Building with Prims - Château de Versailles

Château de Versailles, originally uploaded by Liqueur Felix.

Update: HTML on a Prim - Berkelium

Based on Google's open source and cross-platform Chromium browser, Berkelium provides a BSD-licensed standalone library to embed a browser in a 3d space. Because it is built on Chromium's multi-process rendering engine, Berkelium can benefit from Chromium's sandbox.

Here, the Berkelium browser is inside Sirikata's demo scene browsing Yahoo and Youtube videos.

See http://sirikata.com/wiki/index.php?ti... and http://github.com/sirikata/berkelium

Best Real World Use of Virtual World Technology

Hamlet Au highlighted in his recent post "2009's Top Four Real World Applications of Second Life/OpenSim". I missed his original report which is clipped below. I do think this is the best Real World uses of Virtual World technology I have seen, one of those things you look at and say of course, simple. Terminals like this in malls, hospitals & campuses could be as big a product offering as all of Second Life is now in just a few years.

Below clipped from: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/07/3d-communication-navi-system.html

Real World Navigation System For Japanese Hospital Created With OpenSim Metaverse Technology

Anyone who's gotten lost on a sprawling college campus or another kind of large complex knows the frustrations with trying to read those 2D directory maps with a "You are here" red dot, because it's difficult to discern where "here" is in relation to everything else. In Japan's Kanazawa Medical University Hospital, however, you can find your way with a 3D mapping display that uses an OpenSimulator virtual world server to depict the hospital layout, connected to a touchscreen monitor. (Here's a Japanese language article on the technology.)

It's called the 3D Communication Navi System, a product created by partner metaverse developers Ableseed and Metabirds, which has an extended write-up of the system on its site. The hospital paid the developers 1,500,000 Yen (about USD$ 16,000) to implement it. "Kanazawa Medical University Hospital is using a standalone version so far," Metabirds' Naoyoshi Shimaya tells me by email. "One PC, with OpenSim standalone server, and viewer." He believes the hospital is considering an extended, networked version.

But why create this technology with virtual world technology, as opposed to real world video?

Shimaya argues a virtual version is easier than assembling video footage for every possible Point A-to-Point B request. "Using 3D digital world," as he puts it, "we can create navigation to any place when we want." (From my vantage, a 3D simulation is easier to "read" than real world video of the same location, since the virtual version can be visually streamlined to show only the most essential aspects.)

Copyboting outside SL

This past week there has been hot debate on the blogshere Dusan's blog, Botgirl's blog, and Massively over the right to copy (backup) digital "assets" found on Second Life. One argument posed was that there is no precedent for backing up your identity or content on services like Facebook and the data itself is "owned" by the platform provider based on the platforms TofS. My response was the marketplace and the consumers/content producers will answer these questions faster then the courts. This addresses only making backups of your own content, not others work or digital products "gifted or sold to you". With the increase of virtual products on Facebook the question is not just for SL is it? Ergo here is a link:


Here are the services that Backupify can currently back up:

* Gmail
* Twitter
* Facebook
* Flickr
* Photobucket
* Google Docs
* Zoho
* Basecamp
* Wordpress
* Blogger
* Hotmail
* Delicious
* FriendFeed

Backupify president Rob May has now announced that Backupify will back up all online accounts for free and with unlimited storage. The offer will be open until January 31, 2010. The move is an attempt to attract at lot more users. May noted that storage is cheap while customer acquisition is very expensive, and so he and the company want to give more users a chance to try out the full service.

In 2010 Backupify will announce its new pricing structure for the masses, which May said will likely move to a “freemium” model, with a free account that handles a basic amount of storage and then tiered pricing if you need more space. However, those who sign up during this trial will get an open-ended free account for getting in early.

“If you sign up during this time period, you get unlimited storage, for free. You get an account that is not a free trial, not free for a limited time, free forever,” stated May.

via: ZDnet.com & http://www.backupify.com/

Out of the Box - 2009 ends with Advances and Changes

BlueMars

• Blue Mars Adds Interactive Flash Capability

• Caledon expands to Blue Mars: http://www.massively.com/2009/12/17/second-lifes-caledon-expands-to-blue-mars/

• Avatar Reality Inc announce "pioneer" pricing for developers, digital entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses. http://www.massively.com/2009/12/18/blue-mars-limited-term-pioneer-pricing-plans-announcement/

OpenSim

• The Diva Distro, which is a hyper-grid enabled megaregion with an automated upgrade function: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/11/opensim-deployment-gets-easier/
  

• Zonja Capallini recently released an application, Zoe, which allows saved regions to be rotated, shifted, or merged: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/zoe-version-0-1-released/
• Germans set Prim 500,000 Record in Open Sim: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/12/germans-set-half-million-prim-record/
  

3Di aka Rei

• The OS viewer in a Browser now does Textures: http://zaki.asia/2009/12/21/osgrid-in-rei/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTdJo9QhSwg
  

RealXtend

• Hard at work , in early alpha, but still a mystery
  

Dessault’s 3DVia w/ Microsoft?

• http://archvirtual.com/?p=1983
  

Unity3D

• Experiments are underway by many to integrate Unity3D with OpenSim

Playstation Home

• EA SPORTS has brought the NFL into PlayStation Home
• Over the past two months, PlayStation Home, has added 2 million registered users bringing the service's user count to 10 million

Mutiverse, Metaplace & Forterra

• Multiverse Taps Camron Avatar Craze

• Forterra Headed for Acquisition? Layoffs Reported

• Metaplace To Close

Old News Revisited - Second Life runs on an iPhone - Cira February 12, 2008

A few weeks ago I speculated about an architecture that Linden lab may develop - Rendering Second Life on their servers and streaming it to the browser. Here is a demo from early last year of just that, and not just to the browser but to an iPhone.



Browser based technology developed by Comverse, which involves doing all the processing on a server, and simply streaming the view to the phone, and getting responses back from the user. Read more details here: http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/02/mwc_2008_second.html

" So, it's not a Second Life client on the iPhone - it's just streaming Safari-friendly video of your SL session, with you able to send your commands back in the other direction. That's why it's this sluggish at the moment, because you're one step removed.

Still, as a proof of concept, it's pretty impressive - you wouldn't want to spend long periods of time in a virtual world using this, but if you just wanted a quick fix on the move, or to log in to check something, it works.

Comverse says it could just as easily work for World Of Warcraft or other MMOs, rather than just virtual worlds, although I'd argue that it's more suitable for sedate virtual worlds than for action-heavy MMOs, due to that lag."