virtual online

virtual online / web2.0 — 1 Comment
15
Jul 10

Virtual Online Overlaps, Disconnects with OpenSim, Unity3D and Drupal

We have been working on getting Unity3D to run with OpenSim as we posted recently (check the 3D-virtual-area-in-the-browser in action here). We are adding some more functionality to the solution right now and hope to have a public alpha release in the next few weeks. As the technical elements are being progressed though, it is a bit confusing on what exactly to do with a larger sets of tools and how to consider new options on workflows.  We have been kicking around the issues of what is the best use of each tool and how to get them to work together. Following are some wacky enough pictures showing software capabilities and my notes on the overlaps and disconnects.

First, what is our general scope of activities?

We design 3D online virtual areas, we make virtual objects, we build virtual areas, we run 3D online scenes for visitors and we incorporate some social web features in real-time to make it most engaging.

Design

The design part is still good old paper, pen and flipcharts. We are seeing a need for more activities to engage users rather than just drop them in interesting spaces to explore and chat with friends. We have some new ideas rolling out now on Heritage Key for quests and virtual field trips for educators. Part of the design is to also share achievements beyond the virtual area to the broader web social action via things like facebook apps, wall postings.  Check out the contest for winning £1,000 to get an idea of how this is working.

Make

This is about creating high quality virtual objects that can be combined later into complete scenes. Main things needed here are textures, meshes, animations, sounds and scripts. There are quite a few tool options for creating these individual elements such as photoshop, maya,  zbrush, qavimator and many more.  Unity3D has a studio set for object creation as does the opensource Second Life Viewer and the SL-compatible third party viewers that modify and extend that code.

Build

Once the discrete elements are ready, then they need to be put into a 3D space for build. The 3D space also has land to be shaped and other virtual world features to consider. Unity3D allows for this build work to be done offline, where the Second Life model is online connected to the server, in our case our own OpenSim grids. Unity handles, presents 3D meshes, where OpenSim is based on its own class of pre-configured meshes called “primitives” (aka “prims” which is why we love prims).

Run

Once the build is ready then it can be published to visitors. The major issue here is dealing with changes after the scene is published. This is where the Second Life model is strongest in allowing for changes to be streamed out to all the connected users. Someone changes anything in an area or rezzes a new object and then it gets sent quickly out to all the people nearby. Unity deals with content in a more static way and also runs game physics locally on the users pc. OpenSim will deal with the concurrency where Unity needs to connect to a service, such as smartfox server,  to deliver the MMO side.  The big opportunity with Unity vs SL-compatible viewers (we suggest Imprudence btw) is to deploy 3D scenes to the browser and mobile devices (iphone, ipad and android).

Social

Then of course we need to deliver all the Social elements including avatar identity and communications for chat, IM and voice. For both games and virtual area access there is also a need for rights, roles and points of some kind.  Ideally the social elements should be available across the web, mobile touch points and integrated with social networks (where possible and not annoying). It looks like Freeswitch is a good enough voice solution even though it is not spatial. Drupal is our core community solution (simple diagram for our tech layout here).

The OpenSim plus Unity3D Issues and Strategy

On the one hand, it would be useful to make everything around an OpenSim region. This seems to give us the greatest flexibility for content creation within the existing limitations of minimum target graphics cards, bandwidth and computers. Actually I think more interactive, smaller scenes are currently more engaging than larger, more expansive areas. It seems to be more interesting for users to see a lot of intimate detail within the context of “placeness” than have them flying across bigger online spaces. This also helps to push users closer to each other and increase social activities.  (see my notes on 3D Web about key features here) Certainly for iPhone, Android and even pc’s wifi access, tighter scenes will run better for more users.

On the other hand, the SL-compatible viewers do not deal with real meshes currently. Although OpenSim can hold the mesh assets, the viewers cannot show them.  Meshes from Unity3D studio and other standard tools are easier to make more photo-realistic as far as I can tell. There are also tons of existing meshes out there to use as parts for scenes.  Yet, getting to high quality complete builds also requires workmanship in either environment and each has its own eccentricities and I guess we currently understand OpenSim a lot better. The definition/boundaries of a single region at 256m x 256m isn’t a major constraint until better physics can be deployed.

The other big open question is how to deal with the avatar in Unity3D. In OpenSim it is possible to customize the avatar with skins, textures and attachments. I think this is also possible to make customizable avatars within Unity, but is quite a bit of work and will make the Unity scene a lot bigger. Unity3D for the browser plug-in also also tied to the browser cache which is a pain. Scenes will reload on a refresh and you cannot create specific content folders to allow for content caching independent of the session.

Unity also does not stream media onto objects–so watching video, slideshows won’t work currently from a live streaming source. Although you can play media if it is shipped as part of the scene contents.  Then again, you can have a stream window in your browser next to the Unity scene if that were useful.

