Really

So, Steve Jobs didn’t announce a surprise Apple-branded Metaverse platform yesterday at the WWDC’07 keynote address. But, what was interesting were some of the new features in the OS. CoverFlow, the 3D browsing mechanism for iTunes, has been promoted as the way to browse through all content on the computer:

(Image Courtesy of Apple)

When describing this feature, Jobs reportedly said: “…it turns out to be INCREDIBLY useful.” One of the arguments I hear often is that, “some tasks are always going to be better in 2D”. Maybe so, but I think once designers start trying to use 3D interfaces, they are likely to stumble upon new ways of doing old tasks (and let’s face it, browsing through a list of files has not really changed a whole lot since the days of DIR C:), that are INCREDIBLY useful.

The “stacks” features, shown on the right side of the screen, is another move towards a more three dimensional way to organize objects (Wired gives some more details and history on this feature). Also, the fact that the dock icons are shown sitting on a shiny floor really starts to hammer home the notion that not only are the buttons, windows, and icons three dimensional, but they are living in a three-dimensional space.

Along with the new iChat features (like video backgrounds), calling virtual desktops spaces, and the fact that major gaming companies are supporting the Mac platform, these new features clearly indicate that Apple is pushing their desktop into the virtual world arena. At the next WWDC, the Mac will be a fully immersive environment, where you control your avatar via the built-in camera, seamlessly moving within Mac “spaces” and to spaces on other Macs, iPhones, and iPods (and even PCs - but they will not look as nice).

One more thing - Ok, maybe there won’t be a Mac Metaverse, but Apple will continue to innovate in their interfaces, in ways that can be adapted to improve interactions in virtual worlds.

The new sky and cloud system being previewed in the SL First Look Viewer, adds yet more detail (if not realism) to the Second Life landscape. By playing around with the available controls, you can get a range of effects, from partly overcast sunny days to gorgeous sunrises and sunsets (click on thumbnails for larger picture):

What the images don’t show, is that with the default settings, the clouds move and change at rather extreme speeds (Torley Linden posted some videos that show you) . I think cloud speed is a parameter you can set, but of course, if you set it to a more realistic level, you won’t actually notice the clouds changing… A couple of rash clicks and drags can also get you to:

You can even pre-program the light changes for the day. Right now, the effect is controlled by the client, but the plan is to allow estate owners to control the lighting and weather effects so it will be the same for all visitors. I predict the rise of a new profession: Weather Manager. Is this yet another step on the path towards higher quality content at the expense of simple controls?

In Clive Jackson’s white paper on The Metaverse 2.0 he mentions cites “no barriers to entry” as the first criterion for successful adoption of the metaverse. We saw an example of this principle when Linden Lab remove the credit card requirement for creating new Second Life accounts, paving the way for the exponential growth in registrations.

Another way that Second Life lowers the barrier is the ease of content creation. The in-world tools for building and scripting brought 3D modeling and animation within reach for many people, who no longer needed to buy and learn potentially complex applications like Maya. The success of Second Life must be at least partially attributed to the fact that large numbers of people, many of who might never have thought of themselves as modelers or programmers, were able to have great ideas, and then implement them. Because everybody is using the same tools, applications are differentiated mostly by their creator’s imagination, rather than proficiency in some tool or programming language. There are exceptions, of course: texture and animation creation is more difficult than regular building, and is thus more costly (and, perhaps, we see less innovation in those areas?).

Several recent developments seem to be moving us towards raising the barriers for creating. There’s the proposed certification system for builders and scripters, the push towards mono for scripting (ultimately allowing the use of programming languages like C# instead of LSL), and most recently, the introduction of sculpted prims. All of these initiatives are intended to enable richer, better, and more quality content. Since there’s no plans to remove the current building tools and features, it may not prevent people from creating content, but it may lead to a split in the creator community. Those who bother to go through the certification, know how to program in C#, and are able to use 3D modeling packages to create sculpted prims, will be more sought after, and will be able to create much better applications than those developers only using LSL and standard prims (whether the certification program will actually have any effect, remains to be seen, but the intent is to differentiate between professionals and hobbyists).

That better applications can be built is good of course. However, if the consequence is a decrease in the number of people who try to develop their own ideas, because ultimately they won’t be able to compete, might that not lead to less innovation? Gwyneth Llewelyn covers the sculpted prim aspect of this discussion, but I think it’s worth seeing that as just one piece of what she terms the growing rift between the “talented amateur” and the professional artists, and perhaps another slight dent in the ideal expressed by “Your world, your imagination” .

