Archives for June 2008

Seventeen Unsung Songs wrap-up

Back in May we mentioned a mixed reality event in Melbourne called Seventeen Unsung Songs.

Tateru Nino has done a nice wrap of the event on Massively. Here’s to more engaging mixed reality events in the future!

Weekend Whimsy

1. Richard Dawkins Discusses Second Life & More

This is a fascinating 10-minute presentation by well known religion skeptic Richard Dawkins.

2. SimBoarding In Second Life

3. Beauregard Freenote – High Tide

Bitfilm’s virtual art city in Twinity

Metaversum’s virtual cum mirror world, Twinity, is hosting the German digital media festival Bitfilm in an underground city called Bitropolis. It houses a cinema to view Bitfilm entries as well as an art gallery and bar. Digital media artists can rent their own cube close to the cinema to use for their screenings or other exploits.

The Bitfilm promo gives a snapshot of the quality of digital media on offer:

The festival runs through to the 12th July. To access Bitropolis you’ll need to register online.

There’s no shortage of virtual world film festivals now but this seems to be one of the more integrated efforts involving a well established festival. If you’re a Twinity beta-tester, we’d love to hear from you on the festival.

Interview – David Rolston, Forterra CEO

Forterra Inc is a private virtual world provider with a focus on health care, education and homeland security / disaster preparedness. One of their press releases a few weeks back caught my eye – Forterra has been awarded a Commercialization Pilot Program (CPP) by the US Army for medical training simulations of combat scenarios. So I thought I’d have a chat with Forterra’s CEO David Rolston (via email) about Forterra’s take on virtual worlds.

Lowell:: Can you describe a little of Forterra’s history and whether virtual worlds have always been its focus?

David:: Forterra has been around for a decade already. Initially the company was
known as There.com, and made one of the first social interaction websites (which still exists as There.com). About two and a half years ago There.com made an important change. Our board decided there were promising opportunities in other areas. We spun off a company called Makena Technologies that was licensed to work in the entertainment area, applying the software to creating social worlds for MTV, Coca-Cola and other consumer environments. At the same time we redirected the mainline company to work on enterprise applications and other professional usage, and renamed it Forterra Systems.

Lowell:: For those who haven’t heard of OLIVE, can you give a little of its development history?

David:: As a starting point for the new company, Forterra took the existing software which was built to execute 24 hours a day, seven days a week with millions of users. The software was used very heavily in large-scale, multi-player environments, but it was there for a specific task, namely running There.com. So our first job was to extract a reusable platform from that which would allow a customer to quickly build an enterprise oriented virtual world. That platform is now Forterra’s flagship product OLIVE (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment). Applications developed using OLIVE allow users to sit at their PCs with a network connection, log on, and appear in an interactive, virtual environment represented as a fully animated avatar. We have the best 3D audio in the industry and have been told by our customers it sounds just like being in a real meeting. Through a choice of simple keyboard, mouse or game controller interface, users are able to navigate through realistic environments, access and deploy equipment, drive/fly vehicles, don personal protective equipment, and communicate with one another. As a scenario is executed, the results are captured by a built in session replay system that support debrief, so users can learn from the simulation exercise.

OLIVE’s distributed client-server architecture enables simulations to easily scale from single user applications to large scale simulated environments supporting many thousands of concurrent users. Working with the OLIVE platform, customers can create realistic virtual world content and plug-in functionality to meet a wide range of simulation needs. An API layer enables customers to reuse existing content, integrate with third party applications, and leverage third party tools. The open
nature of the OLIVE platform allows customers to create powerful multi-resolution and multi-fidelity federated simulation environments.

Lowell:: Is the user interface similar to other virtual world platforms like Second Life?

David:: There are some similarities between the OLIVE user interface and that of Second Life in large part because some of the features and navigation are similar. We find Second Life users are comfortable navigating and communicating in OLIVE within about 10 minutes because of these
similarities.

Lowell:: There are also some graphical similarities to Second Life – does OLIVE have any code that’s similar?

David:: No there is no code that is common or similar between OLIVE to Second Life. The graphical level of OLIVE is more realistic and business oriented then Second Life in large part because the majority of our 3D content has been professionally developed.

Lowell:: You’ve recently announced that you’ve been awarded a Commercialization Pilot by the US Army for medical training simulations of combat scenarios – can you explain a little more about that?

