Day 1, Session 2 - So Many Platforms, So Little Time
Panelists: Valerie Williamson, John Swords, Chris Carella, Jonathan Collins (all from Electric Sheep).
This panel discussed a number of the existing virtual worlds. The information was very engaging, though somewhat tethered, since Williamson was there to make sure that no NDAs were violated in the course of discussion. I got a lot of specific info for my concluding report on Virtual Web notions so I'll probably just save that for later rather than rehash from here. Most of that information is fairly obvious and known from other sources. It was just nice to have it restated so nicely all in one place. Some things I did not know though so I found this a very valuable panel overall.
A couple of standouts though, to my mind, were Icarus' Studios and Multiverse. Icarus' Studios I already glossed over in my first break report and more can be found from the company site linked above. I'll add here that Electric Sheep is considering them for some projects.
Multiverse is a product I'd looked at initially after launch back in early August. In concept, it sounded great, but I was very underwhelmed by the product itself. I felt at the time that they'd been a bit premature to market and there were noticeable glitches; the dearth of showcase material with depth didn't leave me with any warm fuzzies either. But it did have potential and I have to say that I have been keeping my eye on this product - but apparently not close enough. It's shown a lot of growth since I first looked at it, and as an out-of-the-box solution for MMO game developers, it is one to be definitely considered when reviewing tool choices. I haven't seen the graphic richness and support structure of Icarus' Studios product. But that can change in future. What Multiverse offers is an easy entry point into the marketplace through a scheme of revenue sharing as just one of many price options. This encourages someone with a good idea but not a lot or any capital backing to get to programming and get their idea up for the world to subscribe to.
Though games can be customized, the basic U.I. seems the same in every game I've seen, just dressed up differently. Rafhael Cedeno, the CTO of Multiverse, happened to be in the audience and some of the questions were addressed to him since he was there - including when there would be a Mac client available. Cedeno said one was forthcoming and polled the room to see how many mac users there were (I'd guess about 40% or more raised hands - which seemed to surprise him; he stated that the Mac and Linux clients would release at the same time and both be forthcoming next year.
(Side note: Given this and some info from the DAZ 3d folks, I stopped by the Multiverse table a second time on day 2 just to get some more details about the Mac client and other things I'd heard from DAZ (wonders of wonders, I was the only attendee at the booth and had both Multiverse employees at hand) and, though I'll discuss it later there, was told very different things. Check Day 2's report for more info).
If I were to compare to two on the surface, I would say that Icarus' Studios has the gloss, production capability, support and power. As long as I could afford the price point, if I were building a new stand-alone MMO or virtual world, that would be my product of choice, no question. If you're just starting out, or you have talent but don't have a lot or any money to spend (remember that the client is free), Multiverse can let you make your dream come true and it could look fantastic.
But I really think Multiverse could have a sleeper hit on their hands. They've thought a lot about contingencies when building it, trying to really future-proof it and set it up for the demands of today and tomorrow. If I were them, I would strongly consider: creating a shallow client for people to build their own social virtual world or MMOs hosted on their own system; small virtual stores out-of-the-box set for same; and perhaps selling back-end systems to ISPs to sell virtual world storage the same way they sell web-page hosting - all tied back to Multiverse's common grid (yes, that's what I'm saying: Multiverse would essentially become it's own mini-Virtual Web/walled garden. They are already for their MMO games but this would be a much bigger garden. Imagine thousands of personal and professional games and social worlds all tied together that could be visited with a common avatar - not years from now but much sooner (or as soon as they could pull it off).
They really do need a custom avatar tool though - that or a heck of a lot more AV models than from when I last looked at them. Also, there is a significant problem in that, back when I looked at them - hopefully they have or are soon correcting this - avatars did not persist beyond a world. Your account did but you would have essentially multiple avatars, each stranded in situ.
Anyway, I heard conflicting data on this point, but the world I got from the Multiverse mouths was that they were not considering any areas outside of MMO games for the moment. We'll just have to wait and see. It could be that if there is any issue about not wanting to expand or admit to wanting to expand beyond the MMO frame, it might have to do with the heretofore announced pairing with Google to expand use of SketchUp models brought into Multiverse for instant virtual worlds. But will those virtual worlds just tie into Multiverse's grid or will they be extensions off of some Google presence, like Google Earth?
My posed question to the panel was essentially what forecasted products announced but not yet available were they each looking forward to try and why (eg. what strengths of these call to you)?
One of the panelists dismissed the question since he never bothered to think about products until he could actually get his hands on them - how very disciplined and electro-zen of him I thought*. But I, like the rest of the panel, couldn't help imagining what new products and their features might enable so they, like me, had a few notions: Qwaq, Metaplace, Wonderland**, Ogoglio, Croquet, 3B, and HiPiHi.