On April 17th, we had a big product launch event at Fenway park in Boston, in conjunction with AIIM/OnDemand. There was a large Second Life component to the event, with the Boston audience being shown a virtual product showroom on Xerox Innovation Island. Sophie Vandebroek posted a short summary (including a transcript (warning - MS Word document!) of the in-world panel discussion), and there was some news coverage and blog entries here and there. We had also planned to stream video from Fenway Park into Second Life, so that the SL audience could see and here what was going on. Unfortunately, as we all know, Real Life is not entirely stable and we always take a risk when we try to stage events in the physical world, so the video link never materialized.

However, there are now some videos of the event available, so everyone can see what they missed! The first video shows what was going on in both worlds, and gives you a bit of peak of the pavilion at Xerox Innovation Island:

The second video is an edited version of a machinima shown at the event, used to introduce the audience to Second Life. Follow along as a journalist meets an avatar named “Sophie”, and learns how businesses are mixing digital and real worlds:

Unfortunately, this edit omits my favorite line in the film. As Sophie and the journalist sit down to chat, Sophie, of course, chooses “Belgian hot chocolate” to drink, but the narrator declines, stating “I had my big eye on a little tea”! Get it? Well, I liked it.

As you may have noticed, both videos include parts from the machinima we did in January - Reuse and recycle is what we do!

The question of how to define the term “virtual world” seems to come up fairly frequently. Often, sites like NeoPets and WebKinz are included, and at VW2007, even MySpace was offered as an example of a highly successful virtual world. Because it is not exactly clear why there needs to be a precise definition, the discussion then tends to quickly turn to the perhaps more interesting question of “What makes virtual worlds successful?” (See the posts from Grace McDunnough and Hiro Pendragon for some detailed and insightful perspectives, for example.)

Richard Bartle over at Terra Nova has a reason for defining what virtual worlds are, though. Given the minimal set of features needed for a virtual world, he asks, can we come up with applications other than those exemplified by World of Warcraft and Second Life? He states his definition as,

OK, well for a virtual world you need a world (obviously) and players. The players need to be able to do things to or with each other; they also need to be able to do things to the world, which in turn should be able to do things to them.

Even with the additional details provided in the article, this definition seems too vague and inclusive to me. Like Bartle, I’m interested in what innovative application we can develop given virtual world technology, but I’m after criteria that separates things like NeoPets and MySpace from environments like Second Life. To me, the defining feature is whether there is an immersive, fully 3D graphical environment. The key is to provide an environment with which users can interact in a way that is close to how their brains are used to interacting with the world. Everything else, like multiple players, persistance, an economy, enables other types of interaction, but is not necessary to give the user the sense of familiarity that leads to the engagement and enjoyment not found in other types of applications.

Essentially, I want my virtual worlds with fields of green, skies of blue, but not necessarily friends shaking hands, saying “how do you do?” Once you do add the social aspects to virtual worlds, a lot of interesting things happen, but these are the same type of interesting things that happen when you add social aspects to other types of applications.

First mention of Second Life in a non-geek oriented comic strip I’ve seen:

Reminds me of reading comics from the 90s where the punchline depends on how slow it is to load web pages.

I suppose we could argue about whether the mention is yet another sign of the growing spread of Second Life, or, since the joke depends on SL being something weird and unfamiliar, it is a sign that virtual worlds are not catching on with mainstream audiences.

Little Dee - a comic strip with hidden depths!

I attended two presentations at the SL Book Fair yesterday: An overview of the THiNC book and press, and a panel discussion on book technologies. Toneless Tomba presented THiNC books, and he also joined the panel with competitors Neo Rebus and Falk Bergman, with the discussion led by Maddyyy Schnooks.

THiNC produces a book “press” that enables users to sell and distribute books. I’ve heard that THiNC books can be hard to setup (but have no direct experience), and from the presentation my impression was that any difficulties are the result of ensuring that the books are secure. Apparently, including the textures that make up the book pages in the book itself would enable users to easily copy and distribute them to others.

Security came up in the panel discussion as well. Maddyyy Schnook pointed out that textures are never secure in SL, and can be easily copied, if you know how. One possible way to avoid texture theft would be to enable prims to display textures loaded from a URL; a feature Maddyyy claimed to be in the works. I asked the panel what other features they want to see in the future, and both Maddyyy and Neo Rebus mentioned more interactivity, for example being able to fold corners or scribble notes in the margin. CivilE Writer, in the audience, asked for a way to export books to a handheld or other device, essentially making it portable.

The discussion did not get very far in exploring ways to extend the notion of “books” in virtual world. The consensus seemed to be that books were an interface familiar and comfortable to users, so the best approach, for now, is to try to reproduce them as faithfully as possible. I’m more of the opinion that books in SL and virtual worlds will evolve to be more like the Ivory Tower of Primitives than a simulated stack of bound paper. However, the interest in the SL Book Fair shows that there is still plenty of life left in the book technology we are familiar with, and we’ll probably have book-like objects in virtual worlds for a long time to come.