David:: The initial Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards that were granted to Forterra by the US Army have been very successful. We have successfully demonstrated our technology through a phase I and II award, and as a result have been awarded a Commercialization Pilot Program. This program funds the development of features so the software can be used in Army production usage and in the commercial markets. Using the OLIVE platform we developed an application with realistic virtual emergency departments, operating rooms, reception areas, and even entire health-care facilities have been built to support a wide range of training applications, including first responder and trauma training. In the U.S. military, the contemporary operating environment requires combat medics to use their skills in team-based medical combat scenarios for effectively treating trauma patients on the battlefield.

Lowell:: Do you have plans for OLIVE to ever be interoperable with other platforms?

David:: Absolutely. The first level of interoperability we have achieved already is for 3D content to be imported or exported to OLIVE using standard content file formats like Collada. We have several partners who are able to migrate their Second Life content and import it into OLIVE. The next levels of interoperability will include how avatars and even the client software will be interoperable between virtual world platforms, but these two are more in the future.

Lowell:: What sort of technology do people need to use OLIVE?

David:: Today we have a PC only client that runs on either XP or Vista. Our customers are enterprises which have overwhelmingly adopted PCs as their main compute platform for users. However Forterra is working on support for lower end PCs since a typical deployment must run on laptops or desktops that are 1 to 3 years old. We also have excellent support working behind or through firewalls so enterprise IT groups can control who gets access to the virtual world.

Lowell:: What do you see as the key benefits of virtual world-based training?

David:: There are many benefits. First geographically distributed learners can meet virtually for either individual or team training and practice their skills many times before applying them in the real world. For certain types of jobs such as being a soldier or oil rig worker our software saves lives because of the hazards of their jobs. For other jobs such as a sales person the skills and confidence they gain practicing before applying their craft on real customers makes them more effective. Second, OLIVE includes 3D record and replay so teams can conduct after action reviews to pinpoint where learners should improve their performance. Lastly, with the physics and simulations built into OLIVE we can enable interaction with objects that supports a wide range of support and manufacturing type of training around a product or process.

Lowell:: What does OLIVE cost? Is it a scenario-specific cost or can people purchase the software and create their own scenarios?

David:: We offer a Software Development Kit that allows customers or partners to develop their own scenarios. Forterra offers three types of developer programs that include a developer license to OLIVE, documentation, support, and different levels of training and developer services. We
offer a Basic and Enterprise production license to OLIVE that allows small groups to deploy inexpensively with the ability to scale up to 1000s of concurrent users. We offer the option to license industry specific pre-packaged content packs such as a medical and meeting pack as well as plug-ins to standard business systems or integrations. These content packs and plug-ins help customers get into production more quickly and less expensively but with the ability to develop on top of those offerings to meet specific needs.

Lowell:: What plans for future developments does Forterra have?

David:: There are several exciting development areas we are working on. First we have rolled out a virtual collaboration application that shares MS Powerpoint, streaming video, and SCORM elearning content to distributed audiences. Later this summer we will expand the collaboration suite to include any MS Office document type, white boards, and meeting management. We are also wrapping up a new terrain standard we pioneered called Paged Terrain Format that allows importing any legacy terrain database. Later this year we will support extensions of our API for AI middleware vendors so we can provide voice recognition and responses with NPCs. This supports high volume individual training scenarios.

A year ago on The Metaverse Journal

We argued for a Melbourne-themed sim in Second Life and covered Anshe Chung’s relationship to the controversial World Stock Exchange.

Linden Lab release 4th podcast: education and Second Life

Linden Lab’s intermittent series of podcasts continues, this time with a focus on education projects in Second Life.

Get it here or you can read the transcript.

K-Zero: more than 300 million registered for virtual worlds

K-Zero are a company that follow metrics in virtual worlds and last week they released their updated chart showing the number of registrations by platform over time.

Note that gaming worlds like World of Warcraft (with more than ten million active users) aren’t even part of the 300+ million, which just further illustrates the growing depth of the virtual world population. Of course, an even more interesting measurement would be how many of those people remain active.

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. eNewsChannels (USA) – Virtual World Museum of Robots Hosts Competition That Asks Residents to Create Robots to Wear and Display. “Museum of Robots in Second Life announces the “Build-a-Robot” Competition, and invites all Second Life residents to participate. According to the organizers, “Our goal is to explore what a robot is, how it can be expressed within the parameters of Second Life, and to encourage creativity and originality. Our definition of ‘robot’ is unlimited: any creation that the designer thinks can be called a robot is acceptable.” Entrants receive a merchandise prize, with an additional Linden dollars cash prize pool awarded to the top 10 winners.”

