Metaverse One

This past weekend was the second iteration of Metaverse U put on by Henrik Bennetsen at Stanford University. The Metaverse U conference took place at Stanford University on May 29 th and 30 th . The goal of this years conference was to explore the cutting edge applications of virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them. Henrik gathered an impressive lineup of speakers and I will embed their videos here once they go online. Some highlights from the presentations: Sirikata , Stanford's open source platform for virtual worlds, had a high representation this year with a demo that showed some of its editing features. Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford University) talked about cultural heritage with virtual worlds stating "museums are the original 3D world" and the need to embrace (inter)active models of educational programming with an emphasis on bottom-up counterparts to traditional top-down approaches. John Hurliman (Intel) presented Cable Beach, a service based a...

Mirror world is the term used to describe a digital recreation of a globe. Google Earth , Microsoft's Virtual Earth , and NASA WorldWind are popular examples of mirror worlds. As the mixed reality Metaverse emerges, these digital globes will integrate more with our day to day. Let's take a look at Google Earth (G.E.). Formerly Keyhole's Earth View Finder, this is a proprietary digital globe that most people are familiar with. One can zoom around the planet, turn on/off different layers of information, import 3D content via SketchUp , look at stitched 360 panoramic images of cities with Street View, links to the web, Google Ocean , and a host of other features. Here is my current residence built in SketchUp, and put in location on Google Earth. Lots of cool functionality but regardless of who makes or adds the content, Google owns the experience. Not a true mirror world in the sense that no one entity owns our real planet. As more cities go digital, these 3D cities an...