And someone from the audience volunteered VastPark.
*In fairness to Mr. Electro-zen, it seemed he did have a some notions that he was comfortable sharing once everyone else chimed in and some of the above are his.
**One of the fellows I lunched with was from Sun and also mentioned the Wonderland launch.
Second break
I went by the Forterra Booth to look at their Olive product. It was very crowded (again). Taking advantage of height, just stared over the shoulders and listened to questions being answered. I really wanted to evaluate some of their educational spaces but the only thing I got to see was a retail training program, which I have to tell you, I thought was very realistic and very nuanced, hence very impressive. Whoever designed this course knew what they were doing and my stress level rose just watching those poor harried sims trying to navigate a busy day with all sorts of customer demands put upon them.
I thought this was one of the best uses of virtual simulation I'd ever seen and I can understand why hospitals, corporations, law enforcement, and the military turn to Forterra for solutions. I really wish I had had the chance to see the educational product though. But for someone who wants to build his own, I'm not sure why I would choose Forterra. But if I were looking for a solution to be built, nothing can beat real life, but what I saw was an excellent preparation mimicking real life events.
SceneCaster also was a very interesting product. In fact, to say that it has a lot of potential falls pretty short of the mark. As a product, it comes along the lines of growing the Virtual Web out of the Social Web, directly tapping into the popularity of products like Facebook and Flickr as a natural user base with more to come I'd expect. It's a sort of hybrid product for now in that it's not really a virtual world but it's a nice bridge in that it allows people to build and share virtual scenes. In many ways, products like SceneCaster can help transition a full virtual world with those who like the Social Web, who like to share media files - in this case based on virtual scene creations - but who are not comfortable with or fully understand the notion of something like Second Life. It's approachable, already has thousands of objects, growing each day from Google's 3d Warehouse, and with SketchUp, it has a creation tool at hand along with an initial list of market pairings and more likely to come forward.
Given the association with Oddcast, I suspect any forthcoming avatar usage will be 2d and there isn't any plan to actually "walk" the space for now other than with eyeballs. And for "stickiness" and ease of use, in addition to Facebook, Scenecaster will let you plug into eBay, and Amazon.com. It has a model for advertisement revenue and has paired with some other vendors for items. But if you think about it, if you're a manufacturer, a product like this will enable you to show someone your product in their scene - and then eventually link to buy it... wow. Second Life and similar products can't really touch that ease of use and access for now. Speaking of access, SceneCaster is regrettably Windows-only, but it will run on Vista as well as XP.
And yes - according to the attendant, they are considering ways to bring in real avatars - and - working on the ability to import 3d models from other applications (but how far away that is, who knows and they say anything sometimes at shows.) I think this is just a nice-to-have-someday thought but there is no way to bring it about as yet. New technologies come about, and this can change overnight to become a reality. Obviously the folks at SceneCaster sense the fast-changing environment. Linkups with Multiverse I suspect are designed to help them achieve dramatic changes sooner than later. Once that happens, avatars, the potential of having social spaces that can be visited, easy drag and drop for the novices plus import capabilities for the more savvy - interlinked in with social sites like Facebook, Flickr, vendors like Amazon.com, and eBay - who doesn't think this isn't going to be big?
Products like SceneCaster really highlight the need for standards. Imagine a huge repository of SceneCaster scenes someday and more accessible virtual worlds - even a Virtual Web. People are either going to want to take those time-consuming hard-worked-on scenes and either export them out or bring people in.
Speaking of avatars, I walked over to the Poser desk next - or rather the e-Frontier booth. They also own Shade, btw, another app that I've been meaning to buy. It's really great to see all those old Metacreations products, like Poser, still living on (see my Daz 3d post later somewhere in day 2) - alas for Canoma though. They've just passed through so many hands it seems, I wonder if I can ever get the current owners to honour my past copies for upgrade pricing?
Poser of course was always a fun (and at times frustrating) tool. It's been the mainstay of animation creation for those rico-suave dance moves in Second Life. It's coming to the point, with this talk about portable avatars, that avatar creation tools are going to be very popular for people wanting that handsome unique look that isn't off-the-shelf. It's not really practical at this point, but theoretically, you could take your mega-polygon Poser output and bring it into something like Activeworlds. But then you'd be crashing the server and everyone would hate you - which is why Activeworlds protects everyone by having, albeit a very expensive, custom avatar review process. But someday... I just wish the basic version offered the COLLADA output format. COLLADA is going to be very important transfer mechanism between so many of these products and for that, you need to pony up for the pro version from what I could tell.
Now, about that upgrade...
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