Blog

Survey: Connecting In-Gallery Experiences with Online Content Management Systems

Open Exhibits community members:

Ideum (lead organization on Open Exhibits), the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and the UConn Digital Media Center request your participation in a survey about connecting in-gallery experiences with online content management systems.

The survey can be accessed at the link below and will only take 5 minutes to complete:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BDZHQKM

To thank you for your time, we will gladly share the survey results with participants. Simply provide your e-mail upon completing the questions.

-Open Exhibits Team

Open Exhibits 3.0 Coming in November

Open Exhibits is pleased to announce an upcoming major release, Open Exhibits 3.0. Over a year in the making, this new release provides full 3D support including 3D motion gestures, compatible with the Leap Motion Controller, and 3D rendering capabilities developed in collaboration with Away3D. Other features include an advanced state machine to facilitate game development, a new Visualizer for gesture debugging, and new open source UX elements. Open Exhibits 3.0 is scheduled to be released on November 12, 2013.

Multimodal, multitouch, 3D gestures...what? The hottest new input hardware devices, such as the Leap Motion Controller, allow for an exciting new form of human computer interaction, motion input. The Open Exhibits Team couldn't wait to get their hands on one. About six months ago we integrated support for the Leap Motion Controller as a 2D alternative to the touch screen. Behind the scenes we were creating a huge library of 3D motion gestures. Fully editable in Gesture Markup Language (GML), these 3D gestures simplify motion development as a natural extension to multitouch. Even better, Open Exhibits 3.0 is multimodal, meaning that all of the these input modes will work at the same time. Use a motion gesture to rotate an object in 3D space with one hand, and tap, swipe, and scroll on the touchscreen with the other.

In addition to 3D motion input, Open Exhibits 3.0 will fully support 3D rendering interaction. Open Exhibits 3.0 simplifies the use of external frameworks, including 3D engines. Open Exhibits has been working with Away3D to create a set of 3D elements that are both touch and motion ready and fully compatible with Creative Markup Language (CML). Rapidly develop applications in AS3 and/or XML without the need to program gestures and 3D transformations.

 

Aside from 3D support, Open Exhibits 3.0 contains a host of new features and improvements:

• New state and resource managers automatically reuse and update UX components to facilitate game development and other resource intensive applications.

• Improved Visualizer allows the debugging of simultaneous multiple input modes and gestures.

• New UX elements such as the radial slider and page flip add to the already extensive (50+) user interface library.

• CML asset loading now uses the GreenSock LoaderMax library for more advanced loading options.

• Simplified CML development allows CML objects to infinitely nest and contain gesture tags without the need for additional containers.

 

Open Exhibits at ASTC 2013

The Association of Science - Technology Centers (ASTC) is holding their annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico from October 19-22 and Open Exhibits will be there. We are sharing a booth with Ideum (the lead organization for Open Exhibits). We can be found at booth #201/300 right in front of entrance two in the exhibit hall.

We will also be presenting at two sessions: Existing in Two Worlds Pecha Kucha where we will present lessons learned from the Human Computer Interaction in Informal Science Education (HCI+ISE) Conference held earlier this year. In the second session, Engaging Visitors with Disabilities in STEM Learning, we will explain our work in the Creating Museum Media for Everyone (CMME) project to build in accessibility tools within Open Exhibits.

If you are attending ASTC, please come out to the Ideum studios on Monday night (October 21st). Transportation from the Hyatt in downtown Albuquerque will be provided. The Ideum party is being held in conjunction with the Exhibitionist Journal (published by the National Association for Museum Exhibition, NAME).

The party is fully catered and there is even a mariachi band!  Ideum will also be demoing new multitouch tables including the Platform 46 and Platform 32 & 46 multitouch coffee tables. If you stop by the Open Exhibits booth, just ask us for an invite!

Open Exhibits featured in Huffington Post Tech Blog

Open Exhibits was recently featured in a tech blog article in the online edition of the Huffington Post. The article, Open Source Collaboration in Museum Exhibit Design, describes Open Exhibits and another open source initiative, The Tech Open Source.

Open Exhibits, now embarking on its third year, is committed to the museum open source initiative. In collaboration with GestureWorks, Open Exhibits has developed two open standard markup languages called Creative Markup Language (CML) and Gesture Markup Language (GML). The Creative Markup Language allows museum staff to style and add content to an application without recompiling the application so that museums may edit the exhibit throughout its life span without the need for a programmer. The Gesture Markup Language allows the customization of gestures that, like CML, are external to the application. In addition, CML has an ActionScript-based software development kit (SDK) that is open source under the Simplified BSD license.

The GestureWorks GML SDK is closed source, but freely available for non-commercial use through the Open Exhibits license agreement.

Open Exhibits also has a growing number of exhibits templates that can be easily customized and styled by both programmers and non-programmers.

Looking ahead, Open Exhibits will soon add 3D support for both input and display. We are currently busy programming 3D gesture support for the Leap Motion Controller and are working with the Away3D team to produce a 3D CML extension. Expect the new release in early Fall.

New Exhibit Download: Museum Timeline

The timeline exhibit is a multitouch interface that allows scrolling of information panels accompanied by a description overlay panel.

The exhibit is fully configured in CML to support easy customization of features. Each panel can have associated images and descriptions. Font sizes and colors, information overlay background color, and the number of media files are all customizable.

Click here to download