Metaverse One

I just received in the mail my Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone. This is the first PlayStation certified Android smartphone, hence it is also known as the PlayStation phone. The phone has a slide-out game pad, sports the Qualcomm Scorpion processor clocked at 1GHz (which runs alongside the on-board Adreno GPU and 380MB RAM), has a 4 inch backlit LCD screen with a resolution of 480x854, a 5.1-megapixel camera with auto focus and flash, and runs the Android OS Gingerbread. I won the phone from a party Qualcomm had during the Game Developers Conference 2011 for their new Snapdragon platform . I haven't won anything like this before so I decided to make my first unboxing video. Yeah unboxing videos are silly, so I decided to spruce mine up with a little bit of augmented reality. I need a couple days to test drive this thing for a proper review. Stay tuned and thanks Qualcomm!

Cool combination of the Kinect and an avatar from Bitmanagement Software GmbH ! IVN from Bitmanagement Software GmbH on Vimeo .

I recently wrote a post on Google's Body Browser that I saw at WebGL Camp#2 this past week. Since that post, the web has exploded with news about this application and web traffic to the blog and video (almost 10,000 views in less than 48 hours) have skyrocketed. Here is the video I took from WebGL camp where it was presented. To experience the application for yourself, get anyone of these three browsers Chrome 9 Beta , Chrome Canary Build and Firefox 4 beta (WebGL is enabled by default) and then got to the Body Browser site . As I have covered in previous blogs, WebGL is a cross-platform low-level 3D graphics API that is designed to bring plugin-free 3D to the web. It uses the HTML5 Canvas element and does not require Flash, Java or other graphical plugins to run. A visit to the Google Health and WebGL team are in the near future for me. Check out the blog I guest write for to get my initial thoughts on this application.

A few months ago I posted about the Kinect device from Microsoft. Kinect, since its launch in November, has sold over 2.5 million units in less than 30 days. This makes it the fastest adopted consumer electronic device ever, surpassing the recent title holder the iPad. Now what is really impressing me is how the hacking community has gone wild with the device and I recommend visiting KinectHacks.net to see what I mean. The technology behind the Kinect intrigues me. I know very little about 3D depth sensors and RGB cameras, so to learn more I decided to visit the Intel Lab Seattle that has been doing research in this area long before Kinect was released. Located by the University of Washington, Intel Lab Seattle is a Center of Excellence in Context-Aware Sensor-Driven Systems. Interdisciplinary projects and an emphasis on prototyping novel systems and user evaluation drive its agenda. Led by Director Dieter Fox , the research staff are recognized experts across a range of topics fro...

A few months back a friend told me of a 3D city map app called UpNext . Naturally being a digital city geek I downloaded the app for my iPod Touch to give it a quick look-see. Launching the app gave me the choice of several 3D city maps (Austin, Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.) to download that I could access offline which is a super plus for those with an iPod Touch. I selected San Francisco, which only took a few moments to download, and it didn't take long to become impressed with the app. Navigation uses standard Apple interface actions such as pinch to zoom, two finger drag to tilt the view, etc. As I zoomed in from the initial bird's eye view of the whole city, the app broke the city down into its neighborhoods. This was a nice surprise as I still don't know the exact locations of all the 'hoods' in SF. Zooming further down quickly loaded simple but nicely textured 3D building models with more levels of detail as I got closer to ...

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...

So every now and then we here at the office do get some pretty awesome toys, er... research hardware for our projects. Our latest addition has got to be one of the most amazing products I have seen in a while. It is a custom 47" Spatial View 3D Monitor. This 3D monitor brings images, videos, and 3D objects out of the screen without the need for special 3D glasses. Hardware-wise this monitor is a modified top of the line LG television with a parallax barrier screen attached to the front of it. Hook it up to a computer with a relatively new graphics card, install the Spatial View software, and all is ready to go. The software is Power Player 3.0 , Spatial View's own player for displaying videos, images, and other content in 3D. A good amount of examples come with the software, but to create your own content, videos and images have to be created a certain way for the full coming out of the screen 3D effect. The best feature (drum roll) is that Power Player 3.0 supports the web3...

