CASE-015 can now download the mother's 3D scene before students enter the history
For teachers who run CASE-015 in a computer class: how to set up the class browsers so the history scene opens in seconds rather than after a long download, and when that will not help.
Since 6 November, a new run of CASE-015 in an ordinary browser window without data saving starts a background download of the history scene's 3D player and the mother's character, about 75 MiB (78 MB) together, while the student is still on the start card. Until then the download began only when the student entered the scene. The questions, the answers, the scoring and the endings are unchanged.
What the start card and the introduction buy
On production, in Chrome on a desktop computer with a cleared cache, without the head start the mother appeared 19.5 seconds after her scene opened; with it, 2.2 seconds, in two runs. In the same runs the background download finished about 13 seconds after the case page opened, while the case's own introduction between the start button and the first scene took about 44 seconds. A student who reads the introduction therefore reaches the mother with the download already done. These are figures from one computer and one connection, not a promise for every classroom.
Five situations where the head start is reduced or lost
A private or incognito window does not keep files this large, so the scene loads exactly as before.
If the browser is set to save data, the platform does not download the 3D scene in advance.
A run resumed after a break is already past the start card, and its scene loads when the student reaches it.
A student who clicks through the start card and the introduction faster than the download gets only the part that is left.
If the advance download fails for any reason, the scene loads its own files as it did before.
The 3D scene is still built for desktop computers; phones are outside its scope.
Setting up the class before the seminar
Ask students to open the case in an ordinary browser window rather than a private one, and to read the start card and the introduction instead of skipping them.
On the projector computer, open the case and leave it on the start card while you set the task for the group: by the time you press the start button, the mother is downloading or already there.
If the class computers have data saving switched on, turn it off for the session, or expect the old wait in the history scene.
Ways to build a seminar around the conversation with the mother are in our note of 5 November. The case is written in Russian and does not yet carry a clinical reviewer's sign-off.