The biggest upgrade to Second Life since 2003 occurred yesterday… the release of the Viewer 2 beta. I would highly recommend checking it out; it can be installed alongside the main Second Life viewer, v1.23. There hasn’t been a total user interface overhaul since v1.2 (under a separate numbering system) was released in 2003, [...]]]>

Second Life

The biggest upgrade to Second Life since 2003 occurred yesterday… the release of the Viewer 2 beta. I would highly recommend checking it out; it can be installed alongside the main Second Life viewer, v1.23. There hasn’t been a total user interface overhaul since v1.2 (under a separate numbering system) was released in 2003, so this is pretty huge news for virtual world enthusiasts.

Of most interest to educators, I believe, will be the rich media support. You can now run Flash (and many other media formats, not just Quicktime) on any prim surface in Second Life, so slide show services like http://www.scribblar.com/ will run without any cobbling. All Youtube (and Flash) videos are now directly displayable without mucking about with third-party web sites. See the Linden Lab overview of the new interface here.

In my opinion – and in playing around with it after the PANMA event last night – the new interface is much more intuitive for the new user. As a builder / content creator, I’ll hold my opinion until I get to use it, but for the 99% of users out there who aren’t hard-core content creators, this is clearly a pretty major win with a move to a more browser-based style of interface.

I’m trying to assemble a team to create a program which will allow “1 click” conversion of Powerpoint documents to a functional slide screen in [...]]]> I’m looking for interested developers to help me out with a project. I’ve posted this to [SLED], but figured readers of my blog might be interested in joining the project as well.

I’m trying to assemble a team to create a program which will allow “1 click” conversion of Powerpoint documents to a functional slide screen in SL / OpenSim. Right now, the method is quite painful. I’d want this to be FOSS, under the BSD license. Here are the goals, and I’ve got a good start already, but could use another good C# developer or two:

Version 1:

(1) Windows forms application written in C#, and support Powerpoint files made in 4×3 perspective
(2) Have the application run on any Windows desktop
(3) The user will browse for the source PPT file, enter their avatar name and password, and optionally select a location to teleport their avatar to to build the screen.
(4) The program will convert each slide of the Powerpoint to individual JPEG (or BMP, or TARGA) graphic files, and resize to 512×512 for upload.
(5) Using libopenmetaverse (formerly libsecondlife), the avatar will be logged in, optionally teleported, and upload the graphic files.
(6) The graphic UUIDs will be stored in an array; then the object will be built, with a script in place with the image UUIDs, and buttons to navigate through the slides.

Version 2:

(1) A controller will be built so that when a presenter is giving a Powerpoint presentation, and changes a slide in Powerpoint, the slide is automatically changed in-world as well. Most of this code is already done.
(2) Support both 4×3 and 16×9 Powerpoint presentations.

Anyone have the skills and want to join this project? Contact me if you’re interested; and you must be cool with working under the BSD license.

Proof That Philadelphia is Really the Center of the Metaverse

Philadelphia has a thriving virtual worlds community, and many enthusiasts live in [...]]]> Now that I’ve given explained my feelings on the year as a whole, here is a short look at some of the things that either excited me or fell flat on their face during this year.

Proof That Philadelphia is Really the Center of the Metaverse

Philadelphia has a thriving virtual worlds community, and many enthusiasts live in the area, yet it typically isn’t thought of as a place where things are happening. Hopefully, that will change now: Peregrine Salon is proudly located in Philadelphia, as are some up and coming VW start ups, and some of them are doing some very cool things.

A shot down of down town Philadelphia.

Enter GeoSim, a company based in both Israel and Philadelphia, who has recently launched GeoSimPhilly. Philadelphia is the first American city to be fully virtualized, and the amount of detail is absolutely amazing. The textures are incredibly well done, the buses match the ones in town, and public art is even re-created. It is a free download – check it out! The folks at GeoSim have told me that a multi-user community version is going to be released soon; it will be interesting to see how regional virtual worlds with ties to first life fare!

Take into account that CyberExtruder is just across the bridge in New Jersey, and Philadelphia is quickly becoming a very interesting place to live for a virtual worlds enthusiast!

Close up of some shops; notice the texture detail!

