The Otherland Group - Blog

Google's Virtual World Lively, the Second Life Killer

Today, Google released the long awaited (and rumored) "Google Virtual World": Lively. Lively can be described best as a kind of IMVU in a web page. You can create yourself an avatar and can create and decorate your "room" (which does not have to be a "room" but can be an outdoor scene, too), where you meet with other avatars. The avatars kind of look like a cross breed of THERE and IMVU avatars and the visual quality is rather good. A plugin is needed, to integrate your room into a web page (which is only available for the Windows platform).

And of course, the web is already overflowing with head lines saying "The Second Life Killer is finally here!"

Hmmm...

While you ALWAYS have to take Google's project seriously ... is hard to see a Second Life "Killer" here.

Lively reminds me of IMVU, Vivaty and the early Kaneva. It is not a virtual "world" but a network of loosely connected scenes. This is a quite popular model for many platforms calling themselves "virtual worlds", which appeared on the market in the last 3 years. I am uncertain, if this model will be too successful in the long run. Many of the projects, which were based on "rooms" alone in the past, have added additional spatial constructs lately. For many applications besides "hey, look at my cool appartment" and "let's spend the night (an hour) together" a room or scene is a very limited surrounding.

This does not mean, that this could not reach a huge target audience. But the competition is already there. And some of the products already on the market do not look too bad. Vivaty, which has a very similar approach (as far as one can judge it now), has the big advantage of being tightly integrated with Facebook and AIM. I consider this a very valuable feature for this type of platform - because, the way Lively is now, it is basically a nice add on for a profile page on Facebook, MySpace or a blog. And for this purpose, a good integration with Facebook, MySpace or a blogging platform is important. Google certainly has these platforms available and the technological abilities to add such an integration.

Lets see what happens in the next months.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, google, googlewatching, metaverse, lively, second life, twinity, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Why use Intraworlds (Corporate Virtual Worlds)?

When I first wrote about Corporate Virtual Worlds last week, I forgot the most important side of the topic: The 'Why question'? Or in a little more words: "Why use a relatively demanding technology like virtual worlds for the typical tasks for which an intranet usually is applied to? Ain't this just another new play toy, costing a lot more but with little or no advantages beyond traditional 2D applications - besides a certain sexy-ness?"

Certainly not. The MPK20 team at Sun Microsystems came up with a good justification a few months ago when they published some info about their project. MPK20 is an intraworld, a corporate virtual world, that was launched in 2007. It is based on Sun's virtual worlds toolkit Project Wonderland, and it is extremely interesting, to see, how the team is "selling" the idea of an intraworld (which Sun calls Virtual Workplace).

While it might be possible to build a 2D tool with functionality similar to MPK20, the spacial layout of the 3D world [...] provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration. [...] the juxtapostion of avatars in the world [...] allows people to intuit who they can talk to at any given time. The 3D space provides a natural way to organize multiple, simultaneous conversations. [...] the arrangement of the objects within the space provides conversational context. If other avatars are gathering near the entrance to a virtual conference room, it is a good guess that they are about to attend a meeting in that space. It is then natural to talk to those people about the content or timing of the meeting, just as you would if attending a physical meeting. In terms of data sharing, looking at objects together is a natural activity. With the 3D spacial cues, each person can get an immediate sense of what the other collaborators can and cannot see.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

In other words: once you get used to the new metaphor (or have un-learned the implausibe 2D ones), intraworlds offer a much more intuitive environment to meet people and to collaborate and cooperate with them. It is certainly not "better" to watch a Powerpoint presentation in a virtual world. But, if I want to present these slides to a bunch of people, discuss them with these people, rework the ideas etc. a virtual world it definitely preferable to a conference call, a video or web conference. Our brain is deeply wired to recognize and act on spatial clues - especially when interacting with other people. It is about proximity and distance. It is relevant where someone else is located, if we are standing close or apart, if we are moving nearer or farther away.

Additionally, a 3D world lends itself very naturally to the spatial display of quantitative information or of complex systems and their relationships. This can be done in a web page, too, of course. But, again, a 3D world is a much more intuitive environment to display such a 3D visualization, to view it from different angles - and, to discuss it with others, of course.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, intraworld, metaverse, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Wozu sind Intrawelten (Corporate Virtual Worlds) gut?