2. San Jose Mercury News (USA) – Business is booming in virtual worlds. “To save money in these tough times, universities, conference planners and global companies have started holding gatherings for far-flung employees and students in the online world known as Second Life. Sun Microsystems has only one rule: Employees should show up looking like humans. Other companies don’t seem to mind if their workers take the form of animals and other entities while they’re on the clock. On a recent afternoon in Second Life, about 20 avatars – the personalized character each inhabitant of the virtual world adopts – gathered for a lecture on software development sponsored by Intel. The semiconductor giant planned the event to spark conversation about complex technical topics among employees and others across the globe.”

3. The Scotsman – Ewan Morrison: Weegie bored. “This past week I have done virtually nothing. Or rather in the real world I have done very little because I have been living a very full and exciting virtual life. In ‘reality’ I went to the supermarket a few times, performed several self-maintenance duties, ate and slept. I did not talk to a single soul other than a few checkout assistants.
Meanwhile, in my virtual week, I went to three indierock gigs, attended a lecture by the world’s leading philosopher, watched strangers having sex, swapped music and jokes with seven friends, went book shopping, was reunited with an old German buddy, spoke on Skype for eight hours and stared down at real-time footage of my own rooftop from a Nasa satellite.”

4. AFP – Schools eyeing virtual campuses. “An Internet fantasy universe teeming with faux worlds devoted to socializing and video games is expanding to include virtual classrooms and universities.
A new trend in online education involves students acting through animated characters called “avatars” mingling in simulated school settings and even rocketing off, via the Internet, on quests for knowledge.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Why are MMOs having a population crisis? “In the real world, overpopulation is a serious concern. The 6.6 billion people on this planet are draining natural resources, and in all areas – except Europe, apparently – the problem is expected to get worse in the next half-decade. In online worlds, however, overpopulation is more of a goal than a crisis. While Blizzard’s unstoppable World of Warcraft (WoW) has seen an exponential growth in its subscriber base since 2004 – it now rests at around 10 million – two of its closest rivals, Lineage and Lineage II, have much smaller (1 million each) user bases. And most of the other notably successful Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) plateau at (and slowly decline from) the 200,000 to 500,000 mark. In these worlds, people don’t use the resources – they are the resources, and if their attention drifts, the virtual world tends to languish.”

6. Pocket Gamer (UK) – Talking streaming, Second Life and mobile World of Warcraft with Vollee and Linden Lab. “A few weeks ago, we reported that start-up company Vollee is set to bring Linden Lab’s Second Life to mobile using its VolleeX engine, which streams games running on the company’s servers to mobile handsets, theoretically enabling you to play any PC game you like on your phone.
It’s an intriguing idea, with as many potential pitfalls as striking selling points. We were curious about how, and how well, it works, so we asked Vollee’s head of business development Julian Corbett and Linden Lab’s VP of platform development Joe Miller to fill us in.”

7. Financial Times Deutschland (Germany) – Commercials cause concern in the virtual Barbie world. “BarbieGirls.com is going VIP. The website associated with Mattel’s Barbie dolls – the world’s most popular toy – introduced a paid subscription section, offering users access to an improved version of its virtual playground. The site, launched just a year ago, allows users to create and dress their own online avatars, earning and using virtual “B Bucks” money. With more than 11m girls registered, BarbieGirls is about to turn into a new revenue source for Mattel. Chuck Scothon, head of Mattel’s girl brands, says the site is attracting girls in the eight-to-15 age group who may be outgrowing Barbie herself.”

8. The Times Online (UK) – Is Second Life about to have a second life?. “If there was one sentence, uttered by its creator, that neatly encapsulates the grown-up ambitions and continued infancy of Second Life, the virtual world that will be ten years old next year, it is this: “Once you get inside it’s an amazing experience, but we still have this situation where a lot of people have problems tying up their shoes.”

9. The Toronto Star – Conan the Barbarian’s latest conquest: The world of MMORPGs. “At roughly 10 million subscribers strong, the king of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) continues to be Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. But if the first week of Age of Conan sales is any indication, those green orcs will need to make way for barbarians. More than 400,000 players have already logged into Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (www.ageofconan.com), making it one of the fastest-selling computer games of all time. About half of those numbers are based on North American sales and the other half from Europe. The MMORPG was developed out of Funcom’s Oslo, Norway studios.”

10. The Economic Times (India) – Few websites to keep kids busy during holidays. “As the summer heat swelters, temperatures seem to be soaring in an interesting new online world too. Just like virtual worlds such as Second Life helped adults escape from their mundane lives, now with the summer holidays underway, it’s time for kids to escape the shackles of the world run by parents and teachers by logging on to virtual worlds specially designed for teens.”

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