Oculus_SNA

A tool to explore 3D Twitter networks in real time w/ Oculus Rift. Mostly like http://flocker.outliers.es, but now you're inside the network. The network layout is calculated using d3.js force layout (https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Force-Layout) in a 'fake' hidden SVG element. Nodes are users and links are retweets. Node's height is proportional to the user number of followers, but you can use any metric you want by changing the code.

Please note that code in sna_aux.js is heavily based on this project https://github.com/cemrich/early-webvr-demo . We'd like to thank the author and also Vladimir Vukićević for their beautiful work.

Running the demo

For this demo to run on your browser:

1. Create a twitter app following the steps in acq/get_data.py first comments, and substitute the uppercase variables with those provided by Twitter
2. Run the acq/get_data.py script to start gathering data [you will need to install https://github.com/sixohsix/twitter with easy_install twitter or pip install twitter]. You should see some logging information on the screen and a constant update of acq/network.json
3. If for some reason steps 1+2 do not work or you want to start viewing some networks without extra effort, there are two example files (network.static.json + network.static.big.json) you can visualize off-the-sheld. Just change line 84 on sna_main.js and point it to the right file
4. Download a WebVR-compatible browser, either Chromium (http://blog.tojicode.com/2014/07/bringing-vr-to-chrome.html) or Firefox (http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2014/06/26/first-steps-for-vr-on-the-web/)
5. Connect your Oculus Rift to your computer
6. Open www/index.html on a browser downloaded in step 4. PLEASE NOTE THAT 'www' and 'acq' directory should be served by a web server, because local JSON files are considered a vulnerability. You can use MAMP, python -m SimpleHTTPServer, or something similar
7. You should now see a 'left+right eye' rendering on your browser. Just press the 'Toggle Fullscreen VR(f)' button, put your Oculus Rift on, and enjoy!

Further reading

WebVR

http://blog.tojicode.com/2014/07/bringing-vr-to-chrome.html http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2014/06/26/first-steps-for-vr-on-the-web/

Oculus Development

http://www.manning.com/bdavis/

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1byh3f/the_oculus_rift_reading_list/