Day three, Part 2. Research and Development

The overlord stood up. "I want to see your latest project." She said finally. Looking at each of the recruit hopefuls in turn. "And present to me which parts you worked on." Her ears slid up. "I apologise for the sudden change of pace but I would very much like to take at least some of you back with me to the lair, so, show me what you've done. I believe you also had individual projects you had blueprints of? Can I see those as well?"

Archeus snapped to attention. "Yes madam Overlord." She looked back to the group. "I'll get our digital presentation readied. Friends would you care to get your personal notes and project request ready for the Overlords review?"
Archeus then began to pull up the presentation on her computer and set up the labs projector.

Socks was a little surprised when the Overlord suddenly shifted gears, but that subsided quickly when she noticed how long the group had been chatting. She gathered her notes on her own project, then proceeded to help Archeus set up the group presentation.

Socks fetched the model, trying to maneuver it to where it would be visible during the presentation. It was bulky, but fortunately light. She was more worried about smacking someone with the legs of the model than dropping it or hurting herself.

Archeus smiled at Socks, "Thanks Socks." She continued to maneuver the device to the front of the lab.
"Socks I need to run our report for the Overlord past you to make sure I didn't mis anything."
She hands Socks a printout of the assigned tasks. Archeus = Project manager, Display concept and design. Socks = Coding manager and Anylytics. Ian = power supply and chassis design. Garran = Interface and communications Manager. Celastos = Mobility and internal structure manager. Does this look OK to you?"

The Overlord required their attention again.
Garran rised from his chair together with the others, like a spring, when she said that someone could already be send to the Lair. He shifted his attitude towards a more serious tone while he recollected his blueprints and sketches.

It told a lot about the Overlord the fact that she wanted to examine their individual works even if they have already been judged by doctor Silver.
A good leader doesn't simply delegate to others.

Here they were, his works. The arm, the artificial skin-cloth... oh, there, the holograph map. He read through the notes, trying to organize a speech, and joined with Socks and Archeus who were already planning the presentation.
"So, here we are." he said to them, his heart racing. "The moment of judgement has come."
He looked at the resume Socks was holding. "Should we follow that order to speak?"

Archeus looked over to Celastos. "I gave Socks a break down of our efforts. But I feel the intention of our Overlords request is to see what areas you're interested in. Not only with this project but with our future endeavors. It may be a nice gesture to talk about what you felt were the good and bad opportunities with this project and even speculate on how you might have done things differently. I'm just throwing that out there.
Remember I want every body here to shine. I only look good when the group as a whole looks good. We are all equals in this lab.
Don't forget that.

Upon hearing the Overlords request to see the project, Ian stood up quickly and began gathering notes and organizing them for presentation. He was excited by the prospect of leaving for the citadel as early as that same day, though he maintained a neutral expression. Looking up he noticed that Socks and Archeus were planning the presentation as Garran walked over to join them. Notes in hand, Ian walked over to the trio. "Everything just about ready?"

Looking up with a smile. "Hello Ian, we're closer now than ever before. I would imagine the Overlord will have different questions about all this for our whole group. Socks has a preliminary outline of our group effort. If you see any changes or updates feel free to fill them in. I just want everyone to feel they had the right stuff in there before we submit it.
Other than that how have you been? I'm so glad to see here." Archeus gives Coyote a big pat on his shoulder.

When Ian asked the group if they were ready, the brothers hesitated a bit before nodding.

"I think that the design I made for the legs will hold up well," Alec said. "I may have sacrificed too much durability for portability, but we won't know for sure until testing."

"And I doubt it's gonna overheat, either," said Niko. "Lukas and I went over a few configurations for placing the components inside and as long as you keep the vent open it should be able to stand use for at least a few hours."

Socks looked at the roles Archeus had labeled for the team, replying "It looks good to me! And going in this order sounds fine if it's okay with everyone else." She handed the paper back to Archeus, letting the group know "I'm going to put together a few more notes, let me know when you all are set up and ready."

She sat down a little off to the side, going over her notes to organize and write down a quick overview of the topics she would need to go over. She hoped having a concrete list of topics would help her not freeze up. Socks was definitely nervous; even though the casual chat helped her calm down a bit, this was still the Overlord, and Socks was never very good at giving presentations.

