Torque 3D Web Demo

Live Asset Updating - Torque 3D from GarageGames on Vimeo.In this video, GarageGames showcases the new Live Asset Updating functionality for Torque 3D.
Below clipped from: Ralph Koster's Website:

"Torque 3D looks to be challenging Unity for the 3d game in a plugin market; check out this feature on their home page:

Deploy any Torque 3D project from the World Editor to a web browser in seconds with our web publishing options. Torque 3D supports all major browsers and operating systems, including IE7, FF3, OS X and Chrome. Games perform at 100% native speed, with no performance cost, completely in your browser.

Both solutions, of course, require that the plugins that host the native client be widely deployed, which is the biggest challenge. The gap between something like Flash or Javascript, and something like this, is measured in the hundreds of millions of installs. Of course, what you get for the native renderers in the plugins is desktop quality graphics.

The push on the other side, of course, is to upgrade the graphics in a form basically native to the browser, so you don’t need a plugin at all, or if you do it’s one you already have (because you visited YouTube once)."

and fom the last comment by Brett Seyler of GarageGames

" I agree. No magic bullet exists yet, and I doubt one will appear in the next 12-18 months. I think this is an awkward, but promising transitional period for games one the web / games in the browser. The streaming problem is a big one to tackle technologically, but there are good solutions for that."

Update:

Onverse opends its doors: http://www.onverse.com/#/Home/

GridHop a Region Database for OpenSim Hypergrid.

GridHop is mainly aimed for use with the clients built-in web browser. The simplest way to access the GridHop interface is to login to your favorite grid or standalone and type the URL http://gridhop.net/ into the chat window. Then just click it from the chat window. That opens the built-in web browser. Here you can browse and search the GridHop database and spot the place you like to visit.

You use the hypergrid link when the destination is on another grid, the teleport link, when the destination is on the same grid.

above via: Gridhop.net

Other sources:

Public Hypergrid Nodes

The above link is to a list of hypergrid-ready nodes on the OpenSim Wiki that can be used for testing your installation and for linking your world.

Noted Warning:

For the time being, and until the security concerns are addressed, we advise you to be careful about who you link to.

Creating Avatars for Multiple Platforms

One of the challanges of bringing newbie clients into a virtual world outside Second Life is developing a simple new account & first avatar experiance. OpenSim's Ruth, RealXtend'S default Male. and 3dXplorer's generic 20 something male are all rather disappointing.


Click on the image to enlarge


alternate hair

IBM releases Virtual World platform behind the firewall -Sametime3D

On June 24th, 2009, IBM announced its first virtual meeting capability for remote, mobile and global teams- Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime. This offering is the result of our research into integrated collaboration tools, a project known as Sametime 3D, which sought to demonstrate the value of integrating virtual world meeting capabilities with existing enterprise applications. Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime (VCS) is an IBM Software Service for Lotus that allows clients to set up and utilize virtual meeting spaces in a secure, behind the firewall configuration. Learn more at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/services/vc4sametime.html

VR leaves the Cave - Again

For 40 years Virtual Reality (VR) has not gone mainstream. In 1966: Ivan Sutherland invented the head-mounted display suggesting it was a window into a virtual world. VR has been a nich market used by those with R&D budgets, Intel, IBM, the Defense Industry and the NSF. It just never caught on and entered the mass market through at least 3 Gartner hype cycles and even product introductions. Yesturday 1989 - the Mattel Power Glove. Today - the Wii controller, Tomarrow - Microsoft Natal?.

Virtual Worlds or MMOG have been around as long, since the 80s.

Now the hype is Augmented Reality but remember it was 16 years ago, 1992: when Tom Caudell coined the phrase Augmented Reality while at Boeing helping workers assemble cables into aircraft. The idea has been there, even the technology and yes the Best programmers and scientists have been onboard, but........ That Killer App still illudes.

Below snipped from: Wired, By Priya Ganapati, June 18, 2009

3D Conferencing System Allows for Virtual Light Saber Duels

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Intel have created a system that can support collaborative physical activities from different geographical locations.

