The Immersive Internet and Kevin Kelly’s “5,000 days of the Web”

by Sam Driver and Erica Driver. 

On July 29th, Technology, Entertainment, Design published a TEDTalk video titled “Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web.” Kevin Kelly has been the publisher of the Whole Earth Review, executive editor at WIRED, founder of nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.” The title of this TEDTalk caught our attention because we figured that in a discussion about the next decade and a half the topic of virtual worlds and other immersive environments would come up. But it didn’t, really, other than briefly in passing. So below we’ve added our Immersive Internet perspectives to Kelly’s thought-provoking talk.

Kelly’s vision is that in the next 5,000 days one single, global machine will evolve that has the Web as its operating system. He estimates that today’s Web has about the complexity of a single human brain and by the year 2040 it will exceed all of humanity in its processing power. The whole will be more reliable than its parts and will run uninterrupted. The machine will be intelligent and anticipate what we are doing. It will be personalized and know us. It will be ubiquitous. Every word processing document and spreadsheet ― every bit of data ― will be on the Web; no bits will live outside it.

The Web of the future (the machine) will be embodied

• Kevin Kelly: The digital will be embedded in the physical. Kelly foresees a future defined by convergence of the atomic and the digital ― as do we. The model he thinks is most likely to take root is embedding the digital nature of things into the material world, rather than the material world being projected into what he thinks of as a disembodied virtual world. His take is that all handheld devices, laptops and PCs, cameras, phones, microphones, and sensors will be connected to the machine. These devices will give physicality to ― will embody ― the machine. The machine will become an Internet of connected things and even humans will become extensions of the machine.
• ThinkBalm: The physical will also be embedded in the virtual – it will go both ways. As Kelly described in his talk, the digital will certainly be embedded in the physical through Internet-connected chips, RFID tags, GPS devices, etc. But the physical will also be embedded in the virtual. Physical objects connected to the machine (say, a building’s security system, a server in a data center, or a camera) will have virtual 3D replicas that are accessible – even operable – in a virtual world. Early examples include IBM’s 3D data centers and Implenia’s 3D remote facilities management environment. (For a camera example see the ThinkBalm article, “First life” versus “fake life” – when realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) This extends to people, as well. Via graphical avatars that contain our personal identification information, people will literally go inside the machine. In immersive virtual environments we will network and meet, teach and learn, rehearse business activities, visualize and collaborate on information and documents and products ― even operate real-world facilities, systems, and vehicles. All while feeling “as if we were really there.”

We will restructure the Web’s information architecture

• Kevin Kelly: The semantic Web will link data to data. The Internet linked computers together and the Web we know today links pagestogether. In the next stage, Kelly says, the machine will link data directly to other data. We will link from one idea (or word) on a page to another idea or word, rather than just link from one page to another. Every person will have a unique ID and every item (the example Kelly uses: a particular commercial airline flight ― in fact, a particular seat on that flight) will link to a specific representation of that idea. That physical thing (the seat on the flight) becomes part of the machine. In another example Kelly gives, the Web will be able to actually read itself and know that Pacifica, California is the name of a place. It will have its own longitude, latitude, and population. You’ll be able to carry around all your information, and your relationships with your friends, with you on the Web.
• ThinkBalm: We will understand the machine through our senses. One characteristic of human civilization is the ever-increasing complexity of our means of cataloguing. We gave things names to help us understand and communicate about them, invented numbers to count higher than our fingers, and created written language to store ideas and pass them on over time. As the Web progresses toward the machine, people will be connected to an unimaginable magnitude of information inputs from all those connected devices and databases. How will a single person be able to make sense of something that has more processing power than the sum of all humans put together? Won’t our cataloguing systems break down? The Immersive Internet gives us relief from all this, allowing us to step back from the complexity and regress back to our lower, older brains, which interact with our environment primarily through our senses. This is possible only as a result of an increase in complexity of the underlying system ― the semantic Web Kelly touched on in his talk. The Immersive Internet will give us the ability to visualize anything, including complex data; communicate with each other and even devices connected to the machine via voice and video; and increase our sense of immersion with haptic technology.  

