CyberTech News

Last Saturday (Feb. 14th) was a day of love. Traditionally we celebrate Valentine’s Day. In OpenLife it was a double celebration as love got to rule the day but also Osiris Indigo (owner of OLX) unveiled “Orbitz”. Orbitz is a beautiful and futuristic club 3000km in the air on the Otherwhere region. To get there just use the teleporter in the landing area of the region.

Osiris threw a “Be a Valentine” party that was full of OpenLife residents ready to dance the time away with ”DJRamblinman Sideshow” spinning the tunes. There were lots of pretty ladies and handsome fellows in attendance. The event lasted about four hours total and had as many as 22 people there at one time. This not only was a fun party but it also showed how far OpenLife has come in achieving stability. The people were not standing still in Ruth form, they were decked out in prim hair and using scripts to dance at the same time. My PC never lagged the entire time.

Orbitz has a great atmosphere and is built to host some fun parties with plenty of room to mingle and a fun and sci-fi appearance that makes it all the more enjoyable to hang out in. OpenLife just inherited another fun aspect to hang around at. Thanks to Osiris for the great party on Saturday.

Pictures by Osiris Indigo

Dear reader,

you did maybe already notice my strong interest in the vision of 3D web and usage of 3D software in real life collaborating scenarios.

Following twitter i found this very interesting new post of cleverzebra.com - the free Virtual Worlds for Business Q2 2009 ebook.

It is still very focused on training and meeting scenarios, but since this seems very simple to understand if we talk bout the benefits of 3D our first RL usecase will be training focused as well. You will read some more news on the Rl-usecases in ~2 weeks. Later on this year we will focus on other, non training based usecases.

Back to the ebook, i did enjoy the overview. And yes, opensim did receive a pretty nice summary. Talking about meetings and trainings, opensim is a very usable platform. The main point we need improvement are:

• embeded application view (application sharing)
• voice (3D spatial sound from each participant).
• improved NINJA-physics (per joint definition of possible axis) would help

Embedded applications

Being in a 3D environment, it does not make any sense to use it just as a chat tool and open your document to share (or the data do look at, like measurements or a presentation) in a separate window. While collaborating on document (”move my mouse” techniques) may be just step 2, viewer must be included, soon. Best way would be to implement a handful of widely used clients. From what the industry demand is, usage of RDP(remote desktop protocol) is essential. it offers remote access even to the desktop (windows xp, vista, 7) and collaboration natively. The next important would be the usage of NX, which is well supported on *nix platforms, as well as on windows. its available open source and with commercial support. its capable of handling slow links and carries stuff like the graphical linux desktop . While it does not sound like it makes sense, ssh would be my choice #3. it has proven to be the secure transport for other things, and maybe is a tool that even helps to spread opensim by making opensim serversupport on linux easier.

A good place to learn from is project wonderland, based on darkstar server. As an basic intro, the video is great. As well, all people into opensim development and projects should spend 1h on their homepage. Just to add some visions. Check also CTN article: Follow the rabbit: how to test drive Wonderland.

voice

While there are some commercial add-ons and realxtend-groupd is working on the next voice generation based on XMPP / telepathy, we still have no solution, yet.

Be aware, that we need voice that is not only spatial, but enterprise-ready. it must be able to pass firewalls like skype does. Any technique that needs dedicated ports for incoming connections does not make sense.

The Lack of voice is for RL usecases maybe as essential like the lack of groups for inworld activities.

NINJA

NINJA? uh? Ninja Physics have been introduced recently. They are not even covered in the ebook. If you are not aware, maybe watch the videos here or here. Think about simulations in technical or biological areas. The only thing, that is missing right now is to define “this is a bowl joint, the possible movement are x/y/z degrees - and you did create a shoulder. That way medical classroom or remote diagnostic meetings would come pretty close. NINJA will be an enabler for some RL usecases.

I will not dive into graphics, since i think the work of e.g. realXtend is outlined in the ebook, at other blog sections and coming to us (via modrex), soon.

Cheers,

Ralf

Article represents personal opinion – trademarks apply – www.ralf-haifisch.biz

Earlier CTN wrote about what is going on at OpenLife grid. One of the perhaps most interesting things was the mention of the concept of Living Island and how trees and grass were growing, seeding and dying - just like in a real world forest.

The technology behind the tree is SSO or Server Side Object. SSO is used to apply a behaviour to an object or prim.

“One of the first examples how SSO can be used is the virtual growing tree”, says Steve Sima, founder of OpenLife. He continues that “The trees on the island don’t just grow, but also spawn new seedlings, wilt, die and sometimes even fall over! …just like real trees.”

SSO’s are not run on the region itself, so they do not eat the resources from the already stressed server. The SSO feature is already in test use at OpenLife, where it is demonstrated at Living Island.

When I asked Steve about plans to release OpenLife server code, he replied that ”I think it’s quite possible. For the moment we have a rather accelerated development schedule to adhere to, but we would like to give it serious consideration in future. I do like the license model adapted by companies like MySQL.”

SHASPA is an intelligent shared space. Intelligent shared spaces are locations (physical or virtual) which deliver a set of highly personalised services to and build / manage relationships between entities (individuals, devices, systems, agents or combinations of these) active in those locations. Intelligent shared spaces act as hubs to social and business networks and support their sustainable development both environmentally and commercially.

Shaspa was launched just last week. I am in talks with Shaspa and I expect to soon post more info about what it is.

NoviCraft provides an experimental 3D environment for team and leadership training

Virtual worlds, 3D environments, e-learning… The new wave of technologies make all those things possible. You can meet your friends and workmates online as avatars, you can keep virtual presentations for your team or customers, and arrange negotiations with your partners whenever you like without a need to travel anywhere. That’s a good start. You gather around without coming to a same place, you avoid travelling, save a lot of money and time, thanks to the latest technologies.

However, where are all content producers? There is a huge virtual meeting place with unlimited opportunities - and a huge lack of content. Isn’t that a waste?

For HR trainers and consultants there is already something. NoviCraft is both fun and serious 3D game that has been designed for team and leadership development purposes. The immersive and engaging learning environment enables a common experience for a team, even if the people are dispersed around the world. The main idea of the game is to improve the participants’ awareness of their own behavior in teamwork situations. The more conscious you are of your own behavior and the interaction between you and your workmates, the easier it is to start developing those things further. The immersive 3D environment and the engaging team exercises in the game make the social interaction more real than it is in the traditional E-learning solutions.

The current version of NoviCraft has been built on an efficient game engine, which makes it relatively light and flexible to play even with an ordinary laptop. The game has been developed by LudoCraft in co-operation with a group of academic researchers of educational and leadership sciences. The publisher of NoviCraft is TeamingStream, a company providing NoviCraft-related training events with its consultancy partners.