Metaverse One

In a post earlier this year I wrote about a 3D Web Festival and its goal to bring together performance artists and Web 3D developers to create new types of art-meets-tech web exhibits. To recap, the  3D Web Festival  showcases websites that are the best mixture of music, art, and technology by those inspired by what’s possible from the best of the best of the 3D Web. The festival will, " bring together the best of the 3D Web - presented as Live Performance Art – amazing, delightful, surprising and at times disturbing" . We just finished up the first show held Wednesday May 13, 2015 in San Francisco and what a success it was. There were creations by selected artists and developers of all kinds showing off their best 3D web sites live with musical accompaniment. Guests got to participate in a panel session with selected performers on the future of the 3D Web including audience Q&A. Also, in true support-the-arts fashion the ticket proceeds from this event went to the ...

  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...

  It has been great to see the influx of fresh faces and new energy into the web3D space thanks to the popularity of virtual reality. In the Bay Area alone there are several meetup groups around the topic of VR and it was at the San Francisco VR Meetup that I met Cris Miranda.  Cris is the host of Enter VR , a podcast with some pretty amazing interviews with industry leaders about virtual reality at the intersection of gaming, technology, business and society. I recently sat down with Cris to chat about VR in an interview he named, ' Discussing the Internet of Things, Connected Cities, and Virtual Reality with Damon Hernandez '.  Thanks again to Cris for the fun opportunity and make sure to check out the Enter VR blog with his other podcast interviews. I am off now to listen to ' Rehabilitating the Mind with Virtual Reality, Using Big Data in VR and more with Dr. Mike Aratow '. Like the name says, Enter VR is a great resource for those that want to know the la...

It's a wrap, the AEC Hackathon 1.2 just concluded! Held in Seattle, Washington at University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education, it was a fun weekend of hacking to improve the built environment with plenty of high-tech and innovative solutions in the house. As always, I was amazed at what the AEC Hackers made over the course of the weekend. In addition to the projects created, some of my more memorable highlights from the event include: 1. Drones for architecture and climbing a tree to get the drone for team Revit My Drone . 2. An awesome smart table  touch screen device thanks to SmartUse . 3. Plenty of Virtual Reality for AEC represented including a full immersive VR setup thanks to the team at VRcade . 4. Multiple  Web3D applications that used WebGL and more. 5. FTW (For The Win): seeing alumni that have started companies from projects started at past AEC Hackathons. Video of the team p...

The Chrome Experiments site is packed with WebGL goodies like this one that came across my radar and it is too much fun not to share. This summer Google Australia announced the release of the Build with Chrome online tool. Build with Chrome lets you explore and build a new world of LEGO creations online. Just select on the map where you want to build and zoom in to get a grid. Once your creation is published it is viewable by all and may be featured in promotional material by Google and the LEGO Group.

Esri , a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System (GIS) software and geodatabase management applications, announced the availability of CityEngine Web Viewer in their ArcGIS Online product this week. For the double bonus, the viewer leverages WebGL . Yes, this means anyone with a WebGL-enabled browser (Chrome, Safari, Opera, FireFox) can navigate and explore uploaded 3D cities and environments created in CityEngine 2012. CityEngine is the software Esri acquired when they bought Switzerland based Procedural last year. CityEngine allows for rapid creation of 3D city models and is used in everything from movies and games (I first met the Procedural team at GDC ) to architectural and proposed development visualizations. I have watched people create rather detailed cities in a matter of minutes with this powerful tool. Since CityEngine is a desktop solution, these models were only able to be viewed within the software until...

Reality became augmented this week in Silicon Valley at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The third annual Augmented Reality Event, aka A.R.E.2012, brought the best and brightest around the world to the Bay area for a two day conference. Companies, research institutes, artists, and more once again got a chance to show off and experience the latest in computer vision, head & eye displays, motion sensor, mobile, and related augmented reality technologies. " ARE is where the people working on and using Augmented Reality technologies come together to explore best practices and innovations in software development, tools, business strategies, design and marketing. Developers, technologists, marketers, hardware manufacturers, mobile operators, researchers, designers, startups, business developers, and entrepreneurs gather to share their experiences and learn from their peers" - website Event organizer Ori Inbar (CEO Ogmento) interviewed by ARnewsTV before the event. A...