Als ich letzte Woche das erste Mal kurz über Intrawelten (Corporate Virtual Worlds) schrieb, habe ich einen wichtigen Punkt ganz vergessen: "Warum?" Oder, mit etwas mehr Worten: "Warum überhauot eine relativ aufwendige Technologie wie diese für die typischen Aufgaben eines Intranets einsetzen? Ist das nicht nur ein neues Spielzeug, teure aber mit wenig tatsächlichem Zusatznutzen gegenüber den bewährten 2D-Lösungen?"

Sicherlich nicht! Für eine gute Begründung der Vorteile muss ich gar nicht einmal lange grübeln. Da MPK20-Team bei Sun Microsystems hat eine recht schöne Vorteilsargumentation anläßlich der Vorstellung ihres Projekts ins Web gestellt. MPK20 ist eine Intrawelt, die schon in 2007 gelaunchet wurde. Sie basiert auf Suns Toolkit für virtuelle Welten, Project Wonderland (auch mit Weblog) und es ist interessant zu sehen, wie das MPK20-Team die zugrundeliegenden Prinzipien einer Intrawelt verkauft (wobei Sun diese Plattform "Virtual Workplace" nennt).

While it might be possible to build a 2D tool with functionality similar to MPK20, the spacial layout of the 3D world [...] provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration. [...] the juxtapostion of avatars in the world [...] allows people to intuit who they can talk to at any given time. The 3D space provides a natural way to organize multiple, simultaneous conversations. [...] the arrangement of the objects within the space provides conversational context. If other avatars are gathering near the entrance to a virtual conference room, it is a good guess that they are about to attend a meeting in that space. It is then natural to talk to those people about the content or timing of the meeting, just as you would if attending a physical meeting. In terms of data sharing, looking at objects together is a natural activity. With the 3D spacial cues, each person can get an immediate sense of what the other collaborators can and cannot see.

Klingt plausibel, oder?

In anderen Worten: wenn man sich einmal an die neue Metapher gewöhnt hat (bzw. die umständlichen 2D-Metaphern verlernt hat), bieten Intrawelten eine viel intuitivere Umgebung für das Online-Arbeiten und speziell für die Zusammenarbeit und Austausch über Distanz.

Natürlich ist es erst einmal nicht 'besser', eine Powerpoint Präsentation in einer virtuellen Welt zu betrachten. Aber, wenn ich diese Präsentation einer Gruppe von Leuten zeigen, mit ihnen diskutieren und eventuell bearbeiten will ... bietet eine virtuelle 3D-Umgebung mit Avataren klare Vorteile gegenüber einer Telefon-, Video-, oder Web-Konferenz. Unser Gehirn ist einfach so verdrahtet, Informationen über räumliche Anordnungen sehr intuitiv zu nutzen - speziell, wenn es um die Interaktion mit Menschen geht. Es geht um Näher und Distanz im direkten und übertragenen Sinne. Es ist relevant, wer wo steht, ob mir jemand nah oder fern ist, wir uns annähren oder entfernen, wo sich Gruppen bilden.

Zudem bietet sich eine 3D-Welt auch "natürlich" für die 3D-Darstellung von Daten und komplexen Systemen an. Auch das kann man selbstverständlich auf einer Webseite machen - und macht das schon. Aber auch hier wieder ist eine 3D-Welt eine viel intuitivere Umgebung zur Darstellung, zur Betrachtung aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln (einfach herumgehen) und natürlich zur Diskussion der Darstellung zusammen mit Anderen.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, intraworld, metaverse, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d

The Intraworlds are Coming!

In the first wave of the big virtual worlds hype (which was a Second Life hype, actually) the canonical application for this new technology was "marketing" - maybe because marketeers are the ones, which just love new ways to reach the minds of customers (and the costs for some experiments in Second Life did not mean much in relationship to typical marketing budgets). They were disappointed after a while, when they discovered the size of their target groups, which they could reach through Second Life ... and the anti-hype began.