Kelly reminds us that today we cannot imagine ourselves without alphabet and writing, that we are totally dependent on it. And that it will be the same with the machine ― we will not be able to imagine ourselves without the machine being there. He’s right on. We’re not sure exactly how we’re going to get from here to the machine we will be living with 5,000 days from now. We just have a vision for what “there” might look like. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” from his book Profiles of the Future seems fitting right now. And who doesn’t need a little magic in their life?

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

A realism model for Immersive Internet apps: Part II

by Sam Driver and Erica Driver.

In an earlier ThinkBalm article, A realism model for Immersive Internet apps: Part I, we went into a bit of detail about the two axes of Immersive Internet realism: visual and data. Visual realism is accurate representation without idealization. Data realism supplies a virtual environment with current, accurate information. In this companion article we build upon these ideas and use analogies from the book, movie, and video game worlds to describe the four main categories of Immersive Internet applications:  

• Non-fiction video game-like. If you want to collaboratively design and prototype a new engine part, you need high levels of data realism (e.g., measurements, specs for related assemblies). But you might not necessarily need as much visual realism (color, the way light glimmers off the surface, etc.). In another example, many aspects of molecular biology simply cannot be modeled with a high degree of visual realism because the subjects are far, far too small. Here, visual realism isn’t even relevant. For examples of non-fiction video game-like Immersive Internet implementations check out Daden Ltd.’s 3D airplane tracker (link to video is below), the Fold-It serious game (see the ThinkBalm article, Know when to fold ‘em), IBM’s 3D data center operations (link to video is below), and Implenia Global Solutions’ EOLUS One virtual facilities operations center (for a great write-up see the Ugotrade blog post, “EOLUS Makes Leap To 3D Internet On Second Life“).

 

Fiction video game-like. At first blush the words “fiction video game-like” may appear to have no bearing at all on real work. But don’t let it turn you off too quickly. Non-realistic looking virtual environments that don’t contain much accurate or current data are still perfectly relevant for some types of business applications – especially meetings, conferences and events, and conceptual training or business activity rehearsal. For examples check out Cisco Partner Space, Michelin Group’s enterprise architecture training for IT professionals (sorry, the only publicly-available write-ups we know of are in French), and the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here product launch (see the ThinkBalm article, At Microsoft, cost of virtual events about 1/3 the cost of traditional events).

Fiction interactive movie-like. Some immersive learning simulations and business activity rehearsal activities require that the experience look and feel as if it could be real, but doesn’t require real data underpinnings. Check out these examples: Hilton Garden Inn Hotels Ultimate Team Play, the I-95 Corridor Commission and Univ. of Maryland virtual highway accident training application, Stanford Medical Hospital student training, and the US Department of Justice National Institute of Justice Incident Commander training tool for homeland security.

Non-fiction interactive movie-like. If you are collaboratively designing a new pair of high-end in-line skates, you might need both data realism and visual realism. Or how about a just-in-time manufacturing process that requires the participation of a large, complex supply chain? Or the remote forklift operations scenario we briefly described in the ThinkBalm article, Heavy equipment manufacturer explores Immersive Internet for product prototyping. But attaining high levels of both visual and data realism is hard to do and we are not aware of production implementations made public just yet. Technologies that will enable non-fiction interactive movie-like immersive environments include mirror worlds like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, computer-aided design (CAD) models, and simulators like Microsoft ESP. A particularly interesting example we saw recently is VoxVue/RE, a 3D data visualization solution for the commercial real estate industry.

It’s important to keep in mind that no one category is inherently superior to the others. Each has appropriate use cases. And use case plays an enormous role in making a sound technology selection because no virtual world platform on the market can be used to deliver all four categories of Immersive Internet applications.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

A realism model for Immersive Internet apps: Part I

by Sam Driver and Erica Driver.