So it all comes back to the fundamental question — how big a deal is using a web app to connect to an engaging 3D virtual online area? My sense is that it is more about the ultimate user experience than making them download something in a few minutes (ok, a massive download is a show-stopper for mainstream users).  It would be a large, challenging undertaking to shove something like the SL-viewer into the browser completely–and what would you really gain vs just making a new generation web app purposely built for OpenSim? Seems like a lot of effort for little real gain. People download things like skype,  openoffice even large videos because they perceive the value in having it running.

Is then our current approach to using Unity3D for an on-ramp to the more immersive offerings still valid. Show them what they are missing and then invite them in? Even if that means the Unity browser sessions will have kind of  monotonous avatars? It seems so today. So we are looking at mashing the concurrency of the Unity sessions with the SL-compatible viewers over OpenSim regions.  In this way people can share some parts of the experience, see who is near them and communicate. Again our goal is to get out to mainstream audiences and we know they are all already on browsers, so this is an important step toward them. The concern is to still pull them into something unique and engaging.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

freemium / virtual online / web2.0 — 12 Comments
25
Jun 10

Unity3D and OpenSim Working Together Prototype

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been hammering away on connecting the Unity3D viewer to our OpenSim servers. It works. You can see it for yourself if you go over to http://heritage-key.com . Arrive in the virtual gallery and check out a selection of artefacts like King Tut’s death mask, Stonehenge sarasens and a Terracotta Warrior and also learn a bit about Ancient World history. The main goal here is to give people a taste of what is on offer in the fuller version of our virtual online areas.

Our challenge is to get mainstream online users into virtual online experiences. Often people don’t know what is even possible, but fear the hassle of finding out.  This new viewer capability lowers the hurdle significantly. Is this the future for museums? Maybe?

Note, we are asking for people to register to Heritage Key, but the visits are as guests on the sessions. There is only one type of avatar and you get a guest id–so it is a little confusing to chat to people! (Avatar does sort of look like Cali Lewis? ). We will integrate the Heritage Key user info shortly.

What You Can Expect to See with Unity3D and OpenSim:

The region content in this scene is identical to the Preview region that we have running for guests on Heritage Key, so you could compare yourself. In fact it would be possible to have Unity3D sessions concurrent with the mod’d SL viewer sessions. We need to do a little more work on this, but it already works.

The graphics are pretty simillar. The main difference you will notice is that the lighting is darker.  We have the main artefacts set-up as full bright. It is the dynamic lighting that is a little dim atm.

We have added interaction on various objects. If you click things will happen, like the Warrior changing from current monochrome to full color. You can also click to get more information about the pieces on display.

Some of the many prims that you will see were originally created in Second Life, so it is also proof that Second Life assets can be 1) pulled over to OpenSim and 2) displayed in a browser.

The avatar should seem a lot snappier that SL/OpenSim as the physics are run on your computer. You can use your alt-cam controls also. Chat works also.

More To Do, More Options

There is still quite a bit to do, but now people without any virtual world experience can get a good taste of what lies beyond their browser.

I still think the web app will offer a more robust, more immersive experience, but if no one uses it then, so what?  This browser capability also opens a lot of avenues for smaller scale virtual online without abandoning our OpenSim assets. And we can also work directly in mesh which is a massive time saver for high-quality content.  We have a new King Tut artefact in progress now that will be a purely Unity3D scene.

And the Unity3D pipeline should allow us to send content to Android, iPhone as well. Smartphones don’t really have the horsepower or graphics–yet. My guess is there is a little work to do on that for UE, but technically it should flow if we get the Unity toolset for those platforms.

We appreciate any comments and suggestions for improvements. We will put it out on the public side of Heritage Key in a few weeks once we have a look at any issues/bugs. We will also have a new facebook integration to promote our fancy new Questing system–stay tuned on that, it is very cool.

Go take a look at the Unity3D plus OpenSim prototype now: — > http://heritage-key.com/blogs/jon-himoff/better-way-experience-virtual-online-our-browser-viewer

(who is Cali Lewis? Check her Geek Brief blog here and also watch her xlent podcasts on your iPhone/iPad. She rocks!)

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online / web2.0 — No Comments
3
Jun 10

Our Game Changer: Live Interview and Tour of Heritage Key

Heritage Key: “It could be a game changer for virtual worlds,” says Saffia Widdershins during our chat on the Designing World live internet talk show.

The teams at Designing Worlds and Treet.tv did an amazing job with live interviews and tours of our Heritage Key areas. Lots of interesting stuff in this 60 minute podcast/machinima show done live, with a live audience from across the internet. Watch it by clicking image below:

This show will (hopefully) give you an idea on how we are working to blend educational content with entertaining,  interactive experiences.  It is also a great showcase for the extensive cultural content that we have now live on our OpenSim-based grid. The whole show is a great example of where the 3D Web is now and should give the idea of why we were are so excited about where it is going.

We talked about why we moved on from Second Life, the potential for Unity, why we like OpenSim and lots more. Viv Trafalgar also does a super job talking about some of the things on the Heritage Key grid now and how they were made.

You can of course also go to Heritage Key right now and make your own avatar and begin your own great adventures across time and history!

