Metaverse One

So this August in Vancouver, Canada was SIGGRAPH 2011 . SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) is the annual conference on computer graphics (CG) convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization and this was the first time it was held in Canada. The conference was attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals and had a strong presence of Canadian companies, developers, and schools (go figure). As usual, it had great sessions and a busy exhibit floor. I am thrilled to report that the Web3D Consortium BoFs were standing room only with people packed deep and spilling out the doors as there was a huge amount of interest in X3Dom and the current state of X3D for augmented and mixed reality . The WebGL sessions also presented to a full house. Truly a great event for web3D in general. As a fan of digital fabrication, I was happy to see companies like Shapeways , and 3D printer machine sellers there showing off their services and products. There wer...

From Canada it was back to Silicon Valley for the ARE2010 in Santa Clara. "The Augmented Reality Event (ARE), the first global event dedicated to advancing the business of augmented reality in the US, announced today that the inaugural event will be held at Santa Clara Convention Center, June 2-3, 2010. The activities will be kicked off by a highly anticipated keynote from the “augmented reality prophet,” world-renowned author, futurist, editor and critic, Bruce Sterling. Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to focus on evolving the much hyped technology into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium. ARE will include more than 30 sessions organized into business, technology and production tracks. The exhibition floor will showcase leading companies and products in augmented reality and will also host a career fair to help kick st...

I have embarked on a tech journey to a series of events worth sharing: - Digital Kung-Fu 2 - 2010 Workshop at the Centre for Digital Media (Canada) Bringing together experts and leaders from an array of sectors in digital media, this workshop offers a full day of interactive sessions to help inspire new ideas and develop them into realizable goals. Participants will be treated to insider techniques for the conceptualizing, visualizing, prototyping and pitching of ideas, as well as insights into current industry trends and technologies. This is your opportunity to get a crash course in digital martial arts! Part of Vancouver Interactive Digital Week, Digital Kung Fu 2 is a one-day intensive professional development seminar delivered by industry experts. Kick-start, augment and accelerate your digital ideas into realizable apps, services (or products) and start-ups. Proceeds of this workshop will be put towards scholarships for students in the Masters of Digital Media program. Click here...

So this week is full of back to back virtual world events, catching up with friends in the industry, and making new ones. Mid-week kicked off the Engage! Expo 2009. Engage! Expo strives to be where companies learn how to combine their existing business with the unparalleled engagement opportunities and new revenue streams of user engagement online. The expo had session throughout the day that were broken into the categories of: *Virtual Goods Conference - the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies using virtual goods, items and gifts; *Digital Law Conference - provides a detailed examination of the legal issues raised by these technologies and offers key insight into where the industry is headed and what the associated legal implications are; *Social Media Strategies - the social media track seeks to help business understand the best practices, current trends, and effective strategies of social media and user engagement ...

So right now is the 14th annual international Web3D Symposium . This is the Web3D Consortium 's annual event sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH (in cooperation with EuroGraphics ) held this year in Darmstadt, Germany at Fraunhofer IGD on June 15-17. This symposium celebrates a decade of innovation and interoperability through the 3D Web open standards. The Symposium will showcase Web3D Consortium’s standard X3D, the only open, royalty-free and ISO-certified technology available today for interactive 3D graphics on the World Wide Web. Use of X3D systems has increased steadily throughout the world, delivering durable applications in industry, science, medicine, culture, entertainment and education. Indeed, worlds and scenarios authored over ten years ago still run today and are faster than ever. X3D systems have a proven track record of protecting content and have the process in place to support projects that require their content lifetime to exceed 50 years. Because X3D is a direct...

Wednesday March 4 th was the Web3D Consortium's 2009 Outreach/Member meeting at NASA Ames research facility. The focus of the event was to reach out to those industries that use web3D, educate, and continue dialogue for how the 3D web open standard X3D and the Web3D Consortium can assist with some of the issues they are having and collaborate to advance the growth of these domains. A quick recap, web3D is any form of real-time interactive 3D. This includes virtual worlds, mirror worlds, augmented reality, simulation, web3D/mixed reality applications, and more. The Outreach event had a good turnout with those from both the web3D space, the virtual worlds industry, mirror worlds, and several web3D students. Guest Speaker Jay Cee Straley from Sprint, presented us his insight on Web3D technology and standards for the mobile platform. He demonstrated some very cool applications of web3D and augmented reality for mobile devices. Don Brutzman ( NPS ) and I ran the X3D plugfest tha...

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...

As promised from my blog in August , here is my entry (now that there are videos) about the Web3D Tech Talk. At SIGGRAPH 2008, the Web3D Consortium celebrated its 10th anniversary with its best ever Web3D Tech Talk. Of course I may be a little bias as I participated in the event, but the tech talk show cased very cool uses of X3D and VRML with content and applications from various sectors and across all hardware platforms. No boring Powerpoints or spec jargon here at this standing room only talk that wowed the crowd with the technology that is defining the open 3D web. Participants from around the world showed off X3D applications that covered medical, educational, social, mixed reality, and other interesting uses of the tech. Enough of my writing, these videos speak for themselves: Michael Aratow - Rationale for 3D standard for 3D medical imaging Tony Pack - X3D to display and review seismic data Johannes Behr - Beyond the Web Browser:X3D used for Virtual and Augmented reality Damo...

SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is the convention for all interactive device, 3D graphics, and related companies. Held this year in beautiful weather Los Angeles. SIGGRAPH is an interesting time, full of company announcements, product releases, workshops, tech discussions/classes, and more. For five days, people from all around the globe come together to geek out on a feast of graphics and tech. Tech panels, white papers, and workshops on all kinds of topics keep all the hallways busy as mainly entertainment focused booths dominate the expo floor. All the major Hollywood players are here, Disney, ILM , Dreamworks , and Pixar to name a few. Intel, ATI , and other hardware companies show off tech that could make any pc command center seem from 2050. Combine this with over a hundred other companies, universities, organizations, thousands of people, and what an event you get. This year had to be the strongest presence of web3d so far at the sho...

The word student is etomologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjucation verb "stŭdērĕ", meaning "to direct one's zeal at"; hence a student could be described as 'one who directs zeal at a subject'. In its widest use, "student" is used for anyone who is learning. - Wikipedia The year 2000, "1999" (Prince) was just getting out of my head, the Y2K bug didn't end the world, the bubble had burst, and I set out to search myself and discover what profession in life I would enjoy to do to the point where "I would never work a day in my life cause I love what I do". I picked the top rated things I liked (video games), was good at since a little guy (scene building and design), and valued (education and proactive change) and combined them somehow with the help of a SnowCrash into a new profession of wanting to build virtual immersive environments that were structured to different learning styles. A...

Today is a great day to start a blog about the open 3D web and open Metaverse if one had to set a date. What makes today different than any other is that it marks the begining trend of true "open garden" virtual worlds coming into the mainstream market place. By "open gardens" I mean virtual worlds based on open standards. Is this necessary to be a successful platform, well no. Is this necessary for a platform to be a portal into the much bigger 3D web? Well it's a must. Like the World Wide Web, the Metaverse is not going to be just one website, one big company, one virtual world, or one platform. It is going to be as varied in content, context, developer, and platform as the people using it. A convergence of technologies and platforms that work well together without exposing whats under the individual hood. Starting this evolution is Vivaty - a Silicon Valley based company that is exposing the video game and Internet generation to true immersive 3D web. Read m...