Some of the vendor briefings we’ve participated in during the last six weeks have led to some pretty intense philosophical discussions. How is “virtual” different from “real?” How is “real” different from “realistic?” These questions are important to work through not as ethereal brainteasers but because 1) many people call this category we cover “virtual worlds,” 2) and many people tend to distinguish virtual worlds from “the real world,” and 3) virtual worlds and the physical world are converging. The way we see it:

• “Virtual” and “real” are not opposites. We think a better way to make the distinction is “virtual” vs. “physical.” Why? It’s all real. Meeting with one colleague in Second Life is no less real than going out for a coffee break with another colleague. (Well, perhaps this depends who your colleagues are, right?) Think of a financial analogy. Depending on what you do for work, chances are you get your paycheck electronically deposited into your bank account. You likely see numbers on a bank statement (possibly on your bank’s Web site) (“virtual money”) and you trust that when you put your plastic card into an ATM machine and enter the right numbers, cold hard cash (“real money”) will come out. Just because you aren’t paid in cash doesn’t make your income any less real. 
• Virtual and physical worlds are converging. During the next 3-5 years, the realism of the Immersive Internet will increase and interface devices (the mechanisms we use to interact with virtual environments –- like mouse, keyboard, computer screen, and haptic devices) will become more natural and less intrusive to use. And virtual environments will be integrated with an increasingly large array of external data sources. Together, these developments will make virtual worlds and the physical world increasingly difficult to tell apart.

Two axes of Immersive Internet realism: visual and data

Realism is a very important Immersive Internet consideration. (See our June 30, 2008 article, “First life” versus “fake life” – When realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) It’s also confusing because there is more than just one kind of realism. We’ve boiled it down to the two most important axes:  

• Visual realism: accurate representation without idealization. The dictionary definition of the word realism refers to what we think of as visual realism. According to Merriam-Webster online the definition of realism is “the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization.” In our view this term applies not just to art and literature but to media (e.g., movies, TV, commercials) and the Immersive Internet. Note the word “representation” ― visual realism is a representation of reality, not reality itself. At one extreme, virtual environments can be very light on the visual realism; they can be cartoony, or video game-like. (Think Google Lively or ROCKETON.) Virtual environments that have a high degree of visual realism look as if they could be real; they can be photorealistic,  or movie-like. Think Forterra OLIVE or Virtual Heroes HumanSim.
• Data realism: the virtual environment uses current, accurate information. Virtual environments that have a high degree of data realism use accurate and correct or real-time or near real-time data such as: weather, tracking (e.g., flight, fleet, cargo, package –- from, for example, radio frequency ID (RFID) or global positioning systems (GPSs)), system status (e.g., computers, engines, HVAC, security), or bills of materials (data about an object from a product lifecycle management (PLM) or computer-aided design (CAD)system). We think of the data realism continuum as being fiction on one end and non-fiction on the other. Some Immersive Internet applications will require a high level of data realism (non-fiction) ― for example, aerospace or automotive design simulations, in which engineers need to know not just how an object looks but exactly how it would work in the physical world. A training simulation to teach fast food restaurant employees to wash their hands for a full minute before returning to the food prep counter might require less data realism; non-fiction is adequate.

Based on these two axes, we draw on analogies from the book, movie, and video game worlds to describe four main categories of Immersive Internet applications: non-fiction video game-like, fiction video game-like, fiction interactive movie-like, and non-fiction interactive movie-like. For a discussion of these four categories see the July 21, 2008 ThinkBalm article, A realism model for Immersive Internet apps: Part II.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

At Microsoft, cost of virtual events about 1/3 the cost of traditional events

In late June I spoke with Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) evangelist Zain Naboulsi about how Microsoft is using virtual worlds to strengthen the company’s relationships with customers via its technical communities. Microsoft has about 700 members in its MSDN developers group and about 150 members in its TechNet group. MSDN is for software developers while TechNet is more for system administrators, networking engineers, database administrators, and other technical folks. IT professionals use these communities to get answers to questions, share their expertise, and simply hang out with each other (virtually, for the most part, via Web-based forums and discussion groups). 

