Day 1, Session 4 - Technical Perspective: Designing for Cross-Platform Delivery and Long-Term Content Portability
Panelist: Aaron Delwiche (Metaversatility)
Given the ever-changing scope of virtual worlds, with new offers appearing every month, almost weekly at times, one is never certain which might ultimately come to the fore. And with the risk imposed by the current lack of standards to build by, if your project or product is too intertwined with a given world, and that world ultimately does not prove to be successful, how do you prevent all your hard work and your clientele from being left stranded in a marginalized virtual environment?
The best solution is to have a - suitcase mentality, - ready to pack it up and move elsewhere when required. But that's easier said than done. What are the practical considerations when envisioning such a virtual gypsy existence?
The panelist for this session is a professor on academic sabbatical, due to return soon to his work at Trinity University, Austin. Delwiche proved a good speaker and I found myself engaged and entertained throughout this session. Nonetheless, given how new virtual worlds are, and like many other panels I attended, there wasn't a lot of concrete example or proven methods attached to the topic discussion. The content was mostly supposed and common sense and despite being a very full session, can be summarized in just a few points:
Plan for portability from the onset.
Preserve copies of your asset files in multiple formats. Use generic, aka the most mutable formats, when possible (eg. OBJ, COLLADA, etc).
Preserve layers, when applicable.
When working with a 3rd-party vendor or sub-contractor, always try to secure the highest quality source files in addition to whatever use files you receive. Note: Most vendors will offer such but often at a much higher cost than just getting either "flattened" or down-sampled use files. After all, they can make more money if you have to come back to them later. Just be sure to account for any such in both your negotiations and budget if using outside talent.
Focus on accessibility. If you do so, portability is likely to follow.
I have to say this is great advice and the most ethical tactic. Too often, disabled users are considered only as an afterthought as to how to service their needs. And accessible solutions too often address the minimum adherence to laws governing requirements rather than effective use and enablement. I've personally found that if you plan and try to future-proof for the effective use of both accessibility and internationalization using a modular solution that can adapt, such will realize long term benefits. Modularity means that you can adapt specific components, realizing faster solutions and not being stuck reinventing everything from scratch, or being caught in a legal bind. And in this case, modularity means a greater likelihood you will be able to pack up at least parts of your kit and take it with you, ala the previous mentioned suitcase analogy.
Regrettably, virtual worlds seem to have taken the somewhat typical approach of not addressing accessibility from the onset. But Devlin, from IBM Ireland's contingent at the IBM booth, was able to offer a great example of virtual world accessibility. He and his team have worked on scripting proximity detection via sound within Activeworlds, in order to help enable virtual world navigation for the visually impaired. It is encouraging to note that some companies are working on accessibility even at this early stage, rather than as an afterthought.
Design your presence around core principals of virtual community. Since technology changes, standards shift, it is sometimes impossible to preserve the functional technology of a space.
So if nothing else, understand that community is the most important thing to preserve when migrating.
That last sentence is particularly key. It was suggested that in order to preserve community in a new space, worlds vendors and managers really need to be already involved, in tune, and understand the core concerns of users/consumers/clients engaged in the original space. "Be kind, be interested, pay attention."
Some panelists in other sessions I attended discounted any value in the interaction of virtual space with the Social Web experience of blogs, forums, wikis, etc. Here though, it was suggested that such spaces are very useful when preserving "community memory" since they are independent of the technology used for the virtual space itself. Certainly it provides a compelling argument to at least consider interlinking functions of the Social Web within or adjunct to virtual offerings.
It was suggested for further study on the topic to understand that value of preservation of The Virtual Community, to read the works of Howard Rheingold, the man who is credited with having invented that phrase through his seminal works.
During the Q&A session, there was some discussion about how to preserve files from Second Life by possibly taking them out of that setting. There was mention of applications, some that would allow for the export and theoretical preservation of native Second Life constructs into XML (LIB SL was mentioned & OpenSim was possibly inferred), or re-importation into other forms via other applications, but which violate Linden Lab's terms of service.
CopyBot, for example, probably built with the best of intentions to help develop Second Life, has been used for outright theft of intellectual property within that simulation. So for the time being, there is no way to legally store for safeguarding or migration anything built or purchased in Second Life outside of that setting. But, with the opening up of the source code, it is possible on a limited basis to import some sculpted prims created in other applications, preserving some aspect of those constructs outside of Second Life. And hopefully more opening up of that simulation will occur, as has been promised.
