THOUGHTS FROM DEVELOPERS AND DESIGNERS.
We are the team working at Algoryx Simulation AB. This blog is a place for
us to share our inspirations in work, cool video clips and other interesting stuff.
We also hope this site can be a place for discussions about software development, graphic design and education.
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Here it is again, a new cool SMART video featuring Algodoo with multi-touch gestures.
Read more at www.algodoo.com/wiki/algodoo_teacher_edition
We constantly get amazing stories about how Algodoo can be used in different ways. Last week Emil got an very inspiring letter from Portugal about a school that actually won the Portuguese National Contest ”Science at School”. So I decided to share this letter with you. Read and get inspired.
The other day I also published a couple of new user stories on the Algodoo website www.algodoo.com/wiki/users. Go there and read more.
Do you have your own user story? Fill out this form and you can win a T-shirt.
Jonatan Persson
Graphical Design & Communication
Algodoo
On July 27, 2010, Pedro Isidoro wrote:
I´m writing to report an activity included in our school project – Fisicarte – which is related to your super original and creative software Algodoo.
We work in a middle size school that is organized like this: 11 primary schools with students from 1st till 4th grade and 1 basic/comprehensive school with students from 5th till 9th grade.
This year a group of teachers created a project including 85 4th grade students and 30 8th and 9th grade voluntary students. We’ve organized several experimental activities related to Physics and during five weeks we included Algodoo in some of those activities. All teachers and students loved the experience of discovering and working with the software.
We’re experiencing a great time at our school because we´ve recently won the 1st price of the national contest – SCIENCE AT SCHOOL – which is organized by very important Portuguese institutions: Illido Pinho Foundation (http://fundacaoip.locais.net), Espirito Santo Bank (http://www.bes.pt) and the Ministry of Education (http://www.min-edu.pt).
At some point in the project we asked the students to write a letter to the Algodoo creator about what ever they were feeling. This is what a student in the 4th grade wrote:
“Dear Algodoo creators,
Taking part in contests has always fascinated us. And if these contests reveal realities far beyond our imagination, we support them with great interest. The teachers who directed/organized the presentation of these incredible experiments were just amazing. Thus, what was an unknown world has become a tempting and magnificent field: we were speechless by some experiments such as the anti-gravity man or the robot dance. After all we saw, everything seems easier and our wish to go further is growing bigger.
It’s your duty to afford young people experiments, which arouse their curiosity and renew their inventive spirit.
Thank you! It was phuntastic!”
Thanks and congratulations for your work!
Pedro Isodoro
Physics and Chemistry School Teacher
Cluster of Schools of Carregal Do Sal
So I was experimenting a bit with the look of the lasers and I realized they look a lot better if one fuzz the edges a bit. Have a look for comparison (click for larger):
Old style lasers (fuzziness = 0)
Lasers with fuzziness = 0.5
Lasers with fuzziness = 0.75
Lasers with fuzziness = 1
Take especial note to the intersections of lasers and the softness of the rainbow.
In my opinion, the fuzzy lasers look a lot better than the old style – but opinion was split at the office, and so now I’m asking for yours. Which do you prefer? And what level of fuzziness? Should old scenes be automatically updated with the new look? Or should this be a per-scene setting, so that old scenes keep the old look and new scenes get the fuzzy look (by default)?
(PS: Fuzziness only changes the look of the laser – nothing more, nothing less. Also, fuzziness will only be available with shaders/anti-aliasing turned on)
Edit: scratch that – fuzzy lasers will work, and look almost as good, even without shaders!
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