High Fidelity – Page 7

November 25, 2014November 25, 2014

High Fidelity Moves To The VR Tune Whilst Ebbe Altberg Looks To The Future

“Any predictions on what the future holds for virtual reality theatre?” Draxtor Despres asked MadameThespian Underhill in episode 24 of The Drax Files : World Makers. MadameThespian gave a very interesting answer :

In the future I want motion tracking technology, so that our bodies can be used to flesh out the acting, be free from a keyboard and a mouse. Eventually the way an avatar can be manipulated will be so detailed that it will be like being there in real life, totally immersed. Twenty years from now when everyone is doing this and going ‘Oh wow isn’t this cool’, hey I’ve been doing this in a virtual space since 1997, I’m still here, I love it.

The above quote demonstrates quite a few things. The first being that virtual spaces have been around in one form or another for quite a while now. Another being that the future has a long way to go and a further point is that those who are involved in virtual worlds have different ideas on what the future may hold.

However the most relevant part of the quote as far as this blog post is concerned is to do with body tracking. I’ve raised concerns as to whether people are going to be comfortable wearing headsets, setting up motion trackers and whether people will actually embrace having their movements captured. I’m not totally alone in this view, even enthusiasts of new technologies admit that there are concerns in this area.

Ebbe Altberg was asked by Ben Gilbert of Endgadget : What is the greatest challenge that the medium of virtual reality must overcome in the next five years? Ebbe’s answer touches upon these issues of comfort :

Ease of use remains the greatest challenge. In order to truly reach the mainstream, virtual reality experiences will have to be easy, natural and comfortable to create, interact with and consume.

Ebbe also touched upon this on the Endgadget Expand panel : The Future Of VRBeyond Gaming when he admitted that after about half an hour of using the Oculus Rift he feels tired. This isn’t so much about the comfort of wearing the device, it’s more to do with frame rates and resolution in virtual experiences that were not really built with the Oculus experience in mind.

However one could imagine that having to wear headsets or get in tune with a motion sensor may well suit those who have an acting and live performance background, they are familiar with the concepts of dressing up, making eye contact and being fully aware of what their expressions may convey.

Storytelling in virtual reality is a glaring use case that goes beyond gaming and if consumers can afford to get immersed from the comfort of their own home, it’s one that could really take off. We’re in the very early stages of this here but one company who have been happily playing to their peripherals are High Fidelity and they exemplify this yet again in their latest blog post : Rock-Paper-Scissors Showdown: Using Leap Motion at High Fidelity.

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November 19, 2014

Philip Rosedale At Gigaom Roadmap – Sci-Fi, Virtual Worlds And Beards

Philip Rosedale was interviewed by Signe Brewster at Gigaom Roadmap 2014 yesterday and Gigaom have posted the interview in an article entitled : The gap between virtual reality and sci-fi is shortening. Philip talks about virtual worlds, including Second Life and not surprisingly, High Fidelity.

The video is interesting because Philip talks about the past and future of virtual worlds as well as discussing how science fiction is a good influence for him. The interview runs for about half an hour and that includes a Q&A session.

There’s a really interesting part of this interview where Philip talks about body language. New devices allow virtual worlds to capture the body language of the person behind an avatar and reproduce that body language inside a virtual world. High Fidelity staff conducted an experiment where they were each interviewed in High Fidelity using the same avatar and then those videos were later played back to all of the staff without sound. The staff members quickly realised that they could recognise who was who based on the face gestures and body movements of each avatar.

When asked about what he has learnt from Second Life Philip talks about economies, virtual communities and how people will self organise. This may explain why High Fidelity is more of an open source venture than Second Life was. Philip has witnessed that people will self organise and presumably he also feels they are capable of self governance. Philip does point out that technology has changed since Second Life was created, for example there was no cloud computing back then and he does state that they tried to make Second Life as open as they could. This is a comment that has a lot of merit. Whereas Second Life isn’t open in the way High Fidelity will be, it remains very open in the concept of user generated content.

Philip talks of how reading science fiction is almost an instruction manual for building virtual worlds and his big influence in this area is, not surprisingly, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

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November 18, 2014

A Glimpse At The Ghost Of Metaverse Past

Back on March 1st 2006 Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka presented a Google Tech Talk : Glimpse Inside a Metaverse: The Virtual World of Second Life. I’ll embed the video at the end of the post, it’s around an hour long but it gives a fascinating insight into where Second Life was over eight years ago.

An interesting point to note is that the presentation demonstrates Second Life in action but due to a database upgrade, the demonstration of Second Life could not be shown on the main grid. This exemplifies well the improvement in maintenance practices that we see in Second Life today, that sort of downtime generally doesn’t happen these days.

The video demonstrates well why Second Life was considered to have such great potential. Philip talks of the economy, the growth in land mass and how people could earn money and withdraw it via Paypal, which they can still very much do today. There’s no shipping involved in this sort of commerce, there’s no Visa requirements to work in an international market. Things have of course changed recently with identification requirements being more strictly applied, but you still don’t get dinged with shipping fees and you still don’t need a work Visa. However it should also be noted that a question is raised about IRS regulations, so even back in 2006 it seems that these things were on the horizon, people could see it coming.

