The word on the street is that some of the High Fidelity team will be heading to Hollywood in a few days for the Oculus Connect event. I would imagine that some of the Linden Lab team may be heading there too. However before that happens, the High Fidelity blog has been been having A Look at Alpha Projects in Hifi. The picture in the blog post is particularly impressive, especially when enlarged.
Dan Hope, who I believe is a new member of the High Fidelity team, highlights the work of three Alpha testers, Judas, AI Austin and Ctrlaltdavid. This is virtual space, so people have virtual space names.
Judas has been working on models created in Blender. High Fidelity currently supports the FBX format, rather than the Dae format that Second Life supports. However as both have their roots in Blender, the basic workflows are going to be somewhat similar. High Fidelity is in the Alpha stage and this is highlighted in the blog post as Judas explains how a recent update has allowed him to import avatars from High Fidelity into Blender without destroying the rig to animate them. However Judas also hits the mark about the nature of virtual worlds in terms of being social platforms. I’ve said many times that Second Life is where it’s at in terms of virtual worlds because Second Life has the people. Any new virtual world has to have that social aspect and Judas acknowledges this in a quote on the blog post :
High Fidelity is about people. A grin, a smile, a hand gesture, a wave — not some pre-recorded gesture — breathe personality into lifeless avatars. [We’re creating] an environment that normal people want to gather in, not because of polycount, latency, or server technology, but because their friends are there. Every game has amazing graphics; HiFi should have amazing people.
Meanwhile in another part of the vast virtual space that High Fidelity engulfs, AI Austin is building I-Rooms: A Virtual Space For Intellectual Collaboration. Again we have a social usage exemplified here as well as the all important collaboration angle that virtual worlds offer so very well. I-Rooms are defined as :
We have developed the I-Room virtual environment—the “I” stands variously for intelligent, information, in- teractive, integrated, and instrumented—a shared persistent space, founded on process methodologies and offering intelligent sys- tems support for interaction and collabo- ration between users, systems, and agents.
AI Austin is also testing the boundaries of what is possible with mesh models in High Fidelity. This includes a Supercar with 575,000 vertices and 200,000. I can see people in parts of the virtual world sphere frowning furiously at this right now. AI Austin also has an International space station mesh that was provided by NASA. As it stands, space is a concept that High Fidelity captures very well. There are a lot of stars in High Fidelity.
Meanwhile Ctrlaltdavid is working on implementing a script that will make the Leap Motion controller handle avatar hand and finger movements without the need for bulky rigs or sensors to accompany it. There have been questions raised about these future virtual worlds and all the peripherals required to fulfil their potential so scripts and design concepts that mean users don’t have to worry about too many extra peripherals are extremely important to future development and direction.
Virtual Worlds are looking to create an even greater feeling of immersion in the future with devices such as The Oculus Rift being widely promoted. Whether people take this greater immersion on board only time will tell but virtual worlds will become more immersive in some form or another.
Ciaran Laval, who doesn’t feature in the blog post, has been working on creating menus in C++ and scratching his head trying to decipher the code. High Fidelity is a very open project, you can fork the code, write your own and create your own client without, at this stage, fear of being frowned upon for diverting away from a shared creative space for all. This is one of the advantages of the High Fidelity model, you can host your own world on your own equipment but that also means it may provide an inconsistent experience for the end users who will one day be required to make the project prosper. There are definitely pro’s and cons to this design concept.
High Fidelity has potential, a lot of it, but it’s still in its very early stages of development. The good part is that the developers are very open to working with the Alpha testers to try and shape the future. The downside of course is that you will find at times that you have to rip it up and start again as your projects become obsolete due to new changes. However that’s part of the beauty of the Alpha stage of the project and users will be far more forgiving of the developers now than they will be in the future.
You forget the nameserver, that is how you will get drained for money. The yearly, monthly nameserver fees. Do you think they code this for your pretty eyes? You will have the code for your isolated world that connects to nothing yes. It will start with low fees, then the moment it gains any traction nameser fees will go up by 67% because history tends to repeat itself.
Well pricing is going to be a very important factor when the time is right. They do mention that things will be charged for, there’s no pretence that it will be free.
Well, in the “real” world we pay a multitude of taxes and fees to maintain and benefit from the infrastructure that makes modern life possible. Why should any truly useful virtual world be any different? I’ve been watching this team build — they passionately believe in what they are doing and they are acting on the best of motives, driven to create something that will benefit others. I don’t think you’re in much danger of being gouged, Tuvti.