At the same time, quietly and steadily, another group of people began to discover virtual worlds. And actually, it seems as if at least in the "corporate world" there is a lot more immediate potential for a real ROI with applications in the context of intranets and education/training. The big advantage of virtual worlds, immersion, the feeling of being together with other people, no matter, where they are in the physical world, is extremely interesting for these application areas, too. That is not just a virtual worlds fanboy's opinion. IBM,  Gartner, Forrester or McKinsey do agree.

So, while we might have to wait a few years until the global Metaverse appears, there will certainly quite a few Intraworlds around in the near future. I would like to define an Intraworld as follows:

Intraworlds are to virtual worlds what intranets are to the web. An Intraworld is a virtual world, which is accessible to the employees of one company. The server side of such a platform usually runs in the company’s own data center and the users access the world with PCs connected to these server(s) through the company’s LAN (or through a VPN connection). Additionally, an Intraworld is optimized for similar purposes as an intranet: communication, information sharing and general collaboration. Typical applications are meetings, conferences, presentations and sometimes training.

In a similar way you can define 'Extraworlds', too, of course.

The first products, which are optimized for this market, are Sun's Project Wonderland and Qwaq by a company of the same name. Both are intended to help companies set up their own Intraworlds. Qwaq is more of a packaged service offering (see here), while Project Wonderland is a real "tool kit" in a more technical sense. You can build a virtual world with it, but you can not simply "log in to" Project Wonderland. Sun has used Project Wonderland to create their own demo intraworld, already, which it calls MPK20.

I will be looking into both products in some detail in the coming weeks.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, virtual training, virtual worlds, web 3.d, intraworld

Die Intrawelten kommen!

In der ersten Phase des "Virtuelle-Welten-Hypes" (der eigentlich ein Second Life Hype war) nahmen Viele an, dass das Hauptanwendungsgebiet "Marketing" wäre, vermutlich, weil Marketeers immer nach neuen Wegen suchen, ihre Kunden zu erreichen (und die typischen Kosten für ein Second Life Experiment in Relation zu typischen Kampagnen-Kosten nicht besonders hoch erschienen. Diese Leute waren sehr enttäuscht, als sie feststellten, welche Reichweite ihre Kampagnen in Second Life hatten (was keinen Experten verwunderte), und der Anti-Hype begann.

Zur gleichen Zeit entdeckte eine ganz andere Gruppe von Anwendern heimlich still und leise die virtuellen Welten. Und tatsächlich sieht es aus, als gäbe es zumindest in der "Corporate World" ein großes Potential für Projekte mit virtuellen Welten im Umfeld von Intranets, Aus-/Weiterbildung sowie Training. DER große Vorteil virtueller Welten, Immersion, das Gefühl - unabhängig von räumlicher Distanz - mit anderen Leuten zusammen zu sein, zu kommunizieren und zu arbeiten, ist für diesen Anwendungsbereich hochinteressant. Schließlich arbeiten in allen großen Unternehmen die Teams inzwischen standortübergreifend zusammen und Reisekosten und -Zeiten sind ein entsprechend großer Kostenblock. Nein, das ist nicht allein die Ansicht eines "Virtuelle-Welten-Fans. IBM,  Gartner, Forrester und McKinsey stimmen zu.

Wir müssen vielleicht noch ein paar Jahre auf das Werden des globalen Metaversums warten. Bis dahin wird es aber sicher eine ganze Reihe "Intrawelten" geben. Wobei ich Intrawelten wie folgt formulieren würde:

Intrawelten stehen zu virtuellen Welten, wie Intranets zum World Wide Web. Eine Intrawelt ist eine virtuelle Welt, die nur den Mitarbeitern eines Unternehmens offen steht. Der Server einer solchen Plattform steht meist im Rechenzentrum der Firma und die Anwender erreichen diese Welt nur über das firmeneigene LAN (oder über eine VPN-Verbindung), Weiterhin ist eine Intrawelt optimiert für einige der wichtigsten eines Intranets. Kommunikation,  Informationsaustaushc und Zusammenarbeit im Unternehmen. Typischen Applikationen sind Meetings, Konferenzen, Präsentatione, Diskussionen und manchmal auch Trainings.

Analog dazu könnte man natürlich auch 'Extrawelten' definieren.