The video demonstrates some of the creations of Starax, especially his wand which at the time, Cory suggested. cost USD$30.00, which took Philip by surprise although he does say how cool the wand was. He also discusses the success of Anshe Chung. There’s also an interesting point to be noted in terms of demographics. Back then the population was 43% female with an average age of 32 and an international population of 25%. I have no idea what the demographics are today but it would be interesting to see them.

The answer as to why Second Life didn’t have a standard scripting language such as LUA is answered here. However there were plans, after implementing Mono, to move towards using more standard scripting languages. Interestingly High Fidelity has gone a different route and is embracing Javascript and the hints are that Linden Lab’s next generation virtual world will also use a more standard scripting language.

There’s an interesting comparison between the World Of Warcraft model of using shards and Second Life’s one world model. Philip suggests that Second Life at the time was about as big as one World Of Warcraft shard. He also gives a nod to the fact that Eve-Online has a one world design, rather than shards.

A really good point with this video is that is explains a lot about how Second Life works, in pretty easy to understand terms. Cory describes the Second Life client as being “Incredibly dumb“. This isn’t an insult to viewer developers or the excellent strides they have made, it’s simply pointing out that a lot of Second Life’s work takes place server side, that content is streamed rather than stored locally. Now this is back in 2006 when the high speed broadband many of us experience today simply wasn’t available and yet, it worked.

However this was partially because by 2006 the cost of bandwidth had got a lot cheaper. Philip suggests that five years earlier they would probably have been out of business due to the cost of bandwidth.

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November 13, 2014November 13, 2014

Philip Rosedale Set To Talk About High Fidelity At Gigaom Roadmap 2014

Tis the season to be a speaker it seems. Last weekend’s events aren’t the end of the event season by any stretch of the imagination and Gigaom are talking up their Gigaom Roadmap 2014 event, scheduled for November 17th – November 19th. There are a couple of posts about this event and I’ll highlight this one first : At Roadmap, Delve Into Virtual World Design With Philip Rosedale.

The article doesn’t give too much away about what Philip may say, which is fair enough, otherwise why would people go and listen to Philip speak? However the article does start off on a controversial footing for those who are still very much engaged in Second Life :

When Second Life launched in 2003, it was the future. Now it is the past, with its once-hyped virtual storefronts and social centers empty (or nearly empty, as 1 million people still log on each month).

It’s possible that it came 10 years too early.

I’ve blogged recently about how some designers are finding those once-hyed virtual storefronts getting a new lease of life due to the number of virtual events. There’s something uncanny about that as I’m blogging here about the number of events outside the virtual world, although many of them are designed to talk about virtual worlds and peripherals. Hmm, this could get quite circular! Anyway, I don’t agree with Signe Brewster’s premise regarding where Second Life is today. Second Life is in a much stronger position than outsiders realise, although it’s certainly not at the peak of its popularity.

Philip Rosedale of course has moved on from Second Life and will be talking about his new venture, High Fidelity. I would imagine he may well cover some of the ground he discussed at the OpenSim Community Conference. Philip spoke well on a number of High Fidelity, OpenSim and Second Life related issues as a keynote speaker at the OpenSim Community Conference and hopefully an official video of that speech will be released soon. There were some technical difficulties with sound, but it’s a speech well worth listening to and involved a very interesting Q&A session too.

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November 6, 2014November 7, 2014

The Verge Asks : Can we build a virtual world?

An interesting post on The Verge : The Big Future: Can we build a virtual world? The question may initially seem odd to those who have experienced virtual worlds such as Second Life, Kitely, OpenSim and are keeping their eyes on future virtual worlds such as High Fidelity and Linden Lab’s next generation platform. However the question is one that goes beyond the current generation of virtual worlds :

The web is fine, but how do we get the internet we always wanted — a “real” space you can walk around in, like the Metaverse from Snow Crash? It’s not a new question, but it’s one that’s being taken a little more seriously now that a huge company like Facebook is putting its weight (and its money) behind virtual reality. In this week’s Big Future, we look at what it takes to build a convincing virtual world, why we’re not there yet, and what we might do if we got one.

The Metaverse that exists in Snow Crash has long been the inspiration and dream of many a virtual world enthusiast, but will we ever get there? Indeed do we really want to get there? That level of immersion may well read well in a novel but can it ever really be a place that will happily co-exist with the physical world?

There will be no real answers to this until we have an answer to the question “Are we there yet?” As The Verge article states, it’s easy to trick the eyes, it’s a lot more difficult to trick our other senses and natural motion. For example The Verge talks about walking in a virtual world and how that’s far more of a challenge than tricking our eyes. I remain sceptical because of the sheer number of peripherals required at the moment to achieve greater immersion. However over time those peripherals will become less intrusive and more intuitive.

Obviously the full on immersion that some crave may not be the route to go. Whereas I fully expect greater immersion to open many a great door, I do feel that some doors may be better if they remain locked. The Verge article does mention the current virtual world scene :

We already have examples of “virtual worlds” like Second Life, and they’ll only get cooler with immersion. But some of the most exciting possibilities involve blending the physical world with VR. Sharing experiences will become more intense, and online research takes on a whole new meaning.

However one area that The Verge article doesn’t touch upon is who will be running the bold new worlds.

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