Second Life and Opensim alike share a particular attribute that is not quite as common to many of the other virtual worlds and games platforms. That attribute (well known to anyone who has been in and looked around) is a completely dynamic and potentially ever changing environment. Creating and moving things on the fly either as a user or through programs and scripts means that any space or event can change almost instantly. It is this attribute which means that sometimes you have to wait a little while for new things, like textures or new shapes to start to appear when the world changes around you.
There is a constant debate between this flexibility and the need to keep things locked down, how much dynamic streaming should something do versus highly detailed, preinstalled graphics.
Whilst that debate rages, and bandwidth improves, or we have hybrid video streaming and broadcast services to get around some of the problems we should not forget that whilst in games pop-up (a rendering engine not managing to raw things as fast as you want to see them) can be distracting, yet in a virtual world like second life watching something rezzed from scripts can be fascinating in its own right.
This is a video of one of the many building designers, rather than leave static buildings lying around the vendor boxes let you see dynamically created versions of the building you wish to purchase. In this case these buildings are not that expensive US$20 in some cases less. So you try before you buy, even show other people. Then pay the designer for their work and take a copy of the building with you to your own place.
This examples is on Creations Estate in Second Life one I just arrived at serendipitously.
I still like watching buildings rezz from boxes, it reminds me of the first clubhouse we had on Hursley back in 06.
Remember if you want to Rez you own houses and places you can always come and join Hursley and rent a plot or two.
There is a direct link here and IQ is next door if you are interested in a much larger half sim plot
Second Life Enterprise – A good addition to the mix
Yesterday the enterprise 2.0 conference saw the official release and announcements relating to Second Life Enterprise and of course featuring some preferred content in the form of Rivers Run Red’s Immersive Workspace and more to come via the Work Marketplace. It is interesting to see this happen both at something like an enterprise 2.0 conference and focussed as a packaged product in the way it is.
Back in April 2006 thru to Dec 2006 (which seems a very long while ago now) we said to one another as we (those early eightbars) realised that there was a huge scope for internal corporate communication…. wouldn’t this be great behind our firewall?
By September 2006 (after the first Wimbledon in Second Life) the US based CIO office had realised the potential and a few of us from places not just in the US ended up on that growing project to understand SL and all the other platforms and their implications to an internal corporate audience. This also started to lead to the more commercial based business unit forming, which interestingly is now part of the CIO office according the communications out of IBM.
This journey and the things that happened on the way (good and bad) all form part of the story I share with people in various ways including the in progress book on the subject.
Linden Lab focussing on enterprise and producing a product, however it is priced and packaged is an important further catalyst to this industry, one that those of us in IBM, Cisco, Sun etc. started to generate corporate and public interest in through our patronage. However this is now happening (unlike in 2006) in an era that has very many more potential direct competitors. many have been there for a while but will now be dropping into even more invitation to tender conversations, Proton Media, Forterra Olive, Teleplace, web.alive…. Equally there will be an increasing drive in take up of the hosted and self hosting services based on Opensim (SecondPlaces, ReactionGrid, Rezzable and SimHost ). Other platforms and standards such as Vastpark, or Wonderland for those who want to still explore and drive forward and develop things for themselves and get a step up on the packages. Services such as Venuegen, specialized in providing a particular quick access service also start to take a share of the market.
It is of course a huge market, business/enterprise communication relates to every employee in every company that has any form of electronic or remote communication. Like email, web and increasingly instant messaging and voip and social media in general it is essential business addresses the communication gaps we have generated. All these options may be confusing, but just pick one and get on with it!
I also still expect an actual games company to realize that their middleware and massive scaling and runtime abilities can be applied to a spin off market. So rather that enterprise business trying to figure out how to use games, games will figure out how to use enterprise business. With some of the developments this week too such as Unity3d becoming free to develop with and also Unreal 3 doing the same to some extent the future looks very rosy and very interesting.
However….. remember that the problems and challenges are not wholly technical. We are dealing here with social and cultural change. Something else I have experienced both the good and bad of and happy to share if you need to talk about the implications to your business, industry or life.
Avatar throwing – Bonfire night
I am not sure how I feel about this, but as I have been investigating how to turn my Evolver avatar into a Unity3d string puppet and then drop that on the iphone as part of an education in pipeline and development I have ended up with quick demo that works on the web.
In this demo you are able to click the spheres that that are above the avatar, each toggles between 3 modes on each click. Initially the state of each is off. When clicked once or twice the spheres then respond to the arrow keys or wasz game keys. The two active states merely change which direction in/out up/down the spheres will move which let you swing the avatar around. The middle sphere is connected to the spine, the rest to arms and legs.
I am experimenting with types of connection and the various weightings on the joints but I thought I would leave this lying around on the web.
