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.

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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.

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The Extinction of an Old Friend

From one perspective, new technologies should have already changed the ways in which online users deal with the web. The market is loaded with cheap, powerful hardware and low cost bandwidth. There are thousands of software applications and services and tens of thousands of sites for almost every interest area.

Looking out across the horizon--not a mouse in sight.

From another perspective, changing user behavior is always a slower and more difficult process than most people expect it to be  (or early adopters have the patience to wait around for). When the change comes, though, it is a moment of opportunity as we learn to let go of old habits and tools that no longer help us as they once did.

With that view, I think the mouse is on the edge of extinction. My guess is that within two years, you won’t even be able to buy one that easily. What will that mean to the future of online experiences?  Plenty.  But let’s first consider the mouse’s desktop companion, the keyboard.

As most know, the keyboard was designed for the mechanical typewriter. The keys were designed to both optimize finger movement and to minimize the chance of the typewriter arms of getting all tangled up, though I seem to remember “a” and “e” getting caught together quite a bit. Remember the details we needed to use that technology properly? It was important to use the striking force setting to get through carbon copies.  The memory of those carbon copies is still vestigal on today’s emails as “CC:”.  And what about white-out/typex (that made Mike Nesmith’s from the Monkees mom a millionaire btw)- the only way to delete and revise without retyping?  How quaint that seems now. But even with all the advances we’ve made, we still use this same keyboard layout, even though a pc keyboard is digital. In the future, new generations of users could be sent off to more speedy layouts such as the Dvorak keyboard patented in 1936 (with an eclectic following of some 100,000′s of users today and used apparently by Steve Wozniak).

What is less well known about the QWERTY keyboard is that it was also designed to make it easy for typewriter salesmen to demo their fancy new machine to potential buyers. Imagine someone being confronted by a traveling salesman with a fancy, shiny new typewriter as asking why it works any better than paper and pencil. There should have been discussions about how typing would make people lazy and not learn how to write properly (which has probably happened). Of course people would need to learn a new skill to install a ribbon and be strong enough to pound out some words. The advantage would be consistently professional looking documents that would be much easier to read. Then the salesman would crank in a fresh piece of paper and with one finger peck out the word “typewriter” using just the top row of keys. Probably like most tech salespeople they didn’t really know how to use their own technology beyond the demo.

Decades later we are still are bound by the legacy of mechanics and simple demos.

But as the Web becomes more complex, offering more varied types of media, more people are spending more time online.  In this new era, use of the mouse and keyboard are  becoming major obstacles to offering new kinds of user experiences. The browser is also a limiting factor as it is forces us to scroll a “page” at a time – scrolling that we have to do with, you guessed it, the mouse.

Breaking the Constraints and Releasing the New Online Experience

People increasingly want information on demand in the form they want. This is much more of an active process than zapping on tv. Further people want more threads running at once. It can hit overload at times, but compare multi-tasking to channel surfing and you will see the difference in pace and content consumption.

So, let’s fast forward a few years: what does the online world look like without the mouse? We’ll be using touchscreens and movement sensors to control our access to information, much in the way smartphones do today. The iPhone has really made a big impact by allowing people to be away from their desktop computers, but still have the ability to interact online.

People will still want something personal–in the way that their pc is theirs (sorta even now as hardware is shared quite a bit). Yet it won’t be the computing power or the screen that is theirs–it will be their online presence and data assets and the physical device that enables navigation. Gartner guesses that by 2013 there will be more smartphones in use than PCs for the first time. More than 1 Billion people will access the internet from a mobile device as well (much more good stat porn here at TechCrunchies thanks Anand!).

I can see where “wearable” devices will be more useful to link us to the net and authenticate us.  Finally the Dick Tracy watch? The content online will also be more visually oriented to convey more information faster, and better. Now could well be the moment for the avatar to start to be more significant, as online content becomes a richer environment to explore and consume. Instead of page views, we will become focused on immersion. In effect it will be the collision of the 2D, browser web with multi-player online games controlled by an iPhone. I guess you can call it the 3D wii web?

The direction of something like Natal is amazing may show us the way to a more natural human-machine interface. It would be even cooler to have goal-oriented behaviours integrated. For example, wouldn’t you like to buy the cheapest copy of a book from a trusted supplier without having to search and compare so much? Or, to ask for the best value at a local restaurant for something that agrees with your diet (without already having dined on similar fare?). The challenge then is to enable lighter touch, but more powerful interactions that get people much better results than they can otherwise. Science fiction novels long ago laid out the solution to this type of interaction with information.