Also: Saffia did a nice magazine piece in Primgraph about our educational project for YTouring/Wellcome we call “Steamfish”. Check that here.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online / web2.0 — 3 Comments
26
May 10

Why Open Source Software Fuels the 3D Web Revolution

One of my driving interests in starting Rezzable in 2006 was to get into OpenSource Software (OSS).  It is the revolution in the software industry – it is the revolution in technology. I am sure that the 3D Web will be built using new OSS, just the way web today relies upon this incredible resource.

From our view, OpenSim could become the Apache of the 3D Web serving up 3D scenes to hundreds of millions of daily users in the near future.

Below are my notes on OpenSource: what it is, why it is changing online and how it has become so significant a force.  Plus, how people make money around Open Source–which is not necessarily free or a charity effort at all. Also watch the short video below where I hit some of the key points on why we are investing so much time and effort into using, developing and trying to make money with our mix of OpenSim, Drupal and more.

Watch video above: Jonathan Himoff, CEO Rezzable talks about why Open Source Software is so important to online innovation and the 3D Web

Not Just About Coding—Using Something That Works

We come at the Open Source topic from the user side, not the coding side. Wouldn’t it be great if software just did everything we wanted it to? Well, that never happens. We want to make new user experiences without having to deal with the technical issues—just in the way people make website and don’t have to first create their own database application etc.

Using a big software application, especially if it is core to your operations, is making a relationship with the developer. This is more critical in innovative, uncharted areas–like virtual online.  And it is not just about the present (unless the software is good enough as it is) it is about where the development roadmap is heading, the people leading the efforts and how fast progress can be made.

When software works,  it keeps working without fatigue, without rusting.  New hardware often makes old software perform better too. So really it is about enhancing and making applications meaningfully better over time. People can keep challenging the software with new uses, many of which can be accommodated and some which need new code to run.

Open Source Software is Seriously Big

If you have a computer you are already using Open Source. For people not familiar with the software industry and online it might be a surprise to note the following data-points:

What is Open Source Software?

The code can be read openly.  You can see the lines of code and comments. Developers can review, study and understand how the applications and modules function. It is also possible to make your own changes to the code and then (try) to compile it and run in your flavour.

Yet, OSS is not necessarily free to use or without usage restrictions. You can’t just do anything you want with opensource code – just like you can’t read a new book and then go off on your own and make a movie out of it.

Opensource is developed by a community with vested interests in using the software and having it work well. Collaboration with a community of developers and users can be organized and is not necessarily anarchy.

OSS is a very different way of solving problems, designing solutions and developing software. It is done out in the public. It is global collaboration at web-speed. There is also a balance between what the coders write and what the users contribute and each party gets access to the codebase for their participation.

OSS is released under a variety of licences such as GPL and BSD which restrict usage and how code can be modified and republished.  According to Black Duck GNU GPL licence is the most widely used.  There are a lot of commercial and philosophical points on why certain licences are better or worse. There is also a hot debate regarding Free  and Open Source Software.

More info on Open Source:

Why Open Source is the Way to Go –

  • More Users Faster
    Users, especially early adopters, seem to jump on good open source a lot faster than proprietary software. More users means more attention to bugs, more comments on roadmap and more stress testing.
  • Share the Load, Build Momentum
    Making great software take a lot of time and an enormous amount of effort. Many people using and working on  improvements is better than a small team in stuffed into corporate cubicles somewhere. Typically there is a core coding team, but also there should be lots and lots of other developers and users involved. It is an extended team activity and leverages the web in a great way. The developers can get massive, immediate feedback and then make rapid updates further building trust and momentum within the community. Users are part of the process—not just the recipients of what comes out of it.
  • More Flexible Architecture, Faster/Smaller Iterations
    As OSS has a collaborative approach built-in to the development process, the systems should have more modular design to allow people to work independently on functions without impact each other or degrading the core performance. This also enables faster/smaller new code releases. Each release then is also easier to debug and track uplift.
  • Easier Integration
    Integration is more than just pushing XML files around. Complex online systems share data and resources in more detailed often delicate ways. Replicating data is not efficient either and impacts scalability. OSS allows for new small applications to be built into the code, often as modulars that can be shared also,  or accessing data in tables already existing.
  • Focus on Core Performance
    Ultimately there should be a set of core functions that should be common across all the use cases. People can then work on making  those critical areas work better—ie serve pages faster, be more secure, scale better. This then benefits all the users significantly.
  • Create an Ecosystem
    While the OSS might be free/low cost there are still many opportunities to add commercial value and build value in a business that has expertise around deploying, running, customizing, integration and creating content. As a network effect, more users lifts the benefits of each participating in the community.
  • Less Risky to Use
    You always have access to the code you are running. While it might not be practical for non-technical people to do anything with this, it does mean that you have the opportunity to pay for changes or at least port your content over to an alternative in the future. You are not at the mercy of a single software publisher—many of whom are bought and sold or become so profitable as to neglect the interests of their users. I don’t know that in all cases using OSS is necessarily cheaper, although it certainly seems to be, but as a user or a business you have a lot more control of what you put into it.