Naboulsi and his team initially had the goal of holding virtual events and user group meetings in an immersive environment.The team experimented with Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for a while before co-opting and then adopting a pre-existing Microsoft island in Linden Lab’s Second Life virtual world. Lo and behold – IT professionals began to show up for in-world user group meetings and small events. The tipping point took place in April of 2008 when Microsoft launched three new product releases: SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. The company launched these products not only at the usual press conference and subsequent customer events all across the US but at a three-track conference in Second Life. (Tish Shute talked a bit about this in her Ugotrade blog post “Microsoft Dev Community In OpenSim/realXtend.”) The “in-world” product launch event was very successful as measured by:

• Lots of warm bodies – well, avatars. About 150 people (avatars) registered for the launch event in Second Life and Microsoft wound up with 220 actual participants – nearly a 150% attendance rate.  This doesn’t include the estimated more than 270 avatars that just dropped into the event for a small portion of it. While I don’t know how many people attended the traditional launch events, two hundred plus participants is more than tend to show up at comparable traditional physical-world events. I’ve done dozens of presentations at vendor events like these – Microsoft’s and others — and I’d say that on average the audience size tends to be in the 30-50 range. A really top-notch sales district might come in at a few hundred attendees but it’s a rarity. 
• Most attendees devoting their entire day to the event. About 90% of attendees stayed for the entire day – a stickiness ratio pretty much unheard of at traditional vendor sales and marketing events. At traditional events, attendees tend to start dribbling out after the first couple of presentations and trickle out even faster after lunch. Technology vendors (not just Microsoft) try to keep people in the room for as long as possible with high-quality presentations and tasty food and by offering non-trivial raffle prizes at the end (say, a PDA or digital music player or a software package worth a few hundred bucks). Naboulsi’s explanation for the low dropoff rate: people came and stayed because they were learning. 
• Attendees reporting quality hands-on learning at the in-world event. Participants could go through examples alongside the presenter, if they had a second PC or ALT+TABbed back and forth between the event going on in SL and a copy of the Microsoft software on their machine. They could practice, say, virtualizing a Windows server. Contrast this with a traditional event, where audience members may passively watch a presenter do a demo — a far cry from being able to get their hands on the software themselves and have a go at it.
• The company’s costs being a lot lower than for traditional events. This in-world launch event cost Microsoft about $4,000. The company didn’t have to rent a meeting room, cater in food, or pay for airfare and hotel room for speakers coming in from out of town. The company didn’t have to buy raffle prizes and other promotional items (how many pens, pads of paper, and thumb drives do you have from attending vendor events)? And now that Microsoft has built many of the assets it needs for in-world events (e.g., meeting spaces, presentation screens, etc.) the company is able to run in-world events at about 1/3 of the cost of doing comparable physical events – and as you scale up the number of attendees at in-world events the cost per attendee drops down even lower.

Lessons learned: how to get started

MSDN evangelist Zain Naboulsi has had enough success with the communities he has managed to build up and the events he has run in-world that he is now encouraging Microsoft to use Immersive Internet technologies more broadly, both internally and externally. He acknowledges that getting people to buy into the Immersive Internet vision can be a tough sell. He found a few things that really work:

• Start with pictures. Pictures truly are worth a thousand words when what you’re trying to describe is hard for most people to imagine. Naboulsi used to lay down a thick layer of peer pressure along the lines of “Getting into virtual worlds is a good thing. You need to do it — everyone is doing it.” But he found that talking about it isn’t enough. Instead he accompanies stories about what he’s been able to accomplish with snapshots from the high-value events he has facilitated in-world. 
• Once people are comfortable with pictures, take them in-world. It isn’t until the second meeting that Naboulsi takes his colleagues into a virtual world to show them around. Why? Some of them don’t have adequate graphics cards or processors on their machines to provide a quality experience. And the learning curve (e.g., creating an account, selecting an avatar, moving the avatar around, navigating through menus) is a huge barrier for the uninitiated. Naboulsi and his colleagues will spend up to two hours with key people they want to help feel more comfortable with the idea of virtual worlds, educating them and teaching them some basic skills.
• Demonstrate the business value. At ThinkBalm we strongly encourage Immersive Internet ROI discussions to focus on specific business process improvements. Naboulsi and his team have done just this. You see the numbers above, focused on drawing larger crowds to Microsoft events at a lower cost than before and increasing the amount of time attendees will spend at the events. The math must work or Microsoft wouldn’t keep doing sales and marketing events — quality face time with customers really does result in new and bigger software license deals.
• Nurture the natural leaders who will rise to the top. In Naboulsi’s words, “Evangelism means fostering communities, not running them.” This means allowing natural community leaders to rise up out of the crowd. In the case of MSDN, one of the community leaders is Kyle Gomboy. Gomboy stumbled across the Microsoft island in Second Life and met Naboulsi there, alongside others like published author on Microsoft ASP.net Christine Hart. Over time, Gomboy took on responsibility for helping to transform the Microsoft island to a social meeting place where technical folks can come and share their creations and have a good time with like-minded people – importantly, at little or no cost to Microsoft. (For more thoughts on leadership in an Immersive Internet world see our June 3, 2008 article, MMORPG guild leaders: Gurus in the midst.)