Then you must add in the social dimension to truly see the future.  Distributed social networks have grown and evolved since the days of the CB radio – and they will be very much a part of how new content and online experiences will be distributed and how they should be designed. The combined dynamics of collaboration, competition, and status are really what seem to engage and drive exciting new online usage. The one thing CB radios have over current online communities is that they delivered real-time communications, while most of today’s online social networking is delayed (asynchronous) to a greater or lesser extent.  But not always – online virtual communities found in games and in virtual experience do allow for both real-time (synchronous) and asynchronous communication – and this is important for the future.

The future of the web should be better results for “social transactions”.  Social transactions are things you do with other people, rather than solo, or things that vest you into a community that then enables you to do more.

The future then – the Net net means online information that is more cinematic in detail, deep in quality, smart ,and ubiquitous across access points will open a massive appetite for mainstream consumption of immersive, rich, and social content. And you won’t need to use your mouse or be tied to leftovers from the mechanical revolution.

Avoid the Noise – Find Real-Time Communities

While activities like shopping, buying books or making travel plans are normal for many online users, in 2010 we are hitting the puking point with spam and linkbait—at least the hard-core online users are. The casual users and noobs are still good targets for scams and will click on even the most annoying pop-up ad.  Online content is growing—but low quality content is growing most quickly.

Within all this noise and potential for risk/wasted effort, people are starting to look for relevant communities that can be trusted—trusted to de-clutter information and protect their time from useless crap. People are also taking some time to choose sites that can be trusted to hold personal information and data including images, video, and blogs.  Flickr is an excellent example here (not a surprise it was started then by gamers who now have a new 2D MMO coming out called Glitch).  People come to the web to do something specific—ie buy something or research something. The ways in which they do things need to be more relevant and value-adding—as well as more entertaining and potentially a place to  meet people (not bots or scammers).

Creating new online communities that are focused, media-rich and vibrant is not easy today. I like two sites that have something going on these days the Daily Beast and Livestrong. They have the mix of commissioned and UGC. You can feel the energy of the contributors and the interaction of the visitors.  Yet, these are still “publisher” sites though even with the UGC load. They are missing the real-time components that will/should define online communities.

Within our work on Heritage Key we are starting down the road to address some of the initial opportunities that may be unique and compelling enough.  Our ambition is to make Heritage Key a community enabler/manager as opposed to being another online publisher. The site is media-rich featuring original video, maps, images, directories and thousands of pieces of content. Yet, what will make HK most unique is the  real-time social interactions in the 3D, virtual online areas.

At Heritage Key, you can visit the ancient world –either as it exists today in the real world, online, or virtually at various periods in time. You can plan your trip to Stonehenge on the website—or explore Stonehenge across time with other people through the virtual environments. You can study images and watch videos about King Tut—and you can go discover the tomb and see artefacts in photo-realistic 3D immersive spaces.  While there is an element of casual gaming at play, there are also the real facts and accurate historical information. (check out the coverage on CNN iDesk)

The act of exploring is both active and interactive.  Exploring, both with and without other people, makes the content more stimulating because one is primed for discovery. In the future at Heritage Key, explorers stand to enhance their online identities and gain status as they achieve goals within the environment, thus making their efforts pay off for them online.

The end result should be more engaging, more accessible and more social experiences that ultimately yield faster learning and deeper understanding. If we get it right, then visiting a museum  or an archaeological site should be more interesting and relevant. And then when it is, people should want/need to share back their experiences with the appreciative community.

Yet isolated online communities won’t be enough either. We will want to move freely between thenm as we do across web sites today. Yet there is a more involved process of avatar activity and managing digital assets. We will need a sort of community of communities to make this work perhaps (more on this topic in future posts).

While the web may really start to look more and more like the “Matrix” in the next few years, the answer to why future online content engages users will be less about flashy graphics and more about what users gain by visiting and interacting.  Users keep wanting more and more and only solid communities will be able to deliver satisfying experiences.

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Rezzable created an on-line virtual questing environment to support Ytouring ‘s Starfish production where students learn through questing in a 3D environment about Scurvy and Clinical Trials. Steamfish website was created to hold all the information for the students to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials also see their scores, watch videos and link to other relevant sites.  After seeing Starfish audiences are invited to enter Steamfish a specially created world. First they create their own character (avatar) on the Steamfish Website . In character they arrive on board the recently ‘shipwrecked’ Stella Maris. This is where they start their quest to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials.  If you want to start your quest please click here to learn more at Rezzable.

The Steamfish game was developed by Rezzable as a virtual experience using Opensim technology.  The Opensim platform allows for more free-form immersion in a 3D narrative environment, the ability to surround players with objects small and large to investigate for enhanced learning, and the layering of a game engine to coordinate progress and scoring. In the game, players learn about the origins and basis for clinical trials by becoming part of an alternate-history version of the Lind scurvy trial of 1748, so a number of challenges were weighted heavily to that part of the story: including visits to the doctor for diagnosis, symptom reporting, and treatment. Woven in with those elements were the kinds of quests that help restore order to the ship, and locate enough equipment and knowledge to call for rescue.

