After some thought about the future Andrew Hughes President of Designing Digitally, Inc., has developed a video asking our industry to explain their thoughts on the evolution of virtual worlds. Below is the video created by Andrew in hope that we can get the like minded people of the industry to start thinking about implementation across platforms and gaming / virtual world engines. We would like to know your thoughts on this by posting responses below. We look forward to reading your comments to his questions!
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Standards for VW are a Long Time Coming
The goal of having a standard for moving between virtual worlds has been a goal for a while. In fact, one large effort started on October 9th, 2007 in San Jose, California. It was the Virtual Worlds Interoperability Community Summit attended by 58 people from 23 different companies discussing interoperability. They have not been able to push that agenda too far. Another effort put forth by the Massive Multiplayer Online Experiences IETF group originally co-chaired by Linden Lab and IBM published standards drafts for virtual world interoperability but they haven't really caught on either.
Looking at the history of technology-based standards, it takes years after a new technology is released before standards become an issue hot enough to make an impact. This was true in the early years of PCs, the early years of web browsers, cell phones and now the early years of virtual worlds.
I think the major issue facing the industry currently is "crossing the chasm" into wide spread use. Once the chasm is crossed, interoperability will become a hotter issue.
I see the future as having many different virtual world interfaces, one to browse the web and then different ones depending on different activities. It is difficult to see a compelling reason why vendors want to share information at this point. Virtual worlds are still "wild west" and we have a little while before consumers are demanding interoperability. Few vendors, at this point, are going to open up their virtual worlds to others and few users have a reason to want to go from virtual world to virtual world. Vendors want to capture users current and not let them wander from VW to VW.
When consumers begin to demand it, interoperability will happen. (like when people wanted Lotus spreadsheet information to import into WordPerfect then interoperability became an issue but in the first few versions of Lotus...few consumers were focused on interoperability, they were just trying to figure out the advantage of automated spreadsheets.)
It is a good question and concern and it makes sense to keep it in mind but I think resources and focus needs to be targeted on compelling reasons why consumers/business folks want to adopt virtual world technology first and then interoperability sometime after that.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Karl Kapp
Real standards can only
Real standards can only emerge after the technology matures and certain ways of doing things become popular, and the markets become better defined, and real needs for interoperability arise. There *are* 3D, VR and VW standards already, several of them, and they have been in use for a long time. But they are not at the forefront of popular use of VWs (mainly used in academia and behind the scenes stuff in industry, not on the internet and well known by the public.)
Reed Hedges
Virtual Environments Future
Virtual Environments pose a generation gap concerning business. The brick and mortar mentality today, who are in charge, seldom see the compelling uses for virtual environments, but I believe that will rapidly change going forward. It's really just a changing of the guard scenario, much like companies saying the Internet was just a fad.
As for how those future virtual environments look and operate, I'd say that there is higher likelihood that virtual environments change from a walled garden, monolithic entity to a more decentralized and open system. Today we see those walled gardens controlled by single entities, and they mimic the mentality of the early Internet, such as AOL and CompuServe. It's only a matter of time before it evolves into a the virtual environment web equivalent and relegates the walled gardens to the history books.
When that happens, you'll see an explosion of interoperability, which would be made faster by the accelerating returns curve. If I had to guess, I'd say that day is 5-15 years away. It's a broad guess because it really does depend if companies actually push ahead and make those changes or if history repeats itself yet again, killing this wave of virtual environment interest.
As for "web embedded" virtual environments, I can say that those are a fad based entirely from previous experience and history itself. When the Web was introduced, we saw Internet Services such as AOL, Compuserve and others essentially offer their walled garden and happen to embed the web. In this example, it's the same mentality as having the web browser and just happening to open a virtual environment. That road was taken already and shown not to be a viable solution - VRML, and on a connected basis, Blaxxun Contact. The reason this isn't viable (although perfectly doable) is that you would be treating a virtual environment as just an interactive web page when it really is not. A virtual environment is more powerful and compelling than a web environment, and therefore should not be treated in the context of a secondary inclusion.