How to Make Money Around Open Source Software

The main point is you can add value to something that already works and performs, it is a foundation for your new intellectual property. You don’t need to create a web page server to make a great website—use Apache and then focus on what you can do best. Your starting point is much further than if you had to build everything or if you had to pay lots of money to get the basic online stack (like LAMP).

Depending on how mature the code is, you should prepared to invest some effort in the Community – it doesn’t have to be writing code, could be in using software, flagging issues, reporting bugs and also giving active coders good use cases.

Then understand where you want to add value and build a business in an open source ecosystem

  • Premium modules
  • Services – at a lot of different points
  • Support
  • Using a mix of opensource in unique ways to do amazing stuff – like 3D Web!
Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online / web2.0 — 11 Comments
18
May 10

The Best of the 3D Web: Why, What, Opportunities

The 3D Web is already here in some basic form and in the next few years it will become massive. My short definition is that the 3D Web is a:

3D graphical representation of digital information that is interactive and delivered within an online social environment.

The 3D Web is a lot more than a single virtual world. It uses some of the virtual world technologies, but goes way beyond to integrate with web and mobile.  It is a new way to engage with information and people across the global internet.  A lot of major forces are coming together now to enable the 3D Web to go mainstream. Following is a short video were I outline some of the key points about the 3D Web as we see them. Below are my more detailed notes on why that is happening, what is the 3D Web and how big are some of the opportunities.

Above: Watch Video Jon Himoff, CEO Rezzable Describes 3D Web and why it will be a serious factor online

3D is the Hot topic

The movie Avatar is the biggest grossing film ever, pulling in more than $2 Billion in box office (the franchise is planning sequels etc). 3D Movies (including Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Train Your Dragon)  in the US market were more than 33% of all box office sales since mid-December. You can bet that there are a lot of new films being planned for this amazing format now. Some interesting detail on how Dreamworks makes 3D movies.  (check Intl 3D Society for industry info).

Beyond the big screen of course is your home television, where 3D is also headed fast and furious. Expect to see a lot of new  consumer electronics and digital cameras for capturing 3D and sharing it back online (some gadgets now for sale). Samsung is betting big that the market will be 85 million 3D televisions units sold in 2015. The 2010 Masters Golf tournament had a special 3D broadcast so there are even some experiments for 3D native content.

I think people love 3D because it is so much richer. You can absorb a huge amount of detailed, stunning, energizing, detailed information very quickly. Your brain is working a lot harder to assemble all this data into something comprehensible.  It is a much more stimulating time. Once you get into3D,  consuming flat content is like looking back at old Polaroid pictures.

Yet, it won’t be reruns of “I love Lucy” alone (ok, I would actually watch that) that will people will want to see after getting all their kit sorted in their home. This new format will also need new types of content (Cameron is urging TV to get into gear and start making new stuff).

For online consumers, the drip feed of single thread content is too slow=boring.  Active online consumers already don’t have the patience to sit passively still and slowly swallow 10 minutes blocks of shows in-between tedious ads. Already people are augmenting their tv viewing with twitter and facebook to make it more dynamic and social. They want to drive their own action. The want to be the stars of their own shows. They want to get to specific or related content fast.  They want to have a lot of chats, interactions flowing as part of their viewing time. It is a tough audience with increasingly complex demands to meet.

Collision of Gaming and Social Web

Games already grab the attention of millions of committed users. Online games are of course interactive and offer something to do online. It is a seriously big business. World of Warcraft (WoW) has more than 14 million customers paying about $10 per month. WoW owner Activision (ATVI) is blowing its numbers posting $1.3 Billion in revenues for the last Quarter. ATVI has a $13 Billion market cap today.  Farmville, a rather thin social game,  has attracted more than 75 million players–Zynga boast more than 230 million players across its games.  Zynga may even have an enterprise value itself of $5 Billion. Then there are the console games which have the kind of dedicated fans that sit out in front of stores waiting for new releases. (on its first day, GTA IV sold 3.6 million copies and generated $310 million in sales.)

Aside from the fun of playing them,  online games are also very social. One of the drivers for Zynga is the integration with Facebook to not only attract new users, but to give a sense of status back to the participants. So social is not just about meeting/making friends, it is also about staking and enhancing your identity in the online realm.

Game guru Koster teases out the impact of social games as: ” The value in these networks lies in the connectivity to friends, the easy distribution of content across the social graph, the web accessibility.”

The potential of the 3D Web is to deliver then the next level of rich media that takes the best of gaming and social web–but also delivers this for mainstream content (ie not the ole ultra-violence first-person shooter, porno, gambling or fantasy role play).

What is the 3D Web?

Elements of the 3D Web have already been imagined in science fiction and key parts are out there on the web today.  It is more than a lone virtual world–it is an ever-growing web of content that can be viewed via 3D graphics and eventually in 3D.  This will be a lot more complex than clicking between websites and browsing pages or watching videos.