Google’s Epic Fail

No year in review in 2008 with be complete without mentioned Google’s (cough) “Lively.” A boring world with an interface that didn’t work, it never really had a prayer, in my opinion. While I don’t believe it, it has been fun hearing conspiracy theories that Google intentionally made it horrid to cause people to have a lower opinion of virtual worlds.

The Bay City Concept Man.

Second Life’s Bay City and a Return to the Main Land

Throughout the course of 2008, it appears that Linden Lab has reversed course a bit on thinking about the main land. Several bit changes happened this year: ad farms are quickly becoming a thing of the past, which is long overdue.

More importantly, themed communities which are fetching a premium, such as Bay City, have been developed. Second Life’s greatest strength is the “one world” concept, and when you abandon the feeling of being part of a large world for individual cookie cutter islands, it quickly stops feeling like a playground and starts feeling like suburbia.

Second Life’s greatest strength is the Residents, and how they work together. Keeping them apart on individual islands that look like jail cells on the map is a detriment. Jack Linden has long understood this, and it looks like he is finally being listened to!

Metaplace, WebFlock, and the Flash Based Revolution

Metaplace and WebFlock are Flash worlds done right. They allow a simple to use interface, while still allowing more customization options and interaction than Google Lively did. While WebFlock is clearly being aimed at the tween and teen age groups by the Sheep, Metaplace is looking towards a broader audience. It is intentionally designed to look basic (it does remind me of Ultima Online, and not just because Raph Koster is on the team!), but don’t be fooled: there is a lot of power under the hood. Metaplace has a programming language based on lua!

Metaplace has gone into alpha, and WebFlock already has a few private worlds online. Both are definitely worth keeping your eye on in 2009.

Open Source: OpenSimulator and realXtend

Perhaps the most exciting developments are the continued improved on OpenSim and realXtend. This year saw IBM dedicate four full time programmers to help work with OpenSim, and also saw the first successful avatar teleportation from Second Life to an OpenSim grid – sort of. For those not familiar with realXtend, it is based on OpenSim but contains a ton of shiny new features, too numerous to list here. They recently launched version 0.4, which is quite impressive, and seems to be a lot more stable that their previous releases.

While OpenSim and realXtend still have a long way to go to be considered stable, they excite me the most because of their potential. Watching various grids pop up this past year based on their technology shows that I’m not alone!

In Conclusion

What is covered here is just the tip of the iceberg, but I stand by what I said in the first part of this entry: there has never been a more exciting time to be a virtual worlds enthusiast. Here is hoping that 2009 has a much to hold our interest as 2008 did – and let’s continue to leave the hype at the door!

I think everyone is having the same reaction to this news: even though no one is completely shocked, still, wow, they’re pulling the plug already? In case you haven’t heard, Google will be shutting down their first foray into avatar based virtual worlds, Lively, mere months after opening it.

Building retention appeal into virtual [...]]]>

Pretty mundane, eh?

I think everyone is having the same reaction to this news: even though no one is completely shocked, still, wow, they’re pulling the plug already? In case you haven’t heard, Google will be shutting down their first foray into avatar based virtual worlds, Lively, mere months after opening it.

Building retention appeal into virtual worlds is quickly becoming the greatest challenge they have to offer. Second Life benefited from being so forward thinking that it had a hard core community of content creators and early adopters when they hit the mainstream, which served as first generation evangelists for the platform. Google Lively never really had that; they were beta testing at a university, and then released to the world. I guess our friends at the Second Life Herald never really saw the potential either, despite being the only organization I knew with a Lively office.

For all of its imperfections, Second Life is clearly the closest thing we have to an open, communal, shared 3-D world, with OpenSim coming along nicely. For there to truly be a Second Life competitor, I’ve come up with a tongue-in-cheek, two question litmus test:

(1) Can you get naked?

(2) Can your avatar be anything other than human?

While this may seem simplistic, think about what other options are out there; none can answer yes to both questions. These two questions say a lot about the creators of a platform, and how much freedom they allow the users to have. Say what you will about Linden Lab, they have made some great decisions over the years, none greater than allowing users to express themselves in an infinite number of ways, and granting creators the intellectual property rights to their creations.

Lively had none of this: it was just a 2.5D chat room that looked like Adult Swim animation after a six-pack.