We didn’t get into it here in this article but the community, led by Kyle Gomboy, is hard at working developing a more heavy-duty virtual environment solution that incorporates Microsoft technology and runs on OpenSim. It will be more closely integrated with Microsoft’s office productivity and communication and collaboration tools than what is currently available with Second Life. Stay tuned for more info!

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

My take on Microsoft’s Immersive Internet play for information workers

by Erica Driver. 

As an IT industry analyst I’ve covered Microsoft’s information worker software products for a long time –- particularly the company’s collaboration and social computing tools. As it dawned on me about a year ago that the Immersive Internet was going to have just as big an impact on the way information workers do our jobs as the Web has, I began to poke and probe at Microsoft product management and marketing executives in the information worker division to find out what they think about people using virtual worlds for work. The answer could pretty consistently be described as “not much, to be truthful.” Not a big surprise, really. Because in this early-stage market 99% of the people in the universe would answer my question the same way. But in Microsoft’s case the answer carries great significance, if you follow this logic:

1. With 500 million Office users around the world and about 100 million licenses of SharePoint Server sold Microsoft is a leading office productivity suite and enterprise collaboration platform vendor.
2. Adoption of the Immersive Internet at work will ultimately require integration of virtual worlds, immersive learning simulations, and digital workspaces with the collaboration and social computing tools people already use –- like, in Microsoft shops, the core Office apps, Office SharePoint Server, Office Communicator and Communications Server, and Live Meeting.
3. If the information worker division at Microsoft isn’t focused on an Immersive Internet future, then the company isn’t working on extensions to or integration of the Office System with Immersive Internet technologies, at least not at this time. So it will be up to Microsoft’s partners to integrate Immersive Internet technologies with the Office System.
4. In the meantime, virtual world platforms will continue to add communication and collaboration features that many enterprises have already deployed, thereby increasing redundancy in the enterprise environment — features like text chat and instant messaging, whiteboarding and application sharing, and voice over IP (VoIP).

My take: don’t expect Microsoft’s information worker division to aggressively embrace the Immersive Internet. Rather, the this division is likely to sit back for a while to see how the Immersive Internet develops, and then get in the game. If you are looking for integration of Immersive Internet technologies with your enterprise collaboration and social computing software in the short term, IBM may be a more likely place to find it than Microsoft. (To be clear, in IBM’s case we are talking about IBM integrating Immersive Internet technologies with IBM’s Lotus office productivity and enterprise collaboration software, not with Microsoft Office System products. IBM has already begun work with virtual world platform vendor Forterra Systems to integrate Forterra OLIVE with IBM Lotus Sametime. See this March 20, 2008 press release on Forterra’s Web site.) 

When Microsoft’s information worker division does embrace the Immersive Internet, Microsoft’s offerings are likely to be heavy on the realism compared to virtual worlds like Second Life® where people can build pretty much anything they can dream up. (We wrote about realism and the Immersive Internet in the ThinkBalm article “First life” versus “fake life” – When realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) Microsoft currently has two main Immersive Internet products in its portfolio, and my bet is that within the next five years Microsoft will integrate these technologies with its desktop productivity, collaboration, and social computing offerings for use by information workers.