In the near future, the best of the 3D Web will probably be described as combining all of the following factors:

  • 3D Graphics and 3D
    3D scenes that you can move into in high quality and very detailed. It will need to be more than cartoons and 2.5 kid stuff to grab mainstream users. 3D graphics, in contrast to 2D photos,  are like videos you can walk (or fly) into in some way. It will also be possible to present these scenes in 3D to users with new viewing software– the content is already good to go for the glasses and just needs new viewing software.
  • Synthetic Places
    There already are streets, cities, locations modelled from real or created new that have a digital geography and are bound by a sort of gravity and physics. People get to know them and understand areas within them just in the way you would know a public park or mountain trail. They can get crowded or be empty. When you log-off these synthetic places are still there and evolving. When you come back they may be different. Or they may disappear.  I like the term “Placeness” which sort of captures the real and the ephemeral nature of these digital venues populated by real people.
  • Your Avatar
    This is your navigation, your presence and your guide to the virtual online areas. You control your Avatar like a sort of puppet. It is very tedious now to push it along with a keyboard and mouse. Our trusted computer companion the Mouse is on the verge of extinction.  New natural movement interfaces like Natal from Microsoft and Omek will remove that strain from users by allowing control from simple human movements. Further, the look of your avatar can be customized to reflect your real personality (or not). Personalizing avatars is also a big digital content sales opportunity that some are valuing in the $billions already.
  • Real-time Social
    You are connecting with people in real-time across the web. It is much more immediate than swatting messages around the net. Meet/make friends and also establish yourself within the global communities that you want to dip-in/dip-out of.   The 3D Web pulls together the visualization, light interactions and status factors in a completely new way.  For many this phenomenon is very threatening, but also very liberating. It will open the entire world to itself — fast and dramatic.
  • Useful & Varied Things To Do
    Mainstream users are seeking activities online that help them do something meaningful. And they also want enough variety within easy access to give them the freedom to dip-in and out of experiences. Hot online transactions today include things like tracking news, buying travel services, buying media and dating.  This is a key distinction from the gaming world or virtual worlds as they are today. People will use the 3D Web to add value to their real life and help do important things better.  Just in the way that people us Amazon to buy stuff or Expedia to book travel, the 3D Web will offer more efficient ways to do things online. As an example at Heritage Key you can learn about history in an entertaining way and then even plan a trip to a real world site.  Modern life in 2010 and beyond will be increasingly complicated (and maybe dangerous?) and the visualization, interaction and social capabilities of the 3D Web will be the platform to survive.
  • Easy to Use
    Within the next 2-3 years all the clumsy, stumbling technical issues will be solved somehow. Already we see that software like OpenSim has made major progress in the last 12 months. The more people use it, the more chance things will get sorted. Then the complicated parts of the technology will be invisible. People can access the 3D Web across pc, mobile, tv.  Also the big improvements in natural movement control will allow users to enjoy their online time more.
  • New Types of Content/Experiences
    It is a more complex environment and needs a more goal-oriented path to keep people from getting overwhelmed. Just because it is there, does not mean people will stay around any more than they hang-out on web pages after they scan them.  The 3D Web offers more and visitors will demand more, just in the same way you have an expectation that on vacation the real world place you visit should be better then the one you departed from.

Net Net: the results of the best of the 3D Web will be Immersive. This is where a switch in your head is released and you believe in the digital content that you are using. The engagement here is very high. It has a personal impact way beyond anything on the web today.

Massive Market Opportunities

  • Reach 600 million connected users by 2013
    1.7 Billion PCs in 2013 and 1.82 Billion mobiles means probably more than 600 million users will have access to good enough systems and connectivity to tap the 3D Web usefully.  Intel is betting big on 3D Internet: Sean Kohl: “With the availability of all this computing power, we’re only beginning to exploit it. Now we’re adding more intelligence and more capability.”  That total market will continue to grow dramatically (add the 85 Million 3D televisions also!). More market statistics on the 3D Web here.
  • New Online Use Cases
    The 3D Web will enable completely new things online especially around groups of people enjoying shared experiences in real-time. This will change how education is delivered and open new opportunities for people to work together on projects.  Visualizations will also be very exciting as well as role play and simulations. In general it is all the same kinda stuff that spurred the internet forward in the early 1990′s but in a more complex, intense format.
  • Premium Customers
    The quality 3D offerings will be something that people will be willing to pay money for. There just won’t be that much good stuff and there will be tremendous demand.
  • New Companies
    This is a fast moving space. New companies can focus in on creating new users experiences and tools to answer the challenges.  It is still amazing to remind yourself that Google and Amazon are only around for 15 years. Facebook was started in 2005. There are tons of 3d Web opportunities across technology, infrastructure and new content experiences.

The 3D Web is the newest Frontier

We have taken the first steps down the 3D Web road with Heritage Key.It is a new online community with a totally unique virtual experience. We think it can be the basis for a new range of “real-time, online communities.”