“We can capture motions of the human body in real time and bring them together on a big screen,” says Ahsan Arefin, a doctoral student currently involved with the project.

The project called ‘Tele-immersive Environment for Everybody’ or TEEVE hooks up two off-the-shelf 3D cameras to a PC with a Firewire port. A gateway server at each site sends and receives the different video streams using standard compression techniques. A renderer is used to project the virtual interactions on a big screen monitor, creating a real-time virtual 3D effect. It’s like web conferencing, but with a virtual reality twist.

The idea has applications beyond gaming. It can be used in business, sports and medicine, says Arefin. An experiment by the University had two dancers from different locations dancing together on a large screen.

Arefin says TEEVE can work on PCs with high-end Intel processors.

“Our goal is to make the system portable and easily deployable because of its use of off-the-shelf components,” he says.

SnowGlobe & HTTP texture

UPDATE: via: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/

The important thing to remember is that you have to go to the Advanced menu, look for the Rendering submenu, and check HTTP Get Textures. Or else, the only thing that will load faster is the Map (gosh, I took ages to figure that out!).

Clipped from the SL wiki

Objective of the http-texture Project

The initial idea of the project is to allow the viewer to point to any image file of any format anywhere on the internet, pull it using the http protocol and use it as a regular texture anywhere textures are used.

This involves a bunch of moving (and new) parts:

• Using any file format as textures (instead of just j2c)
• Pulling image files using HTTP (instead of UDP)
• Getting resources from any host (instead of just the LL asset server)

This is a rather ambitious and wide ranging change. As of today (March 24th, 2009), the main plumbing has been implemented with the following caveats:

• Only jpeg images are supported as another file format
• Such images must be loaded at once (no progressive rendering yet)
• Except for jpegs specified with an "http://" URLs, all other images are still using the old fashion protocol
• There are still quite a bit of crashes here and there... Don't use such a build for your regular SL activities (search for bugs logged against http-texture branch in PJIRA for more info)

Quick Thoughts:

Imagine the implications:

• Freeing up the LL servers from storing, retrieving, cashing, & sending textures/ OH and those nasty adult textures, we dont do them.

and

• those pesky IP rights issues. take down notices.

and

• Working in China. Iran, and Australia is easier if The Powers That Be can block your offensive textures and not our game, our product offering.
  

~woot~ I can hear the boardroom presentation of this now.

OH better yet

More $$ for "The Lab" as well.

• New SaaS products..

• Sell asset services, like land. Imagine all content creators becoming responsible for their own Rez times/level of service.

How about?

• You can pay extra (a new Premium Content Creator account) to have LL serve/store assets for you
  

or

• Don't pay up and content creators (IP owners) can always just get and pay for their own asset server(s).
  

Ballgame changed..... Pay for it to come out, not 10L to go in...

Maybe... We will see.

Into the Deep end of the Pool

We have been exploring and talking to many people "outside the box" lately. Being that I am located in a US city that was once the Silicon Valley of the 60s, residents here have a hard understanding just how important it is to think outside the box.

Kodak just retired Kodachrome(tm) and If there ever was a poster child for those that can't think out of the box and see how technology can change a whole landscape this would be it.

We have been posting clips and snip on ~woot~ the past few days, most would not interest readers here who have a different focus, but there is one thing I will share...

Intel: The people with the worst graphics chips, giving a place to ATI and Nvidia is no sleeping giant, nor have they failed to date to capitalize on their research like another "High Tech" company from this city did after they invented Ethernet, the mouse & yes the desktop metaphor.



Intel acquired and now owns Havok, and acquired another group "Offset" and it's team, I believe in 2008, Since then, they have been making great progress on a game (still codenamed “Project Offset”).