Visual simulation platform Microsoft ESP

Microsoft ESP evolved out of the Microsoft Flight Simulator video game and contains realistic land, sea, and air environments. It has 10,000 accurately placed stars, accurate continents and coastlines, a digital elevation model, land and water classifications, real-time weather data, more than 24,000 airports, realistic 3D graphics, a software development kit with application programming interface (API) and built-in artificial intelligence (AI). For example, based on AI traffic volumes can be variable and seasons can change. Content is customizable and you can import your own content (e.g., vehicles). While this 1.0 version of Microsoft ESP is heavily focused on aviation training capabilities, I envision Microsoft eventually expanding it into a broader 3D modeling and simulation platform that could be used to build all sorts of immersive learning simulations.

Imagine taking a new job selling high-end vehicles. Rather than sitting in a conference room listening to a corporate trainer deliver a presentation on your new employer’s target markets and sales strategy, and getting a deep dive on the car’s features, you engage in a highly realistic video game-like simulation where you interact with virtual customers in various lifelike scenarios. You score points when you do well and take hits when you mess up. Imagine that other new hires are also training in the same environment and you are all connected to each other via integrated social computing and real-time collaboration tools.

Mirror world Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D

Microsoft Virtual Earth is a platform that includes geospatial data, bird’s eye views, aerial imagery, 3D photorealistic imagery, shapes and layers, and a bunch of other services like search, geocoding, directions, traffic reports, and APIs. Virtual Earth’s biggest competitor is Google Earth. The green Virtual Earth image below shows the town where ThinkBalm is located: Little Compton, Rhode Island.  The urban snapshot is a 3D image of Stamford, Connecticut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An indicator that Microsoft may move in the direction of integrating Virtual Earth with the company’s collaboration and social computing products: Virtual Earth already integrates with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 for business data visualization. Imagine if Microsoft went further and Virtual Earth was integrated with Outlook and Exchange Server and Office Communicator and Communications Server so you could zoom in on any address in your contacts database or buddy list, or in an email signature, and get directions and a 3D image of the location. Take it even further and picture yourself inviting a professional contact to come and meet you in the virtual park outside your virtual office in Virtual Earth, where your avatars sit on a bench together while you IM or talk via voice about, say, an upcoming business trip. Sound far out? Give it five years and this style of communication and collaboration will be commonplace. And Microsoft will likely be one of the vendors delivering it.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Stepping Into History conference: An example of presentations-to-tours

by Erica Driver.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference in Second Life called Stepping Into History, run by LearningTimes and Alliance Library System. The tag line of the conference was “experiencing the past through virtual worlds.” Now just to set the record straight I’m more of a history buffoon than a history buff, but I wanted to attend this conference to get a better sense for how the traditional notion of a presentation (where I stand up in front of you and yap at you for 45 minutes and then maybe if, I feel generous, give you 15 minutes for some interactive Q&A) will morph over time. The emergence of the Immersive Internet will allow presentations as we know them to be supplanted by something much more immersive, interactive, and impactful: tours. 

During the Stepping Into History conference one of the historical simulations I visited was Discover Babylon. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which promotes humanitarian uses of science and technology, has a program called the Learning Technologies Program which is focused on using IT to improve how people teach and learn. FAS funded creation of both a Discover Babylon game and the Discover Babylon simulations of a model of the c. 3200 BC ancient city Uruk and of the c. 2700 BC “City of Gilgamesh”in Second Life. The simulations in Second Life feature historical and scientific information provided by subject matter experts. Why go through all this effort, you might ask? In the words of Dan Bracewell, developer of one of the simulations we visited, “We want to encourage people to play. Play is just another form of learning.”

