Visit The Apartment here. It’s very light on the system resources but takes a few minutes to download the assets. We’re talking about a full-sized apartment building translated directly from CAD in full detail.
I was extremely impressed with the web.alive platform after seeing it at work for Levono’s eLounge, so when the news came a few days ago that MellaniuM had moved their apartment complex build there I had to see it for myself.
This is another example of virtual worlds being used in architecture, but up until now I really do think the wrong tools have been applied to the problem. Don’t get me wrong: the hospitals and hotels built in Second Life as proofs of concepts were great and worthwhile. Tangible return on investment in the form of fast prototyping, where designers could solicit large amounts of feedback from a wide range of users, definitely served to improve those projects.
At the same time, though, Second Life as a platform made this pretty tough. Buildings are big complex things and rendering them faithfully means using a reasonable amount of detail. There are a number of other platforms where demos can be run much more smoothly. In this case, for example, the content can be translated directly from CAD, and gets loaded before I enter (instead of on the fly). Your trade-off for better detail and a smoother tour is a longer initial load time, but depending on your setup, that might be worth it.
Here’s a video demonstrating the difference in flythroughs of the Theatre of Pompey and the Titanic:
Second Life is the superior choice for many other applications, but for architecture I think we have a winner here. Hopefully others will follow MellaniuM’s lead and we’ll see virtual worlds employed much more widely in the industry. The fast prototyping of buildings, or at the very least a pre-build walkthrough in a 3D space, saves so much time and is so useful as a marketing tool I can imagine a time where it’s assumed every building project will have one.
Either I’m unusually cynical because of this head cold or this is hype week. Good hype, bad hype, fretting that the hype is over, hyping hype as an indicator of… anything. Weird week really.
On the positive side, I get to link two of the best virtual world bloggers out there: Tateru Nino and Jenn Hienrichs. I don’t generally get the opportunity to do so but they both happened to post stuff that falls within the scope of these roundups.
/me waves.
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my blip channel, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
The Second Life Hype Has Fizzled—Is Twitter Next?
Oh, it’s so very much worth your time to consider this. After all, the massive hype over Henry Ford’s “Model T” died and where are all these “automobiles” today? (A shorter version of this article by the same author appears at paidContent.org.)
Linden Lab purges nearly a million inactive Second Life users
I’ll admit it: I frantically double-checked that my alt accounts were still active upon reading this. Lucky for me my secret identity is intact. Question: is it better marketing hype to keep the inactive accounts to falsely bolster your numbers, or does this send a better message?
Events
Students graduate in the virtual world
“When your graduating class is scattered around the globe an awards ceremony can present difficulties…” This was an awards ceremony specifically for BP executives. More details from The Drum.
Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination. Here’s the contact page.
Training and Education
NoviCraft: virtual world team building
Metaverse Journal interviews TeamingStream’s CEO, Petri Ahokangas, about NoviCraft; the corporate team-building world. A video overview is available on the TeamingStream website.
Virtual Worlds: New frontiers for expression
University of Nevada’s student paper gives an overview of the “Virtual Worlds and Interpretive Communities: Opportunities for Global Dialogue” event. Mostly about “blurring lines”, which is what academic opium is made of.
Second Life used as way of teaching
Towson University takes a crack at Second Life. Not a bad article, and also wins a special award: worst Second Life screnshot ever.
Government and Military
AFCEA on Second Life
Just a quick mention of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s presence in Second Life.
Virtual Philadelphia on CBS3
This is VERY impressive! Gigabytes of graphics, integrated webcam technology, integrated e-commerce tools, and more than a few amazing surprises. Download it and check it out for yourself.
Is one Oldham not enough?
Oldham County builds a presence in Second Life, and goes the extra (often forgotten!) step of planning a series of community events.
Virtual Cocos Island
Costa Rica tourism board does a fantastic job building a place worth visiting.
Online Shopping in the Future Likely to Look Something Like Second Life
A Kansas State University marketing professor posits that shopping for real goods in 3D beats e-commerce websites. Sadly, no successful examples of this proving true are indicated and the logic is a bit confusing… something about how the horrible marketing job many brands have received in Second Life proves the point. Hmm… ScienceDaily took another crack at the material, see if their slightly altered version of the press release adds up better for you.
NASA MMO To Run On Unreal 3; Information in Place and Big Stage Also On Board
The story covers all of the collaborators involved, so if that’s important to you there it is. One thing isn’t mentioned: the Unreal 3 engine is responsible for some of the most unbelievable eye-popping real time rendered graphics we’ve seen in the last few years. Here’s a screenie of BioShock to give you an idea:
Newbs Only
Help wanted: public service avatars
I’d reference this for recruiting or government but something about the style… I think it was this part: “Search. Click. You’re there.” Ah, the newbs category then…
Turn Life’s Lemons into Virtual Lemonade
You know what? DON’T READ THIS. It’s more of that hype that Forbes says doesn’t exist. You don’t want to read a non-existent article do you?
Research Shows Worldwide MMOGs Not Very Cosmopolitan
Hype warning. “A group of researchers recently took a look at social habits inside the MMOG Everquest II” and basically discovered people there hang out with people who live near them in real life. (Ars Technica has more of the details.)
There’s an attempt to generalize this to all MMOs and make some kind of statement about who we are as people, but there are three little facts selectively omitted here:
Hardcore MMOG guilds need to use voice all the time – which means they need to be able to understand each other really well to function as a unit.
Hardcore MMOG guilds play for hours and hours at a time, often several days a week. You’d better all be in the same timezone.
Everquest II has had 400,000 players, ever. That’s not active, mind, that’s in the history of the game. This is a microscopic number by MMOG standards, which not only skews the sample but means that those who do play it have to be pretty hardcore (see previous points).
Other random numbers are tossed around, some seemingly disproving and then proving the point, culminating in some kind of internationalization effort of Habbo’s that didn’t work out well in Japan: “So it was a total catastrophe. The Japanese closed their doors and wouldn’t let anyone in without a Japanese name.”
Ask any Otaku. That’s Japan. I mean, “gaijin” is an insult over there… and that’s hardly news.
That’s hype week.
Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at info [at] calebbooker.com
Shameless plug alert! It’s been an unusually hectic week so I haven’t put much up on the blog, and now that I am, it’s about something we’re doing at Clever Zebra. I know, I know, crass commercialism wins again.
But you’ll like this.
It turns out that the Virtual Worlds for Business ebook is really, really hot. With almost no real publicity we’ve seen hundreds of downloads (approaching thousands now!) and countless people browsing the book online. The concept of the book, a constantly updated series of overviews of all the major technologies of interest to business with several case studies, turns out to be something people really needed.
We plan to keep this thing current and useful. That’s where you come in.
Even as mega-banks topple, Juan Enriquez says the big reboot is yet to come. But don’t look for it on your ballot — or in the stock exchange. It’ll come from science labs, and it promises keener bodies and minds. Our kids are going to be … different.
Nick might seem like a tough guy. You know. Shaved head. Sharp tongue. British.
But apparently he’s just a big softy. All it took was a tiny little tidal wave of begging from friends and colleagues and next thing you know, Virtual Worlds for Business eBook goes free and open-source.
That’s fantastic news for the world and all, don’t get me wrong, but I guess the next time I’m in a bar fight I’m just going to have to count on somebody else. Ah well…