From our side, we are focused on delivering a powerful mix of educational and entertaining content (edu-tainment?). You can transport yourself to the Valley of the Kings and enter King Tut’s tomb. You can understand how small a tomb this is and then go to a surreal cosmic gallery to see dozens of the most incredible ancient world artefacts every discovered. Your only other chance to see the artefacts better is to actually go to Cairo and visit the museum. The best pieces of the discovery do not travel as part of any of the Tut touring exhibitions.

Online you can get up close to see the details with your friends or participate in a live lecture. And the virtual environment lets you even travel across time to go back to reconstruction of a day-in-the-life of King Tut (check our highlights video here). You can wander a stately home in Amarna and get a feel for how the Nile supported the vibrant Egyptian culture for thousands of years. Watch Heritage Key coverage on CNN here. The market for people that buy culture travel services and related media is global and large. We think Heritage Key can add something useful to actual visits as well as helping people learn about why the ancient world is relevant to their lives today.

I would point out that the main take-away on Heritage Key is that we are trying to mix the online community which has the broadest reach via web and mobile with the 3D, virtual experience which has the deepest possible engagement. It is early days on this, but we can see that the combination makes sense and has huge potential.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online — No Comments
14
May 10

Machinima from the Virtual Online Experience at Heritage Key

A quick machinima tour around some of the amazing places that we have live now over at the Heritage Key 3D, virtual online areas. This is just a taster of what we are doing with 3D + Interactive + Social content on our OpenSim-based grids. King Tut’s treasures may have already been discovered almost 100 years ago, but your great adventure to explore the tombs at the Valley of Kings online awaits.

Even better than watching this nice video is to go and get your own avatar and wander through history yourself.  Also check-out the tutorials on how to make the most of your visit to the newest frontier.

For more info about the “Steamfish” project for YMCA for teen education in the UK go here.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online — 15 Comments
12
May 10

Unity and the On-Ramp to the OpenSim Metaverse

We have been looking at how best to solve “the viewer issue” for our Virtual Online Experience (VX) Areas using  our OpenSim grids.  I wanted to share an update on where we got to so far with using Unity as a potential solution/toolset.

We have been working on this test now for about 4 months and results are very promising.  (Stay Tuned or RSS’d: also here as we will post the running Unity test shortly so you can see for yourself how it really works. )

Starting Point

Unity + OpenSim Test Results = A Good On-ramp Now

My initial view is that Unity is a very serious option. It works with OpenSim. We can use our OpenSim content without having to rework it at all. It is also really different from a Web App like the SL-viewer–and that is both good and bad. Unity isn’t trying to be that big a solution, but is more of a toolset.

I think in the short-term Unity can provide a great on-ramp to our amazing King Tut, Stonehenge and other content-rich virtual online areas. Many more people will take a look at our stuff, if all they need to do is click a web page and get into it. This way they will know what they are missing–from tasting what is out there in the richer experience.

Further, we should be able to do a lot more exciting stuff than the poky 2.5D Farmville areas (ok poky olé Zynga  is worth $5 Billion = a lot more billions than WoW). Which is one of the reasons why game-gurus like Ralph Koster say “you will have to be on Facebook even if you don’t want to be.” We should be able to engage users as well as have a more accessible entry point from both browser and Facebook.

Is Unity the basis for a robust, 3D immersive viewer? Dunno atm, and maybe that doesn’t matter either as something like WebGL is perhaps the ultimate nirvana on this topic anyway and all we need to do is wait around a few years for that to be usable? On the other hand, Unity also supports iPhone (until Apple either flashes them out or buys them) , so that opens up a lot of options for repurposing assets into premium content. And in the web, who has time to wait around?

The first objective was to present existing OpenSim content in some useful way inside the browser.  The graphics are quite close to what we get via the SL 1.23 viewer.  As the physic are on the Unity client, the performance over the web is very snappy by comparison.

Unity + OpenSim How It Might Work

In general the Unity viewer can be connected to an OpenSim region just like an SL-compatible viewer. It needs a bunch of modules to deal with the content as well which is where the dev effort was needed. That is the part we are still working on. Unity reads mesh information so the prims need to be converted.  For our test we have generated a static scene from a Region, but in future that could be dynamic.

Of course the interesting part here is that visitors using a Unity viewer and visitors using a SL-type viewer can actually be in the same region at the same time. I can see how we could also connect iPhone users to the same region.  The user experiences will be different depending on the viewer and connection, but the real-time social will be delivered. For example people could do sort of quests together regardless of how they connect to the content and then we could send status and badges over to Facebook.

I think we could be (finally) heading toward the heterogeneous avatar environment envisioned in Snow Crash’s metaverse area the Street. This area for those of you un-initiated, sorta like the Matrix, has levels of realism, interaction based upon how the users connect. It breaks the constraint of the lowest common dominator and opens more interaction across more people. This is a major hurdle for market adoption today (see my notes on top 5 issues here).