How to Get Started:

Quick Tips to Get you started on your Steamfish Quest:

• Create your avatar at Rezzable
• Download of the viewer to be able to access the 3D environment
• Click on this link to access directly to SteamFish
• Click on the panel on the left side of the door in Steamfish arrival area
• Accept the hud ( Left hand side blue panel will come down)
• Open inventory on the bottom panel and find Steamfish Hud right click to wear it
• Now You are ready to start your quest go through the doors ! Good Luck!

Designing a questing system in a 3D world  to achieve a successful learning environment for 11- 15 years old Secondary school kids have been a great challenge.

Asked Fran Wilde, who is the lead builder in the project,  about the challenges of designing the quest in a 3D Environment :

‘There were a couple of primary challenges in designing Steamfish.  We needed to craft a storyline and a visual space that supported the quest elements and the educational goals of the project.   We had to make sure the quests had a good balance of different types of actions and expectations, as well as enough imagination to make them interesting, relevant,  substantive, and immersive.

A major challenge was keeping the material accurate, while keeping the experience from being dry or boring. That meant we needed to rely on all sorts of devices, from various objects that offered clothing and hints towards completing other tasks, to developing machines, tools, and dialogue that would capture the eye and the imagination.  Lastly, teaching the players how the game worked, and helping them feel comfortable playing and knowledgeable about what was expected of them at every stage was important, especially because this was a new platform to many.  User testing helped us define key points where additional hints were needed, quests could be refined, and signage and visual clues could help support the game play.  The game HUD (Heads Up Display) that Ordinal Malaprop scripted and we designed to show health, achievements, and quest instructions – as well as other collected items; and the feedback to players developed as a narrative from elements within the game were key elements in achieving that goal.’

How do you see the virtual worlds working together with education/schools?

I think that this is one major reason why I am involved with designing interactive elements in Virtual Worlds – because the opportunity for rich, immersive, adaptive experiences and activities — no matter where a student or school is located — is so vast on this platforms.  In the future, I see some virtual worlds being places that individuals and groups of learners can take private field trips to any virtual place, *at any period of time*, and  engage in a set of activities that is potentially tailored to their curriculum, before going ‘home’ again to reflect on their experiences and possibly build on them in their own virtual regions.  Rezzable’s ability to create a private, active region on demand for a group makes the first part of this possible now. I’m hoping that interaction becomes part of education in new ways – with both programmed aspects and live players who can move a lesson forward through a virtual experience.  I think with tools like these, education groups can use virtual worlds to teach, to immerse, and to connect with their own students as well as with students and educators interested in the same topics anywhere on the planet.

Steam fish project has successfully been integrated with web and 3D environment where we created both platforms to enrich the students with learning tools and material about the given subject and at the same time encouraging them to participate in a competitive environment where they are challenged. At the end of the quest each school can check the result on the leader board to see who is leading the quest. The website opens up to endless amounts of information about the subject if the kids were to learn more in this case about Scurvy or Clinical trials. In our experience, as the young minds feel involved in the process of learning they feel more concerned about the given subject. 

If you would like to learn more about the quest please sign up at Rezzable and start your quest now. If you would like to know more about what we are building in Heritage Key you can also follow us on Heritage Key Virtual

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Go Check it out,  OpenSim works.

OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web.

First thing to point out is that we are using OpenSim in combination with Drupal as the core user and even grid admin system.  So your own usage may not be the same if you are just working with OpenSim all by itself. We also have about 10 servers cranked-up to support all of this on a cluster sharing 50mb bandwidth.  Info on the tech layout here.

In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex–maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago.

The greatest strength of OpenSim is that it is opensource and has a smart enough set of committed developers beating on it.  We have been luck enough to work with a few of them and meet even a few more.  Because it is opensource we have been able to create our own integrations and services around the core.

The core dvelopers have cleared-up a lot of real problematic stuff like cross-region boarders, assets vanishing, general caching/grey-goo. You can give folders now! The regions are snappy. The build issues are still there on some level, but the workarounds are also better understood. The most painful build issues lately have been with scripting (and not overloading scripting).

The use cases that Rezzable is focused on, try to aim for the what OpenSim does right now and not steer directly into known gaps. So, again you own use cases might trigger different issues.

Below is my list of Top 10 Issues we see with OpenSim —

OpenSim Issue 1: Physics is still weak

Physics engine options are not that good right now. This causes a lot of problems and work-arounds.  Shooting, dropping, collisions and driving are basically to be avoided.  The physics engine also seems to create a lot of issues with the bounding boxes and sometimes you can’t walk through doors easily or phantom prims get solid-ish.

The obvious solution here is to find a way to plug-in better physics engines. It would seem that OpenSim will support this, but so far I have not heard of anything implemented in the last year that changes the performance.