Panelist: Aaron Delwiche (Metaversatility)
Given the ever-changing scope of virtual worlds, with new offers appearing every month, almost weekly at times, one is never certain which might ultimately come to the fore. And with the risk imposed by the current lack of standards to build by, if your project or product is too intertwined with a given world, and that world ultimately does not prove to be successful, how do you prevent all your hard work and your clientele from being left stranded in a marginalized virtual environment?
The best solution is to have a - suitcase mentality, - ready to pack it up and move elsewhere when required. But that's easier said than done. What are the practical considerations when envisioning such a virtual gypsy existence?
The panelist for this session is a professor on academic sabbatical, due to return soon to his work at Trinity University, Austin. Delwiche proved a good speaker and I found myself engaged and entertained throughout this session. Nonetheless, given how new virtual worlds are, and like many other panels I attended, there wasn't a lot of concrete example or proven methods attached to the topic discussion. The content was mostly supposed and common sense and despite being a very full session, can be summarized in just a few points:
Plan for portability from the onset.
Preserve copies of your asset files in multiple formats. Use generic, aka the most mutable formats, when possible (eg. OBJ, COLLADA, etc).
Preserve layers, when applicable.
When working with a 3rd-party vendor or sub-contractor, always try to secure the highest quality source files in addition to whatever use files you receive. Note: Most vendors will offer such but often at a much higher cost than just getting either "flattened" or down-sampled use files. After all, they can make more money if you have to come back to them later. Just be sure to account for any such in both your negotiations and budget if using outside talent.
Focus on accessibility. If you do so, portability is likely to follow.
I have to say this is great advice and the most ethical tactic. Too often, disabled users are considered only as an afterthought as to how to service their needs. And accessible solutions too often address the minimum adherence to laws governing requirements rather than effective use and enablement. I've personally found that if you plan and try to future-proof for the effective use of both accessibility and internationalization using a modular solution that can adapt, such will realize long term benefits. Modularity means that you can adapt specific components, realizing faster solutions and not being stuck reinventing everything from scratch, or being caught in a legal bind. And in this case, modularity means a greater likelihood you will be able to pack up at least parts of your kit and take it with you, ala the previous mentioned suitcase analogy.
Regrettably, virtual worlds seem to have taken the somewhat typical approach of not addressing accessibility from the onset. But Devlin, from IBM Ireland's contingent at the IBM booth, was able to offer a great example of virtual world accessibility. He and his team have worked on scripting proximity detection via sound within Activeworlds, in order to help enable virtual world navigation for the visually impaired. It is encouraging to note that some companies are working on accessibility even at this early stage, rather than as an afterthought.
Design your presence around core principals of virtual community. Since technology changes, standards shift, it is sometimes impossible to preserve the functional technology of a space.
So if nothing else, understand that community is the most important thing to preserve when migrating.
That last sentence is particularly key. It was suggested that in order to preserve community in a new space, worlds vendors and managers really need to be already involved, in tune, and understand the core concerns of users/consumers/clients engaged in the original space. "Be kind, be interested, pay attention."
Some panelists in other sessions I attended discounted any value in the interaction of virtual space with the Social Web experience of blogs, forums, wikis, etc. Here though, it was suggested that such spaces are very useful when preserving "community memory" since they are independent of the technology used for the virtual space itself. Certainly it provides a compelling argument to at least consider interlinking functions of the Social Web within or adjunct to virtual offerings.
It was suggested for further study on the topic to understand that value of preservation of The Virtual Community, to read the works of Howard Rheingold, the man who is credited with having invented that phrase through his seminal works.
During the Q&A session, there was some discussion about how to preserve files from Second Life by possibly taking them out of that setting. There was mention of applications, some that would allow for the export and theoretical preservation of native Second Life constructs into XML (LIB SL was mentioned & OpenSim was possibly inferred), or re-importation into other forms via other applications, but which violate Linden Lab's terms of service.
CopyBot, for example, probably built with the best of intentions to help develop Second Life, has been used for outright theft of intellectual property within that simulation. So for the time being, there is no way to legally store for safeguarding or migration anything built or purchased in Second Life outside of that setting. But, with the opening up of the source code, it is possible on a limited basis to import some sculpted prims created in other applications, preserving some aspect of those constructs outside of Second Life. And hopefully more opening up of that simulation will occur, as has been promised.
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