So – rather than sit in a stuffy classroom listening to someone talk about what ancient Mesopotamia might have looked like, I went there myself! I showed up at the welcome center on the designated Second Life island at the pre-determined time, where a friendly greeter dressed in a toga (who happened to be Michelle Roper, director of FAS learning technologies) welcomed me and instructed me to fly my avatar over to a location under a large floating cone. Once we were all gathered, Dan Bracewell told us a bit about why and how the City of Gilgamesh simulation was built and about the FAS’s future plans for the simulation. Some of the practices the FAS team adopted serve as best practices for business teams pursuing the presentations-to-tours concept:

• A human guide took us through the experience. We weren’t dumped off at a location and told to go look around -– not an easy task for participants who may be unfamiliar with how to navigate in a virtual world. And we weren’t just trucked about in a virtual vehicle that took us through a simulation and spat out descriptions of what we were seeing in text format, to be lost amongst all the instant message and chat conversations going on in our vicinity. Instead, we had a real life tour guide -– someone intimately familiar with what we were experiencing who was able to give us information and answer questions. I felt like I was really on a tour!
• The designers deployed the theater concept of the “fourth wall.” The fourth wall is the imaginary wall at the front of a stage through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. In a 3D virtual world, the fourth wall is anything that breaks the participant’s sense of immersion -– like, for example, a giant billboard in English when we were supposed to feel like we were in ancient Babylon. Rather, period-appropriate black pots sprinkled here and there contained information that would pop up on notecards or Web pages to tell you more about what you were looking at, if you chose to click on the pots. 
• Design was paramount and the environment was easy to navigate. The historical reconstruction we saw had style — lots of it! It felt alive and real. It had personality. The below snapshot is from the virtual reconstruction of the Temple of Innana in the City of Gilgamesh simulation. Not only was the environment appealing and attractive, it was easy to navigate. We could walk or fly easily from one place to another without bumping into walls or ceilings or crashing into each other.

Much like how static Web pages have given way to animated, interactive experiences, presentations will evolve into tours throughout 3D environments. Why? Because this modality can engage the audience and, further, convert passive audience members into active participants. Success will come from developing interesting and engaging content, respecting the fourth wall, and paying a lot of attention to design and navigability.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Dassault Systemes: An Immersive Internet contender to watch

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

On June 17th-18th we attended Dassault Systemes’ DevCon 2008 conference and accompanying industry analyst event in Paris. Dassault Systemes (DS) has roots in computer-aided design (CAD) software and product lifecycle management (PLM) and is evolving into what the company is calling “PLM 2.0.” DS uses the term PLM 2.0 to refer to the concept of creating an online 3D environment that enables everyone -– not just engineers -– to create and share 3D product designs and models, and help bring new products to market. It’s the focus on “online 3D environment for everyone” that gets us excited and DS has a few products in its 3DVIA brand that mark the company’s move into the Immersive Internet market. Most significantly:

• An authoring environment for 3D modeling and game development. 3DVIA MP (a new, enterprise-scale version of the 3DVIA Virtools application development platform) is a tool for creating “lifelike experiences.” (For more on this see the ThinkBalm blog post “First life” versus “fake life” – When realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) Customers include companies like Electronic Arts, which uses it to prototype new video games. DS says this tool can be used to create what the company calls “smart objects” –- 3D models that are animated or scripted so they have some functionality. While 3DVIA MP’s roots are in video game production and creating design and market simulations in specific vertical markets, we foresee DS customers experimenting with the tool to create immersive learning simulations in the future. 
• Free, easy-to-use 3D modeling software. 3DVIA Shape is a basic modeling tool currently in beta (free software, client download required) that people can use to create fairly simple objects and forms. 3DVIA Shape provides an opportunity for people not familiar with 3D content creation to get their feet wet. The product competes with other entry level 3D content creation tools like tools like Altadyn 3DXplorer, the open source C3DL project, Google Sketchup, the modeling tools built into Linden Lab’s Second Life, the open source Ogoglio project, and View22 SceneCaster.
• An online community where people can share 3D content they create. Dassault Systemes’ answer to Flickr for photos or Google 3D Warehouse for 3D content is 3Dvia.com. 3DVIA.com currently has 28,000 members who have created and uploaded about 2,900 3D models that are free and available for public consumption, with thousands of other objects that members choose to keep private. 3DVIA.com supports uploading of 3D model files not only from 3DVIA software but other professional and open source modeling products including Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, Google Sketchup, open source Blender, and others. Members who use3DVIA Shape can directly publish and in the future “remix” 3D models on 3DVIA.com with storage and sharing managed on the Internet.
• In the future: the ability to remix 3D creations. DS expects a future release of 3DVIA.com to provide members with the ability to remix (modify and reuse) other peoples’ 3D content using DS’s 3DVIA tools, while remaining in compliance with the original creator’s licensing requirements. People will be able to modify 3D objects by simply changing the dimensions or parameters of the object, or add animations or interactive functionality to originally static 3D objects to make them “smart objects.” This future capability has the potential to set DS apart from sites like Google 3D Warehouse. Imagine if DS added a means for monetization –- picture an iStockPhoto.com type site for 3D content that could be used in any virtual world or environment. This could really help propel the Immersive Internet forward.

