In this article you will find an overiew of the parameters accessible in Settings Menu. For a more in depth instructions regarding individual entries however, head to the next sections.
The Settings Menu will appear on your screen after you press ‘Tab’. In most cases it will be upside down looking from the front of your sandbox, so the device has to be accessible from the back. A flipped screen would result in inverted cursor making it very hard to operate, hence we decided to leave the menu orientation as is.
Use mouse and arrows to navigate in the menu. Once you open a section, you’ll have to press ‘Tab’ again to exit and once more to open starting screen again. When editing value inside a tab, you can also use arrows.
Some of the tabs will redirect you to another sub-menu. These are the ‘Borders’ tab, which lets you edit every projection border separately and mode-specific sections for Paradise Island module and Discovery Game.
The first six tabs contain parameters that are by default defined in the GlobalSettings file. This means that if you change the values and close the application (which results in saving your changes), you edit the GlobalSettings and as a result any other preset using global values.
Starting from the top, the two first tabs called ‘Terrain Levels’ refer to projected level of terrain in your sandbox. In other words, they dictate the height at which projection starts and stops. When changing values, focus more on what’s happening in your sandbox than the values itselves. Remember that changing e.g. ‘Bottom Level’ affects lower parts of the sand, even though some changes may be visible in the upper regions as well. This setting is also relevant in the Paradise Island module.
The ‘Water Drop Offset’ setting only affects Interactive Map module. It is also strictly connected to the next parameter, the ‘Sandbox Top Level’. It describes the distande between said sandbox level and the height at which waterflow is activated. The offset value is expressed in [mm]. The larger the number, the higher you will have to raise your hand above the sandbox to activate waterflow.
‘Sandbox Top’ and ‘Bottom Levels’ are physical distances between Kinect sensor and the sandbox, set in [mm]. It is best to set them at the very beginning, as they may cause glitches and bugs in the simulation if the values are wrong. Also remeber to use at least 50 [mm] margin on both parameters.
‘Borders’ of the simulation may be a hard concept to grasp, but they will become understandable as you use them. Just start with whichever border you want and change the value both directions (increasing values moves borders from top to bottom, from right to left) until you see the picture moves. It should look like you are moving a curtain over the light beam. Set the border so that the ‘curtain’ is right at the edge of the projected picture and no light goes outside the sandpit. Repeat the operation for all four borders.
Important! The global values for this setting (default option) may give different results in other modules. To overcome this, set ‘UseGlobal’ to false in the settings files you want to change.
The two next tabs contain settings that are mode specific and don’t affect the remainig modules at all. In the Paradise Island module you can change several water and wind parameters. The names are pretty self-explainatory, but if you happen to have any doubts, just observe the effect in your sandbox and set the values to your liking.
In the Discovery Game section you can change two parameters. ‘Model Depth’ describes how deep in your sandbox is the model placed and ‘Cover Offset’ dictates how much sand you will have to put over the model after each game in order to activate digging. The second parameter is linked to the first one, so you don’t have to change it again if you change depth.
In the next articles you can learn more about the individual parameters and general structure of the Settings files.