Wolfgang Höhl, an architecture software specialist, shows you how to use freeware correctly for architecture visualizations in ‘Interactive Ambient’. The book begins with an overview of real-time visualization possibilities before showing the reader how to work with three free software packages. The guide describes the appropriate hardware and the system requirements. The reader will learn how to model the "Wolkenbügel" (cloud-iron) of the avant-garde architect Mart Stam (1924/25) step by step with Blender 2.43. Readers will also learn to design surface textures and create their own interactive 3D walk through. Dart 3.0 enables the reader to create an interactive construction mass model. Finally, ARToolKit 2.7.2 shows readers new ways of simulating their interior designs. Further reading lists, web links and numerous illustrations help the reader get started. ‘Interactive Ambient’ shows readers interactive architecture visualization possibilities and encourages them to experiment successfully.

As society continues to experience increases in technological innovations, various industries must rapidly adapt and learn to incorporate these advances. When utilized effectively, the use of computer systems in educational settings creates a richer learning environment for students. The Handbook of Research on 3-D Virtual Environments and Hypermedia for Ubiquitous Learning is a critical reference source for the latest research on the application of virtual reality in educational environments and how the immersion into three-dimensional settings enhances student motivation and interaction. Exploring innovative techniques and emerging trends in virtual learning and hypermedia, this book is ideally designed for researchers, developers, upper-level students, and educators interested in the incorporation of immersive technologies in the learning process.

Programming has become a significant part of connecting theoretical development and scientific application computation. Computer programs and processes that take into account the goals and needs of the user meet with the greatest success, so it behooves software engineers to consider the human element inherent in every line of code they write. Research Anthology on Recent Trends, Tools, and Implications of Computer Programming is a vital reference source that examines the latest scholarly material on trends, techniques, and uses of various programming applications and examines the benefits and challenges of these computational developments. Highlighting a range of topics such as coding standards, software engineering, and computer systems development, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for programmers, computer scientists, software developers, analysts, security experts, IoT software programmers, computer and software engineers, students, professionals, and researchers.

This handbook of research is one of the few texts to combine Open Source Software (OSS) in public and private sector activities into a single reference source. It examines how the use of OSS affects practices in society, business, government, education, and law.

Welcome to the 5th International Conference on Open Source Systems! It is quite an achievement to reach the five-year mark – that’s the sign of a successful enterprise. This annual conference is now being recognized as the primary event for the open source research community, attracting not only high-quality papers, but also building a community around a technical program, a collection of workshops, and (starting this year) a Doctoral Consortium. Reaching this milestone reflects the efforts of many people, including the conference founders, as well as the organizers and participants in the previous conferences. My task has been easy, and has been greatly aided by the hard work of Kevin Crowston and Cornelia Boldyreff, the Program Committee, as well as the Organizing Team led by Björn Lundell. All of us are also grateful to our attendees, especially in the difficult economic climate of 2009. We hope the participants found the conference valuable both for its technical content and for its personal networking opportunities. To me, it is interesting to look back over the past five years, not just at this conference, but at the development and acceptance of open source software. Since 2004, the business and commercial side of open source has grown enormously. At that time, there were only a handful of open source businesses, led by RedHat and its Linux distribution. Companies such as MySQL and JBoss were still quite small.

The book "Simulation and Gaming" discusses the following topics and research areas: game-based methods of problem solution and data processing, analysis, and information mining; educational games and game features, including game characteristics, story, mechanics, and methodology; development of integrated games tasked with helping students in interpreting, translating, and manipulating the field of kinematics through formal presentations; possibility of research integration through real and practical examples and games as well, in the field of physics; analysis of game engines from various aspects such as modularity, performance, and usability; virtual reality (VR) and interaction mechanisms used for three-dimensional (3D) game development; analysis, development, design, implementation, and evaluation of the simulation model in the field of engineering and metallurgy, according to ADDIE model; concept of computational thinking, with an accent on its inclusion in compulsory education; overview of the current prominence of AI simulation based in the gaming leisure industry, mainly for research purposes in the context of gambling and forecasting of online casino patron's churn behavior; innovative modeling and simulation approach using newly proposed advanced game-based mathematical framework, unified game-based acquisition framework, and a set of war-gaming engines to address the challenges for acquisition of future space systems; modification of simulation of a complex system and a physics model through programming, achieved with a block-based programming language.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International IFIP WG 2.13 Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2010, held in Salvador, Brazil, in October 2011. The 20 revised full papers presented together with 4 industrial full papers, 8 lightning talks and 2 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: OSS quality and reliability, OSS products, review of technologies of and for OSS, knowledge and research building in OSS, OSS reuse, integration, and compliance, OSS value and economics, OSS adoption in industry, and mining OSS repositories.

Provides something far more useful than either the cheer-leading or the fear-mongering one hears about open source. This book also provides a top to bottom view not only of the technology, but of the skills required to manage it and the organizational issues that must be addressed.

Intelligence and autonomy are among the most extraordinary capacities blossomed by human evolution. Yet, endowing humanoid robots with these two crucial capabilities is still one of the biggest problems for the robotics community, despite decades of research. On the software side, algorithms for artificial intelligence are still at an embryonic stage. On the hardware side, robotic actuators are a far cry from the muscular human system in terms of flexibility and adaptability, which in turn reduces autonomy and robustness. Underneath the nature of algorithms for intelligence and technology for autonomy, the importance of efficient, scalable implementations of robust software goes without saying. Among the large variety of humanoid robots, the iCub has emerged as one of the most diffused research platforms. It has been developed as part of the RobotCub EU project and subsequently adopted by more than 35 laboratories worldwide. Collaborations across laboratories are encouraged by writing code and libraries openly available. As a consequence, iCub is considered to be the ideal platform for experimenting and advancing open-source software for research in several domains, ranging from motor control to cognitive systems.