So feel free to throw me around 🙂 Its a bit bonfire night themed, reminded me of penny for the guy as a kid.
Blink and you miss the future of sports broadcasting.
On the last Formula 1 race of the season (well done Jenson Button for becoming world champ the race before) not only was the coverage by the BBC brilliant, if nothing else for the fact that we had no adverts destroying the action and we had the return of “the Chain” as a them tune, but there was a little hint at the future of sports broadcasting.
This example may have come from the F1 company feed, or been part of the upgrade in racing brought by the Abu Dhabi circuit but it was the sort of thing we need to see more of.
The live video (replay) was blended into a rendered 3d model so that camera angles and analysis could be made after the event.
This is of course a little after the event and probably done manually in the tv suite, but as we did with Wimbledon and Second Life way back it is possible to rebuild live elements from data and allow viewers their own perspective on the action.
I hope the Olympics 2012 people were watching!
Happy Halloween from Feeding Edge
I could not resist this, we did not carve it in the end went for a more traditional look. Happy Halloween everyone.
More iphone Radgoll experiments
I carried on with a few ideas of what to do with the ragdoll version of my Evolver avatar and I ended up with this interesting behaviour. Which is sort of where I was heading. It is a form of emergent behaviour caused but the avatar being suspended by the two top spheres using a form of hinge. This combined with gravity and the bones and joints in the avatar lead it to create this dancing toy effect that is different each time it is run. Next is to wire the strings up to touch controls and then I have a full dancing avatar to play with on the iphone.
Iphone dancing on the ceiling
In my continued look at the quick things that can be done with a Mac, and Iphone, unity3d and some content (in this case my Evolver avatar) I thought I would see if the bones and animation worked ok and performed ok on the Iphone.
I was not being overly precise about defining the mappings of the ragdoll, but I did click on a few Kinematic check boxes to see what would happen.
This was the result. It does indeed animate itself, there is nothing I have put in other than asking for joints and physics it just dances away to itself.
It is amazing, the lengths we used to have to go to to make even the most basic animation happen, morphing 2d shapes on commodore 64’s and alike.
It feels to me that we have the potential for a huge bedroom coding movement now again. This was so quick to build and deploy that its hard to see why we all are not doing it.
Art, U2inSL and experiences in Second Life
My feeds today led me to look at a brilliant YouTube video that is over on New World Notes called Impressions by Willow Caldera. This video is wonderfully shot and shows a the very creative and expressive side of Second Life. It acts as a reminder (probably to those of us who preach about “business use” or who are starting to finally grok it all that there is much much more to all this than a bit of powerpoint and some business dressed avatars. I would recommend popping over to NWN and taking a look.
In following the links I saw this video too on the same channel about the U2inSL Warchild benefit gig.
U2 are back in the news again for using Youtube themselves (as opposed to this U2inSL who are a tribute act). However I still always manage to get U2inSL into any explanation of what this is all about.
There are several reasons for this.
1. Most people know who U2 are they are both part of the establishment and known innovators.
2. People listen to music all the time on the Radio, Ipods etc.
3. Bono is particularly known for charity work too.
Each of those have a way to reach people who don’t yet understand why we are all harping on about virtual worlds. Love or hate U2 it acts as personal conversation rather than a business one.
What happens at the concerts (as you can see from the video) is effectively a tribute act puppet show/impersonation. Yet it also has a crowd of people willing to watch listen and feel part of it. They are all passionate U2 fans, and they have gathered together to raise some real money for charity by collectively listening to their favourite tunes together.
Underlying all that we of course end up with copyright and image rights conversations, but in the case of U2inSL this really is a passionate fan base enjoying feel connected rather than someone making fake gucci bags for a quick buck.
As many of us keep pointing out, engaging and supporting these passionate fans whether you are a band, an author, a manufacturer of widgets is the key to the world today. Where those people happen to be and the way they are choosing to interact with one another is where you need to be joining in. Not a huge capital investment, not masses of PR and spin but just good old fashioned human to human conversation. Twitter, SL, Facebook…. whatever comes next, you just have to be there.
Predator design on Feeding Edge car
Further to my previous post with some Feeding Edge logos splattered over a Subaru, I just used what little graphic design talent I have to create this multi layered rendition of a predator mask. So I now have both a version of the corporate presence and my own merged together on a GT500.
I think it looks pretty good, but then beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Update: Using the subaru scoop as part of the predator mask 🙂
More product placement – Feeding Edge Forza3
Ok so it will not win any prizes for design (yet) but here is my custom Scooby in superb Forza 3.
This user created content means that people I race with online with this car get a Feeding Edge advert for free.
How are you promoting your brand across social networks like Xbox Live?