Metaverse One

Anyone that has been following the virtual worlds industry has noticed the growing number of virtual world platforms that have closed recently. Now this is to be expected given the amount of virtual world platforms that popped up over night during the 2007-2008 virtual worlds gold rush, but it still saddens me to see these players leave the stage. I have witnessed that the closing of a virtual world platform is more than a company shutting down, people getting laid off, and investors losing on their return. It is the Apocalypse of a digital eco-system. Worlds are demolished, user creations are destroyed, relationships with digital family and friends are lost, and all at the literal flip of a switch. So I am taking a moment on my birthday to salute those virtual world platforms that have recently fallen: Metaplace - Raph Koster's virtual world open platform announced it was closing earlier this year. This really surprises me as I found Metaplace's world creation tools to be su...

March, the month that welcomes Spring, longer days, and the influx of game developer geeks to the Bay area. Yes, last week was the Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco at the Moscone center and what an action packed week it was for me. Tuesday was a full day of meetings with folks in town for GDC followed by a gala event at the Consulate General of the Netherlands office, and a Silicon Vikings (Scandinavian game developers) after party. I'd like to thank Natasha Chatlein , Senior Science & Technology Advisor with the Netherlands Office for Science and Technology, for the invite to the consulate event and I expect multiple visits to their office in the future. I mean who can pass on hanging with friendly smart people in an office with a breath-taking view of downtown San Francisco. Wednesday was Dutch Interaction Day that started with an invite only tech-focused breakfast followed by a Gaming for Real World Workshop I hosted here at our SOMA office later in ...

Monday was the Virtual Medical Environments Workshop by Media X at Stanford University. This event was really intriguing to me as no industry has used 3D for visualization as long as the medical industry has. Parvati Dev with Innovation in Learning Inc and Media X at Stanford University lead the workshop that looked to, " bring together selected industry and academia representatives with experience in developing and disseminating virtual medical environments. Existing use cases will be presented and discussion will focus on opportunities and barriers. The goal will be to generate a Roadmap that presents some possible paths from the trough of disillusionment to a plateau of productivity." The workshop had over a dozen presentations of work being done in the medical field with web3D technologies. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations from UBC students AJung Moon's ' Nonverbal human-robot interaction and opportunities for cognitive rehabilitation in virtual...