OpenSim Issue 2: SL Hangovers

OpenSim seems (and we really try to avoid most of this stuff) to have a lot of SL-oriented functions especially around land, parcels that are more interesting to SL-copycat virtual worlds than our interest in 3D online experiences.  Net Net is the core code isn’t as performance-oriented as we would like to see it.

The biggest gap vs SL is that OpenSim does not have a commerce feature and of course no $L which is still a trusted micro-currency.

OpenSim Issue 3: Perms are Not There

We did quite a bit of work to implement a fairly basic permissions concept, mainly using Drupal roles. This works fine for Heritage Key, and we also have a separate “sub-grid” for build work. On the Rezzable grid it will require a lot more manual switch-flipping to have quasi-group/collaborative control on access and prim-perms. We have not implemented any commerce concepts (and may not either). I think the whole issue of perms/DRM needs a more complete architecture to avoid the issues beleaguering/demoralizing SL content creators.

OpenSim Issue 4: Lack of Docs

I suppose if you like to read code, you should have all you want with opensource OpenSim–but for those of you, like me, that like something with pictures and some summary, we are out of luck. It is more of a Ouija-board process with the developers to understand what it is, does, might be. And of course things are also changing as new releases flow through–but getting a roadmap certainly would require a crystal ball and some incense.

OpenSim Issue 5: Admin Tools

We have made quite a few tools to track users, manage resources. I think we should even be able to share these (once we write-up what they do somehow).  I have seen that there are some basic tools also floating around to make some reports/alerts, but these are quite simple.  I would hope to see more user info and logging–especially relating to inventory and server memory.

OpenSim Issue 6: Voice

Vivox apparently has a OpenSim implementation. I have not seen it, but the gang at IBM seems to be messing with it. It would seem to make sense that it works. It is not free, so there is more of a cost consideration than a functional one.  We have been more focused on lectures and talk-show use cases and are using skype-to-stream solutions which works fine and also has the advantage of being broadcast to the web.

OpenSim Issue 7: Mesh Support / SL Viewer

Being able to deploy mesh assets is also a gap on the SL grid (although not on Blue Mars). Main points about this are 1) more cost-effective production for sculptural content 2) more realism for objects. I think Mesh will also need careful design and usage so as not to kill performance, not of asset serving, but of the user experience with viewing/streaming. Blue Mars looks great, but has apparently great than 1 gig client with all the meshes inside it.  The Mesh topic also hits on the Issue of OpenSim not having a native viewer. All the viewers are basically SL viewers in the first instance.  So there is a lot of overhead, random issues and workarounds to get the SL viewer to work — but our guys at Imprudence have done it for us! They rock! And even the new Imprudence code we are using on HK/Rezzable viewers works much better in the last 3-4 months.

OpenSim Issue 8: Concurrency

Concurrency on light interaction areas we think will scale out at 20-25 concurrent on a region. Now, this is a lot different than on SL for a couple of key reasons. First if you are running your own server, a region is less of a cost issue than it is on SL. So you can have more regions each with less content. I think the main focus is on server-loading then. We are running as much RAM as we can get on a machine and hope to see server concurrency at 400-500. The best news about OpenSim vs SL here is that you can have cross-region tps scripted. If you visit our King Tut Virtual you will basically visit 6 different regions on OpenSim that was just 1 in SL. So on a cost-basis OpenSim has better cost per concurrent user than SL by far (SL $300/month for 50 concurrent and OpenSim $350/month for 400+ concurrent).

OpenSim Issue 9: Scripting

We just had to unravel some scripting to get a new project to run with even a target of 10 concurrent. The good news is that the OpenSim modules allow for server-side coding instead of scripting. The bad news is that coding is more complex and of course see Issue 4 about about lack of docs. Scripting will still be very important, but I am hoping we can get a lot done in the code and create modules/integrations that way. We are making more Bots now that so far seem to work nicely. These Bots will access our CMS and have AI features for NPC interaction (= they will do smart stuff with our existing .com content).  Again, benefit here is that Bots will be also accessible from the web pages, iPhone etc.

OpenSim Issue 10: Cross-Grid Movements

Maintaining identity, roles and assets is still the biggest isssue holding back larger adoption of the OpenSim platform.  We are aware of other work and have our own initiatives in the area. I would think that within 6 months it will be a few clicks to move an avatar with inventor between grids effectively. I can see where a facebook connect will work well and I also am hopeful that DRM issues can be addressed as well.  Right now we are testing mechanisms to move avatar between our own grids (ok, that isn’t too sexy, but it proves a point).

So there it is. Stay tuned we are working on these issues as are many other OpenSim project, developers and enthusiasts. I think a year from now it will be even a bigger step forward than over the last 12 months.

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