Just "a game" maybe modest as I look at it:



It supports Collada, as do many games now, but it has simultaneous real time games editing and play (think Second Life) and yes they have just a few resources to make 3D work. Here is a link to their features page:

http://www.projectoffset.com

With all the technology - Why is the A&E Industry still Laggin?

via: www.aecbytes.com/

Even with CADD, Project Management Software, the Internet, BIM, the A&E segment just can't improve construction productivity. Read the industry rags and you will see they just don't get it.

Some Architects Do get it...

Apple Snow Leopard to Support Collada

Via: The Khronos org:

Apples Snow Leopard promises System Wide support for COLLADA

On the Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page, under System Wide Digital Asset Exchange support there is a easily overlooked mention of COLLADA. Users of COLLADA and the file format .dae will be please to see that Preview, OS X's lightway graphic viewer application, will display .dae files with OpenGL-powered 3D graphics. You will be able to zoom and rotate around a 3D scene and play viewpoint animations. There is a good discussion about this over at idevgames.com

Out of the Box - Impressive 3D by Swedish Developers

All the C3 products are based on high-resolution aerial photography with carefully calibrated cameras. For every picture, the cameras position and angle are calculated with extremely high precision, using an advanced navigation system. This is what enables C3 to give each pixel its geographical position with decimeter accuracy.

C3 Maps are calculated directly from images and is not dependent of any laser scanned data (LIDAR).

For rapid production scaling C3 have choosen to use a standard camera system that can be used inside standard aircrafts. With this approach C3 is contracting flight operator partners world wide to acquire the requested images. To clone a camera system for production in a specified area is manageable within 2 months and thus new areas can be captured rapildy.

http://www.c3technologies.com/index.php

Others:


Publish and Share 3D Models online
3D2web beta: http://www.3d2web.com/index.php

The Start of a Better Sim

Akira Sonoda accidentally discovers the CHANGED_ANIMATION event in Opensim, and fosters the first generation of lag-free animation overriders (AOs).

LSL open source AO's like ZHAO

"have one common flaw which is imposed by Second Life's design: They produce Lag! The reason: They have no clue when to change the animation! Therefore they do some polling triggered by a timer event in order to read the currently running animation which will be overridden depending on the configuration read from a configuration notecard.

But in OpenSimulator based grids this can be done much more elegant because thanks to Melanie, one of the developers, a new event is available is available in OpenSimulator, which tells the script when an animation has to be changed!"

via: MaxPing.org

Add changes like this to patches by Intel engineers working on OpenSim code and hopefully soon a region in OpenSim will support hundreds of avatars with much less lag then a similar sim in Second Life does.

The Meerkat Viewer - Now Features Content Backup & Restore

Meerkat is a fully open source fork of the Second Life viewer. New features include:

• Grid to Grid teleport. On your map screen you'll find a list full of new grids to explore.
• Content import/export. Bring objects, scripts, and textures that you've created to other grids or work offline in OpenSim.
• Avatar List. Lock on and view any avatar in a sim. No more wasting time trying to find someone 10,000 meters in the sky.
• GPL compatible libraries. We've replaced Quicktime and other non redistributable libraries with ones we're allowed to give out.
• Enhanced build tools. These allow for quick bulk object changes and new, more precise object parameters.

Check out Feature List for a full list of all the new features.

• http://www.openmetaverse.org/projects/libopenmetaverse
  

• http://www.meerkatviewer.org/
• http://openmetaverse.org/
• http://pleiades.ca/

Community Planning using Second Life

clipped from fastcompany.com and MetropolisMag.com

A community meeting using Second Life

Eric Gordon, a professor of new media at Emerson College, and Gene Koo, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, just won a MacArthur Foundation grant for their innovative new take on community planning using Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world which users explore as avatars. I spoke with Professor Gordon over the phone last week about how holding community meetings in Second Life transforms the planning process.

Q&A: Eric Gordon on Community Planning with Second Life

Almost Soup - Teleporting Out of Second Life

As you may know we believe OpenSim is stable enough to be an alternative to Second Life. Add to Open Sim RealXtend and Modrex technologies, the ability to import and view content from other programs like Google Sketchup using Ogre and you can see some key ingredients to the future of a new 3D Web being developed.