Next Set of Unity + OpenSim Issues to Look At

Our prototype/test covered the presentation of prims and sculpted prims and results looks good. Our next wave will work on things like: Avatars, scripted interactions, pushing into Unity strengths, improving lighting as well as connecting up things like chat, IM, user log-ins.

One of the big opportunities is to be able to use mesh objects directly with Unity. From a content creation side this is a huge lift in productivity and photo-realism capability.

More Images from the Unity Test:

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

freemium / virtual online / web2.0 — 2 Comments
8
May 10

5 Top Issues Holding Back the Virtual Online Experience

Day 2 here at the MetaMeets conference in Dublin and some ideas on the future. While we are seeing millions and millions of people jumping into Facebook games, the uptake on 3D Immersive Online is more or less flat. Why?

1. Wrong Target

While SL defined a kind of virtual online experience, the Virtual World as a consumer offering is not scalable.  The “land” concept benefits mainly the platform operator and not the content creators–who pay more for that resource than in general they can recover (ok, some people beat the casino, but most don’t). The fetish about being a “land owner” or the belittled role of being a “resident” are not compelling to mainstream audiences.

virtual welcome 01

2. Persistence is Wasteful

What people will want is content on demand — not a false “land-centric” view of content that can only be accessed via pushing your avatar into a crowded (=laggy) or empty (=lonely) area. I think a more interesting target is “Placeness” which helps people understand content and consume it. But Placeness does not have to be persistent and can be delivered to multiple instances and even allow variance. So rather than have people queuing to enter a virtual area like King Tut’s tomb, we can provide that on-demand in whatever configuration a user wants. As well, if virtual content is not needed it is not rezzed and consuming server resource. It would sit in a database and be called when someone needs it.

3. Online Integration Needs Context

While people will want an immersive experience online, they don’t want to be cut-off from the web threads or have to register a new account. Facebook already bridges a lot of this. But the main point on integration is from a user experience perspective–in that you do things on the web or on mobile and they are seamlessly pulled into the virtual or push back out.  The virtual experience should not be some isolated experience.

4. Technical Hurdles

It still isn’t that easy to get into a virtual online session and move around. We still see a lot of issues with people trying to use wireless and laptops and getting in, but then having crashes, lag etc. A wired connection is a lot more stable.  School environments have a lot of firewall issues as well. We have a new Unity-based browser viewer that may address some of this, but not without some issues.

5. Lack of Compelling Content

We have about 8-10 hours of content on Heritage Key now which is very engaging, but of course it is not that vast or varied. In fact no one grid can ever be enough to meet the interests of the entire online userbase.  And content will need also to be more complex and high-quality to justify getting paid for it. There is also an issue here about what platforms to build new content for. I don’t see how anyone can make big investments in closed platforms where the created assets are not easy to archive or repurpose. Further content creators need clear copyright control over their work.

A Vision of the 3D Web Future

Our vision of the Virtual 3D Immersive Experience that should be more compelling might be described as (ok this is still a work in progress):

* 3D = not 2.5D

* High fidelity = photorealism for content including Avatars (of course this can be styled, but point is about quality and detail)

* Immersive = makes you feel like you are in a place. So actually if this is right the idea of having a virtual experience embedded in a browser is not that important.

* On-Demand = how you want it, when, where you want it

* Avatar-centric = built around user experience and social interactions. Avatars also need better, more fluid controls and be reactive to users in a rich manner.

* Useful = adds value to tasks, transactions, processes that are needed. I think this is a hard challenge to meet and in general it is difficult to deliver. There are a lot of opportunities for making entertaining education content, but this market is difficult monetize. So, beyond shooter games what will consumers find interesting?

* Pay-to-Use =Better Monetization Strategies. If making money on selling “land” is not scalable then what is? Advertising is obvious, but will need the scale that is missing at this stage. Paid to play will hit the quantity/quality challenge. Yet, pay to play is working for kids online and of course WoW makes it happen.

* Federated = thousands of interconnected grids all opt-in and controlled by their own grid owners. Moving between these grids should be seamless and secure.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online / web2.0 — 2 Comments
14
Apr 10

Kids Worlds and the 3D Web

DreamWorks is launching  Kung Fu Panda World a virtual, online world into a what the New York Times is calling a “the cooling business of virtual worlds.” They put $10 million into this project over 2 1/2 years (which for some reason is not available in the UK according to the site “You are trying to access the website www.kungfupandaworld.com from an unsupported region”). The NYTimes also reports that Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” has been a flop, but the mouse machine is undaunted and will release a VW for “Cars”. DreamWorks is also looking at a new project for the “How to Train Your Dragon” brand. Good to see the gangs on the Westcoast are still drooling over WoW revenues and Farmville growth. But is this the right answer?

McDonalds is co-promoting KFPW with the usual in-store schmere. DreamWorks will also have in-world advertising. [and how much clickstream data are they collecting on kids and will they share it with parents?] The site will further have live moderators and some special software (heh) to track bad behaviour. Site is charging kids (err..parents) $5.95/month = $71.40/year to train pets karate and earn sashes.