Die ersten richtigen Produkte für diesen Markt sind Sun's Project Wonderland und Qwaq (der gleichnamigen Firma). Beide sind dafür gedacht, Unternehmen beim Aufsetzen eigenen Intrawelten zu unterstützen. Qwaq ist schon mehr ein fertiges Lösungsangebot (siehe auch hier), während Wonderland ein echtes "Tool Kit" ist. Man kann eine Intrawelt damit bauen aber nicht einfach in eine bestehende einloggen. Allerings hat Sun Project Wonderland schon dazu genutzt, eine Intrawelt für das eigene Unternehmen zu bauen, MPK20.

Ich werde mir beide Produkte in den kommenden Wochen mal etwas genauer ansehen.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, virtual training, virtual worlds, web 3.d, intraworld

Usability in Virtual Worlds - its all about the business plan

After visiting some more current corporate projects in virtual worlds in the last week, I had to recap my presentation about usability at Metavers08 (see the slides here) I wrote about the topic nearly one year ago, but the situation hasn't improved much: Usability is still an aspect that is considered low priority with many projects in virtual worlds - if it is considered at all. The situation is a bit similar to that on the web in the mid 90s: developers and their clients are much more excited about the new possibilities (if they are still excited) or about spectacular design.

When I am writing this, I don't mean the user experience of the virtual world platforms. Granted, especially Second Life IS a usability nightmare and the new user experience is so "well thought out", that many users who would like to give this virtual world a try, simple run away screaming - or at least shaking their heads. The company behind Second Life seems to have realized this lately, though. While I don't know what they will actually do to improve this sad situation, they at least announced a newly found focus on user experience. And other virtual worlds are much more usable right from the start - sometimes because the platforms are a lot less feature-rich, of course. The little "worldlets", for example, the 3D scenes you can embed into web pages, are very simple, rather limited and you don't need to know (or learn) a lot, to be able to use them.

Better usability is good for your business
Sometimes, the new virtual worlds are significantly more user-friendly, though, because their designers realized that it makes sense to offer an easy entrance, early on. The reason is usually not an altruistic one but simple greed: when you want to create a business with/in a virtual world, you better not make it unnecessarily hard for your (potential) customers!

Many companies "trying out the potential of virtual worlds" these days, still don't seem to think this way. If you look at some of the projects from very well know brands in Second Life for example, it is still not uncommon to appear on their sites and not find the slightest clue about what to expect here and where to find it. Some other projects often are not "designed for the avatar" (avatars don't move and don't "see" like humans). The example to the right comes from an early phase of one of our own projects .

This is not limited to Second Life (and Second Life's basic shortcomings are responsible for these faults). And this can't be excused with "we are just experimenting with marketing/sales/training/conferencing in virtual worlds". Simply because a badly designed experiment is not very useful for evaluating the "potential usefulness" of virtual worlds. ...

Interesting enough ... it isn't too hard to do better. Some 25 years with software design (plus some additional 12 years with web design) have told us, how ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, ucd, usability, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Usability in Virtuellen Welten - kein Luxus sondern kaufmännisch sinnvoll

Nachdem ich in der letzten Woche noch einmal ein paar "Corporate Locations" in virtuellen Welten besucht habe, musste ich nich einmal an meine Präsentation zu "Usability in virtuellen Welten" auf der Metavers08 denken (Charts dazu hier; englisch) Ich hatte ja schon mal vor einem Jahr darüber geschrieben, aber seitdem hat sich die Situation nicht sehr verbessert: Usability ist immer noch ein Aspekt, der bei solchen Projekten nur eine sehr niedrige Priorität bekommt - wenn überhaupt jemand dran denkt. Das ist ganz ähnlich wie Mitte der 90er im Web: Entwickler sind so begeistert von den neuen Möglichkeiten und von spektakulärem Design, dass alles Andere dahinter zurück fällt.

