It took longer than expected (what doesn’t?), but the update to MINA 2 has been completed. MINA provides the underlying communications infrastructure between jACT-R and CommonReality (which provides the simulation brokering). The previous version had an out-of-order bug that took me forever to track down. I figured it was my code and my liberal use of threads, but it turned out to be a MINA issue. Fortunately, the 2.0 release (M2) has a more consistent threading model that functions much better.
While initial runs showed that it actually ran slower, subsequent runs have revealed that was due to the short duration of those early tests. Long term executions, such as my handedness model, are hovering around the original performance numbers (~ 50-70x realtime). No complaints from me.
The update required significant rejiggering of the state and connection management which should now allow participants to come in and out at anytime during the simulation (assuming none is the exclusive owner of a clock). I can now return to examining some model fits, further monkey refinements, perhaps get my dissertation into a publishable form? Craziness.
The next stage in the monkey modeling will incorporate some new features we’ve been playing with at the lab: gaze following. Aside from being relevant to developmentalists, gaze following presents a useful and cheap perspective-taking surrogate in the absence of more advanced processing. From my current meta-cogitating perspective, this also provides a useful starting point for goal inferencing.
But before I do that.. I really need to fix the movement tolerances in the visual system..
