Virtual Film Props

Virtual Props have dynamic content displayed on a screen via a browser. Either you provide the browser, for example a mobile phone, tablet or latop, or, we provide a small hardware device that plugs into the HDMI port of a monitor or TV. This device is a small computer that runs a browser and connects to the 'Set Wide Net'. It's a simple way to get a display up and running. We call these devices 'Screebleys'. You can hire these from us or we can help you set up your own. This makes it easy to create a room full of screens where the content is both under your control, and can be movtivated by the action.

Here we're thinking of office and control room scenes that have many computer monitors or wall mounted displays. We've put together a system that allows your art department to get motivated, animated content onto those screens. We got event and sequence control so that the screens can change with the action.

Our 'Screebleys' are based on simple HTML pages that use our JavaScript library to deliver animation events. For more artistic control we've allowed for animation into SVG which means your art department can leave conventional web pages behind to deliver a look for any period or genre.

Interactions

Virtual Props listen for events emitted by the 'Set Wide Net' server. Each virtual prop has an ID (swnID) that is set with a cookie. Screebly hardware will load a fixed page to set an initial identity, but this can be changed once they are running. The server can send events to all virtual props, or to a specific prop ID, virtual props can share IDs, so grouping is easy.

The events are simple JSON objects that contain a 'type' and a 'payload'. The 'type' is a string that the prop can use to decide what to do with the 'payload'. The 'payload' is a JSON object that can contain any data that the prop needs to do it's job.

For example, a prop that is displaying a clock might receive a 'time' event with a payload that contains the time to display. A prop that is displaying a computer screen might receive a 'content' event with a payload that contains the URL of the content to display. The server can also send a 'reset' event to all virtual props. This is useful for resetting all the props to a known state, for example, at the start of a scene. The server can send a 'UI' events to all virtual props. This is useful for hiding or showing a selected UI element - this might be a form of 'Master Warning' or 'Breaking News Item'

Online Demo

You can see the principles in operation for yourself. Open two or more browsers, preferrably on different machines for the full effect. Nagivate to one the 'Gribbley' pages - you see that there are 4 starting pages so you can demo up to 4 virtual props.

With the remaining browser, navigate to the 'Demo Menu' from here you can send commands to the Virtual Prop pages. If a page has a Clock or Counter the lower section can be used to send this type of 'global' event. You can see here that there is a fixed time event for scenes that need to start with 16:47, and a UTC time event that will set the time to the current UTC time.

On the gauge style pages you'll see that the values regularly change. There's a simulation module running the background that's generating random values.

Couple of final notes, this is a public demo, so be aware that other people might be using it at the same time. We also realise that we're using the terms 'Gribbley' and 'Screebley' interchangably. This is because they started as Gribbleys when they were purely virtual, and Screebleys when the physical hardware was added. We should really clean this up!