Archeus seeing that everything was assembled and everyone was in position. *Clears throat* Hrmmmm. "Well Mad'am Overlord with your permission." Looking at her majesty and getting a nod. She dimmed the lights and walked over to the mapping system prototype.
As she powered it up, the emitters cast a low blue glow lighting up the faces in the room. Everyone seemed to have a slight aurora about them. This coupled with the fact that the Overlord was present and the room had a deafening silence seemed to give a sense of magic to what would other wise be a tension filled atmosphere. "Archeus continued. Our prototype is not as interactive as what we want to build, so I have some animation that will give you a better idea of how we see it being utilized.
The display began loading. A generic minion walks to the machine and begins narrating. "R&D presents: The Science Computing On Tier Chromatic Holography 3D Mapping. Or SCOTCH-3M. First we can look at our terrain from almost any perspective.", The minion reaches out and grabbed the top of the display and pulled it down bringing the northern side into view. Then spun it around allowing the display to bring up the various roads and showing land heights. They continued by pointing to the options bar. "Now if we want we can add the local weather conditions." The display then overlaid cloud cover and gave indication as to the wind speeds and direction." Virtually any data that can be quantified may be incorporated into this machines software for integration into the real time displays." The animation continued on for another minuet or two then concluded. Archeus raised the lights back up and held out her arm to the prototype. "If you have any questions, please please ask away. Everyone here has put in a great deal of work and I hope this has given you the basics of our concept."

Garran watched Archeus working with the interactive presentation and smiled, feeling proud to have the occasion to talk and show his abilities to the Overlord. He listened for a while at her speech. Then, since he wasn't going to talk so soon, the sphinx discreetly approached Socks, who was writing down an outline for her speech.
He saw focus on her face.
"Seems it will be your turn soon. Are you ok?" He whispered, to avoid disturbing Archeus, and keeping the eyes on her Majesty to spot her reactions.

Socks looked up when Garran addressed her, taking a moment to parse what was said. She glanced around to figure out where everyone was in the presentation before realizing it was almost her turn.

"I'll be fine, but I can't help but be a little nervous about presenting. I've never really been one for that kind of thing, and on top of that the presentation is for the Overlord herself!"

She wrapped up her notes, scratching out a couple of things she felt weren't needed or ready to go over, and listened to the last bit of Archeus' presentation, eager to get her own done and overwith.

Niko turned to look over at Socks and give her a reassuring smile. "I'm sure it'll be fine. You've done some good work on this, and that's the important thing. The Overlord won't be too much of a stickler for your public speaking skills, will she?"

"Perhaps not, but there's no need to slouch in that regard, either," Lukas said. "First impressions matter. Let's focus on the three of us, shall we?"

Alec looked over the notes that they all made, both on their part of the group project, and their own individual ideas that weren't quite what the Overlord was looking for. He thumbs through it to see that the notes look a bit chaotic, essentially being a written discussion for most of it. "Should we have made another draft?" he asked.

"On ideas she doesn't want?" Niko asked back. "Too late to take that back. We'll just have to help out the others."

Fox lingered near the entrance to the Tent, quietly observing the Fresh recruits. Every so often she would type something on her Tablet, getting pings back. A subtle indication she was communicating with someone. Most likely General Steele but it was impossible to tell. She waited untill the preparations had been finished before she re-emerged from the corner of the tent and looked over the project with a look of interest. "First the group project... let me see.... what is this for may I ask? It looks intriguing."

Archeus began to explain. "Thank you Madam Overlord. It is an interactive Three Dimensional Mapping System. It has been designed to take several different real time inputs and translate them into an image the user can interface with to see various quantifiable points. So lets say you wanted to look at land topography and how the weather was affecting it. Or perhaps you need data for civil engineering a bridge lets say, that's easily done with this. The more points you are able to define, the better it will perform." Archeus then looked over at Socks. "Socks would you like to say a few things?"

"Yes, ma'am," Socks replied as she gathered her notes, got up and prepared to give her portion of the presentation.

She started, hesitantly, "Ahem, um, as the coder and analyst for the project I believe we could have a basic proof of concept within a year. It would, uh, kind of be simple, and wouldn't show much detail, but mostly that would be because we don't have the dedicated hardware for it yet. Um, basically we'd have to shoehorn something that already exists in, mostly just to get it working."

Socks put up a chart showing the basic idea behind what she meant, continuing a bit more confidently "For the proof of concept, we will have use some general purpose hardware to run the code on, until we can get a feel for the number crunching we'd need to be able to calculate the wave interference patterns needed to create the projection. Then we can essentially bake the code into a custom hardware module to run the holographic projection system at a more useful speed and resolution."

She wrapped up her part of the presentation, "In all, I think we're a year away from proof of concept, two from an initial working prototype, and probably five or so from full production; assuming no major issues arise and we work full time on this. However, I also think that given the benefits of actually being able to see 3D objects in a true 3D space would be a great boon for not only those out in the field, but also our engineers and even for general morale through entertainment, so this system would be well worth the time spent."