The economy is not just affecting the real world, but the virtual as well. No one or avatar is safe from the budget slashing going on. Virtual world builders , platform companies, and start-ups are also feeling the pain. Carla Thornton's article Virtual Worlds: "2009 is going to be a trial by fire" points out some interesting points about these times. From the article - Virtual worlds, at least those looking for funding, are meeting the all-too-real world of the worsening economy, according to a new report. Prepared by Virtual Worlds Management , a provider of market research and events related to the virtual worlds industry, the report says investments in 63 virtual-world related companies declined by 58 percent from 2007 to 2008, shrinking from $1.4 billion to $594 million. This year will see more contraction, Joey Seiler, editor of Virtual World News , told The Standard . "2009 is going to be a trial by fire for the industry and entrepreneurs," he said. ...

Web3DStudents is a collaboration between students and professionals in the outreach, education, and development of the 3D web, web3D applications, and the mixed reality Metaverse. Our work is funded by various web3D projects we do for corporate and private clients. This money keeps us living and the computers running while we teach, learn, promote, develop, and help others in their migration to the 3D web. 2009 marks an important year for us as we start a series of Web3D Industry sponsored student projects with some of the biggest names around. These projects are 3D web mash-ups and mixed reality applications that will showcase the power of the web3D open standard, be available for all to use, and documented so other web3D students can learn the how-to for their own projects. To show our commitment to world change beyond those affiliated with the 3D web, Web3DStudents members are pledging that a decent portion of all our private work contracts this year will go toward humanitarian aid...

In San Francisco at One Market Street is the Autodesk Design Center, an interactive environment that highlights the impact of software and technology on the process of innovative design. The 16,500-square-foot Gallery, is the first space in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to the spirit of design innovation with over 20 exhibits. These include a small model of the California Academy of Sciences, a full sized Ford Shelby GT500, model of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, a huge Lego dinosaur, and the $100 laptop. The space is intended as a location where designers can discuss the latest in technology and be inspired by others' work. Designed to achieve a LEED -Commercial Interiors Platinum certification rating, the space takes green interior design to the highest level and includes daylight and views, recycled material, certified renewable lumber, local manufacturing and renewable energy. From another blog, Carl Bass ( Autodesk president and CEO) says, "The Autodesk Gal...

So surfing around the 3D web I came across a pleasant surprise. Media giant Warner Bros. is among the early adopters that has migrated over to the emerging 3D web. Using a browser plug-in that supports the 3D web open standard, I experienced this great precedent for virtual movie theaters. The scene itself loads fast, is graphically impressive, very spacious, and easy to navigate around. The categories of movies offered is simple to identify and requires nothing more than walking into that genre's theater room. Once inside the room, which is a nice recreation of an actual theater, one can select a movie to browse using a search menu from a friendly user interface with a variety of different options. Click to activate, watch the curtains draw, and enjoy what is shown. I have to comment on the interactive movie posters that when clicked, play the movie's trailer and offer options for purchasing the movie on DVD or from Itunes. With the total experience I am very impressed, all a...

Some old news here as back to back holidays and projects have sidetracked me from posting this earlier. On Friday November 14, 2008 Stanford Open Source Lab had its first Open Source unConference . Hosted by Stanford's Metaverse man Henrik Bennetsen, it was an intimate turnout of those supporting open source tools and technologies. Pictures from WiseMarco The event grid had great topics and speakers for all the sessions. There were several sessions on Drupal (the open source content management platform) , I caught Vladimir Bacvanski's engaging session on Javascript and the Dojo Toolkit , and finished off with Gene Leybzon's session explaining and showcasing some cool applications he developed for Google's Android open free mobile platform. Gene Presentation For Android Only natural to have a session on the open standard for the 3D Web/Metaverse and cover its open source players. Thanks to Web3D Consortium Board member Dr. Michael Aratow for also participati...