I want to share a well written post titled, ' Future of virtuality in-the-making: Reflections from Stanford University' by Ates Gursimsek for the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation's Blog. Ates is a PhD researcher at Roskilde University, friend, and visiting scholar at Stanford University's H-STAR Institute who studies collaborative design and innovation in virtual worlds. Ates states, "my observations have introduced me the rising culture of technological and social innovation through collaboration and co-creation in Silicon Valley (SV), as well as research and development studies on these emerging Web technologies, focusing on social sciences, humanities and educational studies, at Stanford University." Check it out . Here are videos covering a couple things he worked on and experienced while visiting Silicon Valley. Tesekkur ederim for all the great info Ates. I look forward to seeing where your research takes us!

For years I have been wanting to see 3D on the web become ubiquitous and with Katalabs' OurBricks, I am closer than ever to seeing that dream come true. Leveraging the power of WebGL and its supported browsers, OurBricks allows users to examine a full 3D version of any model uploaded to the site with no need for any plug-in. Visitors to the site can download content, embed it in any webpage as easy as embedding a Youtube video, or drop it into Katalabs' multi-user 3D sandbox for a 'virtual world' type experience. OurBricks seems the ideal solution for 3D artist that want to share their creations. Countless times I have seen on other sites where artists can share their 3D model, in the form of a 2D image, for peer review and "Can you render this model from a different angle," appears somewhere in the comments section. Now that problem is solved! The OurBricks platform supports the following 3D file formats: COLLADA, OBJ, FBX, DXF, and KMZ. There is an option ...

On June 10 at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California, the third WebGL Camp took place. For those that need a refresher on WebGL visit here . MC Henrik Bennetsen of OurBricks and Kenneth Russell from Google hosted WebGL Camp #3, a full day of presentations, demos, and conversations about this developing graphics API. Session videos in order of the agenda. Rachid El Guerrab - Human Engines Tony Parisi Tim Johansson - Opera Altered Qualia - three.js Remi Arnaud - Screampoint Vangelis Kokkevis - Google Henrik Bennetsen - Katalabs Aleksandar Rodic - Chrysaora and ro.me Neil Trevett - Khronos & NVIDIA Nicolas Garcia Belmonte - Sencha John Pywtorak - SRI Kenneth Russell - Google & WebGL working group chair Thanks to Ken, Henrik, and all the presenters for such a great informative camp.

April 28 th was the first WebGL Developer Meetup here in the Bay area with a great mix from industry titans to garage developers. Managed by the Khronos group, WebGL is a web-based graphics library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser (Chrome, Firefox , Safari). Web3D veteran and my fellow Meetup co-organizer Tony Parisi introduced Neil Trevett , President of Khronos & VP Mobile Content at NVidia , who presented on 'What is WebGL ?' Henrik Bennetsen gave a product demonstration on OurBricks . OurBricks lets you discover, interact with and share 3D content right in your browser. Think of it as a 3D warehouse where you can freely examine the model and much more. A great site for 3D modelers that want to share their work with others. A proper write up on OurBricks will be coming soon but do check out their website and the video below. Closing demonstratio...

Earlier this month was the second WebGL Camp in Silicon Valley. Organized by Henrik Bennetsen (CEO of Katalabs ) and Christian Greuel (Manager of SRI Geovisualization Center), the camp is a developer focused event that aims to bring together the people who are writing the WebGL spec with those who build projects on it for some show and tell. WebGL is based on OpenGL ES 2.0 and provides a programmatic interface for 3D graphics. It provides a 3D graphics API implemented in a web browser without the use of plug-ins. It uses the HTML5 canvas element and is accessed using Document Object Model interfaces. The specification is currently a work in progress and is managed by the non-profit Khronos Group. The event was a who's who from the WebGL community. The presentation list: Gavriel State and Daniel Koch from TransGaming provided a high level introduction to the ANGLE Project . ANGLE provides OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible API's on top of Microsoft's Direct3D. Presenta...

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.

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