participants. It can also be used for application sharing and co-browsing.  The session can be recorded and played back.  Elements like the text chat, participants list and whiteboard contents can also be saved either during a live meeting or from a rercording.

One possibility for use could be to record a synchronised speaker and presentation, and make that available via the recording.  Screen capture tools such as TechSmith Camtasia can be used to capture off a recording to allow for transcoding into a regular video format for other uses, YouTube, streaming, etc.

The Fellowship of MSc folks met at the Aerie Peak gryphon point to fight our way North towards Shadowfang Keep. Avoiding death is not an option on this journey, and you quickly become accustomed to making a little progress, dropping dead from the onslaught, appearing as a ghost in the graveyard, returning to your body, and placing yourself as far onwards as possible.  Then looking round for the baddies who may show as ghostly figures near you. Then resurrect and run as fast as you can onwards again. It takes a few goes to get through heavily fortified gates.

Shadowfang Keep is entered via a portal into an "Instance" of the game. These are special areas in World of Warcraft where your group or raid party is able to interact with a dungeon privately; that is, without interference from other parties. See http://www.wowwiki.com/Instance

I also learned that taking in plenty of food in advance, to sit down("x" key), and preferable to eat as well, is important to allow a quicker recovery. Free to play accounts cannot receive health boosts or food supplies from other players.

Good team support meant that weakening players, like my dwarf, were assisted when set upon by multiple "mobs". Carnage did at times occur.

The team prevailed and completed the quest.  We all now have stronger bows thanks to the rewards given by the grateful occupants of the Keep.

The Fellowship of IDGBLers met once more on 15th March 2012. This time to take on the challenge of a "Dungeon" available through a portal which takes you into a separate "instance" of the game.

I think we had fantastic teamwork. If we had just sailed in to the Dungeon with 4 strong players and even my short legged dwarf we could have wiped out everyone. Without much stratgey. But Coranich left to pick up a classmate.. and we all got wiped out! We tried again with much more care and planning and despite a few "deaths" we won through. Folks covered one another better, and we went to find lost characters - like myself once too. We had to learn new tricks for blasting open doors too. We were definitely in our ZPD.

I tried the free to play Aion MMORPG available for download from http://www.aionfreetoplay.com/. I am on EU server "Anuhart".

I entered as one of the races of Daeva (assigned to me on account creation), and selected the Elyos faction and Scout class. It was raining, hence the leaf umbrella.

The free to play Aion game allows for only 2 characters to be created, but gives access to all 55 levels, nearly 4,000 quests, and all territory travel, unlike the level 20 restricted World of Warcraft free starter edition.

• There is an official wiki and getting started guide at http://gameguide.na.aiononline.com/aion/
• A community contributed wiki with information of the land, characters and play is at http://aion.wikia.com/wiki/Elyos

Entering a new world, with a new character, even though the interface had many similarities to World of Warcraft, reminded me how important scaffolding was, and the value of the community created wiki information sites. I will hold off creating my main (male) character with my usual name prefixed aith "Ai" until I know more about the game and the factions. 

Studying games based learning means I tend to encounter the phrase ‘I’m no good at games’ a fair bit. The problem I have with it is I’m not sure it is possible. What people who say this actually mean is any one or more of the following:

1) I am intimidated by computers or don’t want to learn

Needs no explanation, we’ve all seen it. In this example ‘no good’ translates quite nicely as ‘don’t want to try’. It’s about motivation. I’ll cite my Grandad as case in point. He doesn’t want a mobile phone because he’s no good at ‘technology’, but he can achieve the kind of magic with the cricket on his Sky+ box that I can only dream of.

2) I consider gaming to be a somehow lower form of entertainment

This one might be a little bit specific to the shire of white middle class England I live in, but there’s a social divide in play. You can test this out for yourself. Next time the ‘what did you do at the weekend’ question comes up in a peer group try alternating your responses between:

1. I got my hunter up to level 20 in WoW.
2. We went to the new Titanic exhibition at the city museum and I finally got round to finishing Obama book.

3) I’ve forgotten that ‘games’ is a wider field than that shooting thing my son likes

There’s no question that electronic gaming has got popular. The problem is that people tend to generalise based on what they see in the media. Talk about gaming and our first points of reference are either first person shooters and how they are encouraging little Jonny to go all Black Hawk Down on his school or that weird kid who stays up all night doing strange things with orcs.

Gaming is a massive field. It includes those board games you used to love and still make me play at Christmas, the whole of the sports world, even those stupid games you play with yourself on the commute to work or with the receptionist in your building. I refuse to accept that anybody can be bad at Every Game.

4) I feel the need to project myself as a serious grown up

This is very similar to 2), but needs a section of it’s own. At what point in our lives do we stop playing? Early childhood play is about learning. Go to school and learning becomes work and play what we’re allowed to do afterwards. As ‘serious’ adults do we spend time playing? Would you be prepared to tell your friends in the book group you’ve been playing? Why not?

5) I want to stop this conversation as soon as possible and talk to somebody here who is less geeky

Potentially more a reflection on me rather than the wider subject…

Image source- PS3 Controller by Chi

The Introduction to Digital Game-Based Learning class met Elena Northmead at the Virtual University of Edinburgh's Vue South Beach Pavilion in Second Life for a discussion on Augmented Reality Games.