.. It is not soup yet?
... No.

I believe for the 3DWEB to take off faster then Twitter 4 primary ingredients are being chopped, diced and are now stewing.

1. Open standards & protocols with open source software services (Apache like servers) for the storage & transfer of real-time information of all types between servers and the viewer's PC, TV and cell phone. This includes being able to teleport between sites and view 3D content as easily as you just found and opened this blog page.
   
2. Easy import and exchange of content, be it music, a building design or avatar hair from multiple established creation tools, from Gimp and Blender to high end Autodesk products to Google's Sketchup. This will open a giant pipeline of content and draw talented creatives waiting just outside the current myopic game & media studios and virtual world walled gardens like Second Life.
   
3. The establishment of content markets of all type, from free like Google Warehouse, to auction sites like E-bay, to Checkout & pay catalogues like XStreet, Renerosity, Dell & Apple Apps.
   
4. Instant access & viewing, just like opening web page now. This may be a viewer that contains the browser, or 3D in the browser, or even better a replacement for the 30 year old Windows desktop metaphor. Maybe all of the above.
   

How close are we? Who is the best cook? I could give a rats ass, We are starving on crumbs.

We can smell the soup, taste the cooks spoonful, read recipes, but the soup is still cooking. So today I would like to point to two blog posts regarding Point 1 above - Teleporting - I will followup in the future with the other points... Take note, I do not promise not to eat the meal before it is served.

• Teleporting from Second Life To Open Sim to realXtend
• Hypergrid & Gridder''
• Intergrid Teleport with the Meerkat viewer
  

Image from Meerkat Wiki

It is time to make a reservation for dinner. Call us.

A Visit to RexPioneers

• flickr Photos
• rexpioneers.com

I.O.S.

Xerox, which reported a meager first-quarter profit as revenue fell 18%, isn’t putting the information-overload pitch on TV. Marketing vice president Christa Carone says it spent a “very modest amount” to create the video with its WPP-owned agency, Young & Rubicam.

In the video, a solemn narrator describes “IOS” as a disease that causes humans to delete important life skills from their memories to make space for all the new information with which they are bombarded.

Via WSJ.com

Lionhead Studios Milo Project & Microsoft Project Natal

Lionhead Studios presented a video at E3, showing the capabilities Project Natal can offer. Will we ever get to see anything like this on this on the 360 before a new system is made?

Home & other Snippits

Home

Yann Arthus-Bertrand's movie released worldwide on all mediums .. Absolutely stunning. A must watch!


We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

HOME official website
http://www.home-2009.com

PPR is proud to support HOME
http://www.ppr.com

HOME is a carbon offset movie
http://www.actioncarbone.org

More information about the Planet
http://www.goodplanet.info


Worried CAD vendors

Google is 100% behind a 3D internet experience. A 3D enabled Chrome is now being advertised on the front page of Google, coincidental with the release of the O3D programming interface (Open 3D).

Every web designer and developer now needs to ask themselves “can I afford to ignore this?” or a more pertinent “how long have I got to exploit this before I’m left behind?”

Anyone who profits from CAD in any way, either as a user or seller, has a lot to be worried about right now. SketchUp is growing in its user base (and edu base) at an unprecedented level. I was recently at an Autodesk Revit training event where more of the audience questions revolved around SketchUp than the actual product we were there to learn about. And the industry is worried for one very simple reason. They’re starting to lose customer loyalty, and with it their market share. “If you can design a NASA space station with $400 SketchUp Pro, why can’t I use it for my project too?”

via: http://provelo.co.uk/

Weta Digital




Weta Digital is a world leading visual effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand

Link: http://www.wetafx.co.nz/reels/characters/

3D Sound - A New Physics Engine?

Fluid sounds, such as splashing and pouring, are ubiquitous and familiar but we lack physically based algorithms to synthesize them in computer animation or interactive virtual environments.