It all seems a bit crass and unnecessary, although it looks pretty. DreamWorks is looking to make more money–fair enough, but do kids really need more of this kind of entertainment? Is it just creating addictive dependencies on empty stimulation? Let’s get kids ready for WoW and more violent shooter games? Will kids one day go “Panda” instead of “Postal”?

Says Nancy over at Mommies w/Style blog when she saw the preview:  “I loved the safety features. As a mom of a 4 1/2 year old who now uses the computer regularly — I liked the Parent Panel. It lets parents oversee and manage their child’s account.” Don’t feel too secure though as Habbo and other site users are often targets for phishing and other scams. See some notes from GData, especially on phone scams. “G Data recommends that all parents visit age-based sites together with their children. Parents should keep an eye on their children’s activities on the net.”

Kids can join these VW’s and try to avoid live moderators (are they state certified to supervise kids?), watch for the local bullies, avoid twisted adults, dodge spammers, scammers and phishers and also stay out of the clutches of Mom and Dad. Well, I guess maybe they are learning something useful after all?  The Escapist Blog notes that “Parents can also play and earn in-game items for their offspring.”

Anyway, I think Kids VW’s are a shady cocktail of what is “good for kids” and what is fast money for the merchandising people that target kid demographics scientifically. More disturbing is the effort invested by massive corporates into delving into their little, developing brains to suss out what will make them junkies.  Clearly manipulation of this scale should only used on adults.

The future 3D Web will not be necessarily any better in terms of content and or risk–but we can hope there will be more choice and more inspired use of web technology. Like SL back in 2008, we can expect to see all kinds of random stuff, some useful things, a lot of total junk, but also areas of amazing, inspired creativity.

Some notes on how Kids Virtual Worlds today and the 3D Web in the near enough future might compare:

Kids Only

 Mainstream – 3D Web Future
2.5D 3D, photorealism
Closed Worlds Move between Grids, OpenSim-type grids
Fantasy, Cartoon-like Mixed Reality, Surreal, Hyper-real, Feeds from Real Data
Simple Content Simple to Deep Content
Brand tie-ins, Movie tie-ins New Brands, tie-ins
Safe Experiences Interesting/Unexpected Experiences
Anonymous Persona
Include Parents, Existing Friends Friends, Make Friends
Easy to Access, single path Low Hurdle, Advanced Features for Power Users, multiple use cases
Gain Points, Badges, Buy Stuff Gain Points, Badges, Buy/Sell Items
Browser plug-in Browser or App, Facebook link, mobile link
Publisher controlled content, QC Publisher, Community, UGC, varied content, chaotic
Addictive-type games Addictive, also social games, varied
Live paid moderators Community moderators, none
Likely to be at fastfood promotion Likely to be at a TED conference?
Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

virtual online / web2.0 — No Comments
26
Mar 10

Heritage Key Outranks British Museum on Alexa

It’s a small milestone for our work on Heritage Key that the site now outranks the British Museum in Alexa rankings–both US and UK.  We opened our site only in August 2009 and the British Museum has more than 5 million physical visits, sells tickets to events and is generally the greatest museum for ancient world history. Today our ranking is Alexa global ranking is 57,100 and BM is 57, 196 — we are also even better in the UK (3,995 vs 4,176) which is a surprise to us.

I don’t really know how solid the Alexa rankings are, but they are something relative.  Looking at our Google stats and system info is obviously more detailed. We are also happy to see our Google page rank at 5 now. The BM is as you would expect, 7.

In fairness, I don’t think the BM is that bothered about their online presence. Their very interesting series with BBC is probably pulling a lot of traffic (although the flash bit isn’t crawlable) and there is even a nice questing game. We have perhaps a lot more interactive content with virtual Stonehenge, King Tut as well as quizzes on-site.   We also did expect to pass the BM in rankings as we are more focused on SEO and create a lot of new content targeted toward online users — like new video such as the Boudicca episode for Ancient World in London which is getting a lot of views. The BM also isn’t allowing comments or any UGC.

Main take-aways for this milestone:

* Brands like Heritage Key that can span interests across many traditional things like museums, movies, television and events will out-rank individual sites. We see this also even in publishing with one of our favourite sites the Daily Beast. But you can’t just be an umbrella — you need the strong brand and original content (we have already posted more than 8,000 pieces of new content as well as have the amazing 3D virtual online experiences).

* Traditional Brands might not be that worried (the BM is posting more and more footfall each year), but they are missing out on monetizing the global online audience. Check the stats on where that market is heading here. The actual cost to participate in the online boom for trusted brands is not that high, but it will require attention and action.

* Community sites are the future of the web. Push publishing and searching catalogues are not compelling enough to get above the noise. There needs to be something interesting and relevant to define the soul of community.  Check sites like Livestrong where they got it going on already.

Next steps — Louvre (41,109)  and then the Met (21,213)!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Posterous
  • RSS

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

← Older Entries