Metaverse One

  My first post of 2015 touched into how this is going to be a great year for web3D and the 3D Web. Now while there is a growing number of web developers already evolving flat websites into those with web3D content or into fully interactive 3D Web applications, games, and environments, there is still a lack of 3D Web art that one can visit online. Other than Chris Milk's " 3 Dreams of Black " and a handful of other experiences that leverage web3D, there really isn't much out there in the art-meets-music-meets-web3d realm. I encourage my readers to please provide links in the comments section to any web experiences that fit this criteria that you know of and like.  So why aren't more artists collaborating with web developers to make crazy cool web experience art like 3 Dreams of Back? Well it seems I am not the only person asking this and with that said, I am thrilled to announce the 3D Web Festival.   The 3D Web Festival  will showcase websites that a...

I can say it with confidence in 2015, "The 3D Web is finally here!"  I have been involved with and covered web3D tech for years but it has only been since last year's support of  WebGL  (a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3D & 2D graphics) by all the major browser vendors that web3D is truly ubiquitous on all desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Gone are the days of having to download and install a plugin or app to run interactive 3D content via the web. The super exciting thing for me is that this web3d tech development has created a groundwork within HTML5 for the highly anticipated 3D Web. What is the difference between web3D and the 3D Web you may ask? I see web3D as all tech related to the delivery and rendering of static and interactive 3D content on the Internet. Google Earth, World Of Warcraft, 3D online gaming, virtual surgery, and military simulations are some examples of web3D applications.  Unity3D ,  Flash ,  X3D-Edit , an...

On the heels of an 'augmented' good time at the ARE2010, I headed to Denmark as a guest of Roskilde University to participate in the Making Sense of Virtual Worlds and User Driven Innovation workshop. Held at the lovely venue of Magleaas, just north of Copenhagen, this three day (June 7th - 9th) workshop, funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council KINO, brought together academics and a few industry players from all around to share with each other the research they have been doing in virtual worlds. 'SENSE-MAKING STRATEGIES AND USER-DRIVEN INNOVATION IN VIRTUAL WORLDS is a collaborative project, running from 2008-2011, that joins university researchers at two Danish universities, Roskilde University and Copenhagen Business School, and a range of different partners who work practically with virtual worlds in different organizational contexts (encompassing both public organizations and private business). The project has a practice-orientation both in the sense that the a...

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...

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...

Learning about the 3D web open standard has never really been an easy thing in the past. Tutorials were scattered over the web, the Web3D Consortium website didn't offer much help to those new to programming, there were few books that covered the open standard such as Core Web3D, the VRML 2.0 Handbook (great books), and no books that covered the new standard X3D. If you were a 3D modeler looking to author web3D content there were few tools out there to help you do it and none of these had in depth tutorials. As someone wanting to learn X3D, this is what drove me to get active with the Consortium eight years ago. I found there were students everywhere that wanted to learn web3D technologies for credit but where and how? So in the past it was difficult for newbies, but now this is no longer the case. In 2007 X3D: 3D Graphics for Web Authors by Don Brutzman and Leonard Daly was published. This book is highly recommended resource for programmers that makes learning X3D undauntin...

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

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...