Fluid sounds synthesized using the "Harmonic Fluids" algorithm [Zheng and James, ACM SIGGRAPH 2009].

Read more:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~djames/research/index.html

via: www.virtualworldsnews.com

3D + Time = 4D .............. Revit <->MS Project

A new release of the BIMjet Connect software was released this week. The Connector provides a bi-directional link between Microsoft Project and Autodesk Revit platforms. Enabling Architects and Contractors to schedule complex BIM models for 4D visualization and construction scheduling.

OUCH: For a limited time only, join us and celebrate this release of BIMjet Schedule Connect at a remarkable $899.00. That's a 40% discount off of the regular price of $1499.00

via: http://www.bimjet.com/Home

Introduction to 4D Research
by Martin Fischer @ http://www.stanford.edu/group/4D/

Traditional construction planning tools, such as bar charts and network diagrams, do not represent and communicate the spatial and temporal, or four-dimensional, aspects of construction schedules effectively. As a consequence, they do not allow project managers to create schedule alternatives rapidly to find the best way to build a particular design. Extending the traditional planning tools, visual 4D models combine 3D CAD models with construction activities to display the progression of construction over time.

Is Linden Lab just Rearranging the Deck Chairs?

Will Second Life's closed world survive if developers see Google SketchUp/Wave/O3D/Collada as the future. What will happen if 3D in the browser can be married with open source Virtual World Client Server and or P2P technologies being developed around the world?

99% of all 3D objects, textures, code, ie: content, is not M/C/T or listed on Xstreet. It was never made in or for SL nor can it even be imported into SL. (the 99% figure is just a good guess, it may be conservative)

Does Linden Lab management think SL is unsinkable?

The lack of a rich content creation pipeline and the actions of Linden Lab to protect what they believes is "their" Intellectual property," THE PRODUCT", the platform code and all the "residents" assets in it, will be the death of Second Life I am afraid.

Third party developers have fled Second Life and new developers are finding a richer, more welcoming set of open platforms.

Let's not leave out the other big players, the proprietary giants just waiting for the right time to take a piece of the pie once it is baked, Microsoft and Autodesk.

The proliferation of entrepreneurs, 3rd party developers & VARs (value added resellers) that once lead to the rapid growth and extended development of the SL platform is now almost a memory. Frankly the same mistakes were made by Lotus in 1988, 20 years ago, but now there is no good reason for IBM to buy the company, unless they have some secret killer app like "Notes".



Originally posted to YouTube in March 2009 this short video highlights a number of workflows using Google SketchUp and Google 3D warehouse with Esperient Creator. Esperient Creator is a new generation interactive 3D application authoring tool - that provides a WYSIWYG approach to creating 3D applications. Creator can import models created with Google SketchUp by dragging them directly from Google's 3D warehouse into Creator.

Mitch Kapor looses out to Microsoft Again - Project Natal: E3 XBOX 360

Mitch Kapor created excitement for motion sensors and gesture recognition for Second Life a year ago, but were is the product? Watch this Microsoft Promo and understand the post title.

Quote below via bit_tech.net

Project Natal appears to be a bit far from release at the moment, but is set to combine the power of new visual and motion sensors to track player movements, voice commands and object recognition. In short, it could pave the way for an entirely form of gaming.

According to Microsoft the finished product will be able to track a number of different objects and people at once, even being able to distinguish between different voices and colours. The system is already drawing comparisons to the interfaces seen in films like Minority Report.

Development kits are said to have already been shipped to developers so, while no release date for the system has been given, a release surely can't be too far off.

The most complete demonstration given of what Natal can do came from Peter Molyneux, who unveiled a new game that Lionhead has been working on called Milo. Hailed as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and player interactions, this is likely the project that Molyneux was claiming would change the face of gaming not to long ago. There's little way to describe it other than to say that it's a virtual boy, in a virtual world, that players can fully interact with. Expect more details on both products soon.