Das war im Web nicht besonders hilfreich, sobald es darum ging, auch Geschäfte zu machen. Und das ist im virtuellen Raum nicht anders. Interessanterweise ist es aber gar nicht sooo schwierig, es "besser zu machen". Die Erfahrungen aus rund 25 Jahren Software-Ergonomie (und rund 12 Jahren Webdesign) zeigen, wie es geht ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, ucd, usability, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Wanne try a New virtual world? 50 Beta Invitations for Twinity

Twinity is probably one of the most interesting contenders in the realm of "full immersion" 3D worlds. At least it is certainly the most ambitious German project in this market. Metaversum, the company behind Twinity, is a firm believer in the mirror worlds idea (i.e. replicating real world locations in a virtual 3D space). They intend to reproduce some of the best know urban areas of the world first, starting with Berlin - not a huge surprise with a company based in the German capital. (Its fairly interesting to compare their ideas with the concepts behind newcomer Near btw.)

The platform is still in a closed beta currently. Client and servers are relatively stable, already, though. It can be loads of fun exploring the virtual Berlin - especially if you know Berlin in physical reality.

If you want to give it a try, just click HERE (the link is good for 50 sign ups; so please don't be disappointed if it won't work anymore in a few days).

WARNING: The Twinity client software is only available for Windows, currently. Yes, no Macintosh and no Linux version, either.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, twinity, virtual worlds, web 3.d

The importance of having shadows Or: realism in virtual worlds

What is the difference between the two pictures above? Realism? Immersion? Fun? Success? Both are rendered from Virtual worlds. The left one is from Gaia an low end (and extremely successful 2.5D world. The right picture is taking from Playstation Home, probably the most realistic virtual word of today, only accessible with a Sony Playstation 3.

Hamlet Au, one of the most famous authors in the Second Life Blogospere recently posted an arcticle about a new experimental version of Second Life, which provoked a lot of comments immediately. He questioned if it was really desireble to have more graphics effects, more realism in Second Life - especially if this leads to different user experiences among the users - and quoted some interesting numbers:

Top virtual worlds/MMOs by use, as of 2008:
- World of Warcraft, 10 million subscribers
- Habbo Hotel, 8 million monthly active users
- RuneScape, 5 million monthly active users
- Club Penguin, 4 million monthly active users
- Webkinz, 4 million monthly active users

He concludes, that people probably don't want realistic 3D worlds, as 4 of 5 of the most successful virtual worlds are 2.5D and the only 3D one is certainly not "high end" or "realistic". 

I can't follow his line of reasoning though.  While I won't argue his numbers (showing that a lot of 2.5D worlds are vastly more popular than next gen 3D ones), it is tough to draw conclusions from such a fact. When two factors are correlated this just means that they are ... correlated, NOT that one is the result of the other in a cause-and-effect relationship. :) Assuming cause-and-effect when there is correlation is one of the most popular mistakes in logic.

Eddie the Artificially Intelligent 4-Year Old

While robots in 3d games are currently in the headlines and disputed in courts of law [English source] [German source] there are application of those robots that go beyond the current staffing of deserted islands with chatbots in Second Life.

The matters involved here are complex. But let's start with the concept:

What if a robotic avatar in a virtual world could both understand natural language and make predictions about your behavior because it "knows" what you think?

Right, this would be helpful for all kinds of applications, from gaming to military to education.

And the first steps along this path have been made by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who created 'Eddi' a virtual intelligence which is confronted with a task that 4-year-olds fail to accomplish.

The test done is the so called 'false-belief test'. I quote:
"In a typical real-life version of this test, a child witnesses a series of events in which Person A places an object (such as a teddy bear) in a certain location (such as a cabinet). Person A then leaves the room, and during his absence Person B moves the object to a new location (such as the refrigerator). The child is then asked to predict where Person A will look for the object when he gets back.The right answer, of course, is the cabinet, but children age 4 and under will generally say the refrigerator because they haven’t yet formed a theory of the mind of others." (RPI News)

Now the researches of RASCALS (Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Characters Architecture for Living Systems) created both a version if Eddi who fails like a typical 4-year-old and one that can master both the parsing of the language and the logic behind the task.

The researchers are planning to install a 'star Trek type holodeck' where virtual characters can interact with humans in a real environment. While the team needs to cooperate with a heavy duty computing array from IBM at the moment to accomplish this task at the moment we might see similar setups in 5 or 10 years more commonly.

Source: RPI