Glad she had her presentation over with so she could get back out of the spotlight, Socks headed back to her seat, looking over to Ian and asking, "Ian, you ready?"

Nodding to Socks, he gathered his notes. Presentations always made him anxious, but he did his best to give an impression of confidence as he stood up to begin his presentation. "My role in the project was designing the chasis and power supply."

Presenting the overlord with a folder which contained copies of his notes, he continued speaking. "The chasis has been designed to be able to withstand shock and vibration even for extended periods of time. The power supply is designed so that it is capable of dealing with high heat and humidity. In addition, there is also a backup power supply which would be able to power the device for up to several hours if need be."

Relieved that his part of the presentation was finished, he sat down and turned to Garran. "Ready for your part?"

“Thanks Ian”

Garran took his place in front of the Overlord where the coyote stood before and bowed respectfully.
“Her Majesty. As part of this project it has been my role to design the interface between the user and the machine.”
The sphinx rotated the projection of the machine Archeus set up, to focus on the screen.
“As you can see, we opted for a large, concave screen. Now, the screen being curved is actually mandatory: otherwise the illusion of 3D is lost, and what you’ll have left is just the illusion of depth. The main concern was how to convey the hologram to as many people as possible: the use of a big screen allows many users to operate at the same time without having to look from disadvantageous points of view.
All in all the dimension depends on what’s the goal we’re aiming to. Screens could be range in size from devices like this, which can be moved from a room to another, up to whole walls in assembly rooms or intelligence offices, or, as recruit Fisher already pointed out, various entertainment places. Certainly up to now it’s not quite the equipment to give to a scout, but who knows, maybe one day with good enough miniaturization technologies and flexible screens...”

Garran zoomed the image. “Now, the interaction. To allow a further degree of immersion in the illusion, on the edges of the screen and the borders of the machine there’s a set of cameras: these have the task of collecting the various gestures of the operators, that are then analyzed by a software and translated into commands. Many cameras mean that the system is able to map the hands in the space. This way users can interact with the hologram almost as they were touching it.
Development of such a software will be long, though. We must make a program able to recognize hands and paws of various shapes, both of bipeds and quadrupeds, or even ferals if we need. More so, it must be able to recognize the same hands regardless of the point of view. We’ll then have to develop a gesture code to give the right commands too.”

The sphinx cleared his throat and flapped the wings slightly. “Well, I think that wraps it up. An alternative could be a parabolic screen horizontal on a table, but I won’t be sure until we work on it.”

Garran bowed again to the Overlord and moved aside to leave space to the brothers. “Guys, your turn."

The brothers got up and took Garran's place, taking a moment to get composed. Alec looked like he may have lost his nerve, but kept silent and let the others do the talking for the moment.

"The three of us worked on the internal structure of the device and mobility issues," Lukas said, bringing up a slide showing a hypothetical cross-section of the generator. "So far we haven't seen any issues that are unusual for electronics, though we are trying to account for the heat that this process will generate. If all goes according to plan, this take up some intensive energy, with plenty of excess heat.

"As such, we speculate that we will need internal fans here and here—" Lukas pointed at two spots on the slide where fans had been added. "—and a vent here." He moved his finger to slits on the left side of the device. "This is just an estimate, of course. I'm prepared to make adjustments as necessary."

Ruben moved his hand past Lukas's and made note of the handles on the side of the device. "This thing is probably going to be too heavy to carry in one hand, and it might be too heavy for one person, so we have four handles on opposite sides to help move it from place to place. Also..."

He pressed a button to bring up another slide showing the underside of the device, and the folded-up extendable legs attached to the bottom. An inset showed the legs extended and propping it up into a standing position. "We decided on a design for the legs that was sturdy, and also adjustable for users of different heights, though the fact that they can be tucked into these grooves there means that they couldn't be too bulky or thick."

"Oh!" Alec spoke up and raised his hand too, which got in the way of his brothers and made them flinch. "If those legs do break, we also designed the hinges so that they could be taken apart with the right tools and replacements could be made, see?" He pointed to a detail shot that indicated a clear bolt head. "And that's what we've come to so far."

They took a step back and bowed, waiting for the Overlord's judgment.

Just want to say to those that follow this thread that the new forums are at http://forum.overlordcomic.com/

Go ahead and register over there, get your character info set up and whatnot, and get ready for RP stuff! We're aiming to have it started up again after Megaplex.