What is more likely to happen is that virtual environment viewers/browsers will support the web as backward compatible. While I will not say that there won't be companies that will try to push the web embedded solution as the newest thing and the future of virtual environments, I can only look on and smile - remembering Blaxxun Contact and other VRML systems in the 90s who said the same things.
It may seem like a very minor difference, but Web browsers supporting Virtual Environments are less likely to endure than a Virtual Environment supporting the web.
As a side note; Love the use of Augmented Reality on the video :) I'm not even going to go into how AR will integrate with the web and virtual environments... that may blow your mind - and no, it has nothing to do with those symbols and current uses.
Not unless there is a good business reason
We are going to be seeing just the opposite happening over the next 5-10 years. Many new worlds and new platforms are in development, and each is being targeted toward a narrower market segment. There is no advantage for a company to allow for identity transfer.
"When will I be able to transfer my avatar from one platform to another" is really its a silly question asked by idealists.
Another question he ask might be pertinent, will virtual worlds move into the browsers. My answer is "some will, some won't" There is really no advantage to running in a browser, other then user perception. Since the browser requires a plug in (also known as an application) to work. "How about HTML5" when someone writes a java script based virtual world that doesn't look and respond like crap, AND can be maintained. I will personally give their shoes a cleaning with my tongue.
Bob Flesch, Prototerra
IEEE VW Standard in Concept
Tom Starai from the IEEE is organising a group to define a IEEE standard.
His acll in in the "Virtual World Roadmap" linkedin group
"IEEE standard has entered concept phase"
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=13409743&authToken=vVEu...
Are you willing to pay for?
We did a certain number of consultancy and study to discuss your questions with customers. Typically, most of them don't see any general benefit using VW. Introducing them into a VW conference session, very dedicated, one room only, standard avatars, they started to rethink about the earlier position. But, despite this small shift in mind, there was no willing to invest today. That's business reality.
One the other hand, yes, if we face more technology power VW can provide a contribution. Far away from first thought to rebuild real-world, we will see dedicated scenarios of immersive moments - e.g. walking through 3-models and complex data (as the data garden video by ThinkBalm shows). Maybe, we will simulate roles of different contributors (like OLIVE) to train behaviors. And, maybe there are effects certain customers are ready to pay for.
In contrast, we don't see a fully connected endless new space of virtual objects. Limitation becomes dedication. And dedication contributes to customer understanding.
Alex Gutendorf, SONOXO
Standards
Have you looked at VW-RAP or MPEG-V yet? Both works in progress for VW standards.
Also, COLLADA may yet be adopted as a standard for VW 3D content - its already used in many 3D packages and supported by many game engines. A demo COLLADA viewer has also been developed for HTML5.
Good questions, Andrew
Andrew: I think about the question of standards and interoperability quite a lot. My current take is this:
* Today we see examples of interoperability among virtual worlds -- as long as those virtual worlds share the same underlying technology. OpenSim and Hypergrid is an example. And work in this area is still largely experimental, or proof-of-concept.
* A scenario I see as likely: rather than monolithic, closed-wall virtual worlds becoming interoperable, so people can take their identities, avatars, and inventories from one virtual world to the other, I see more of an Immersive Internet emerging, where some Web applications will be in 2D, others in pseudo-3D or 2.5D, and still others that are 3D spaces and experiences. Using technology like what we are seeing with Evolver, we will be able to have a single avatar we use in multiple environments. But probably not all. After all, OpenID, Microsoft Passport, and other single-ID technologies have been around for a while and none of them appear to have taken deep root.
Great topic. Thanks for bringing it up.
Erica Driver, ThinkBalm
History repeats itself
I don't have any specific answers to your questions but it would appear to me that history could give us some valuable insights. I have studied well the history of mass media and the parallels are eerily similar. Whether it was radio in the 1920's, television in the 1940's and early 1950's or even the development of telegraphy in the 19th century, the questions you pose were the same kind of questions folks back then were faced with.
At least we don't spend hours watching a test pattern like we used to as kids when that was the only thing on TV @ 6 o'clock in the morning. LOL