Dassault Systemes does not offer a virtual world platform, per se -– customers have not used 3DVIA MP to create massively multiplayer online games or virtual worlds. But the company’s strengths in 3D modeling, CAD, and PLM combined with executives’ vision of an interactive, immersive 3D future show whopping potential. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on this one.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Heavy equipment manufacturer explores Immersive Internet for product prototyping

by Erica Driver.

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed two enterprise IT architects at a US-based heavy equipment manufacturer about steps the company is taking toward the Immersive Internet. The company is funding the IT architecture group to try to find more effective, less expensive ways to design and prototype products, which in this case are complex and expensive pieces of machinery. The company has been steadily on the move to compress its product cycles from about 9 years thirty years ago down to six years a few years ago, now down to about four years today –- and shorter than that in the future.

One of the company’s executives believes that how well the company collaborates internally and externally will be a differentiator in the future. The company is global, with engineers all around the world. The engineers use the PTC Pro/ENGINEER (Pro/E) computer-aided design (CAD) software to develop their products and anyone who wants to interact with product models in a collaborative manner has to have the expensive Pro/E application on the desktop.

Initially, the manufacturer worked with a local state university to create a rapid prototyping system that utilizes augmented reality and the university’s Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) (see figure for an example of a CAVE at the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago). In this environment, engineers and others could interact with each other and a 3D virtual prototype of a new product –- say, a tractor or backhoe or forklift. But the CAVE equipment is costly and to collaborate in this type of immersive environment all participants have to be on-site.

So now the manufacturer is working on porting the geometry of 3D product models from Pro/E into a virtual world built on Sun Microsystems’ Project Wonderland open source virtual world platform. They’ve gotten to the point where avatars can interact with, say, a virtual tractor in the environment –- fly around it, look inside it, fly into the engine. But they had to slim down the geometry and reduce the number of internal parts in the image, so users can’t at this time look at the internal wiring or other systems.

The IT architecture team is enthusiastic about the future and hopeful that the Immersive Internet will be able to deliver:

• Better engineering collaboration. The company hopes that engineers located in different parts of the world will be able to work together on a digital model of a product or part — interactively and simultaneously. Never mind better collaboration –- how about mass collaboration. It’s one thing for a handful of engineers to collaborate on a design or concept. But it’s another thing to be able to say “I’m working on a proof of concept with twenty of my customers.”
• New products that can be operated remotely. Imagine a factory fully decked out with radio-frequency identification (RFID) and global positioning systems (GPSs), where a forklift operator might be sitting not up in the forklift cab but behind a desk with a headset on, operating an unmanned vehicle remotely. Or operating several unmanned forklifts remotely at the same time. A powerful combination could be a 3D virtual environment with a real-life video feed from machines so the operator of the virtual machine can see what the real machine “sees.” Or think about a leader/follower scenario, where several tractors in a field might follow a lead tractor that someone is driving.
• Reduced manufacturing and operations costs. At this company, a typical factory has 20 million square feet of space. One of the difficulties in a space this big is the company sometimes loses parts. They have to fly parts in from other locations via air freight because people can’t find the pallet they need. A virtual environment, RFID tags and a GPS system, and streaming video could be combined to reduce or eliminate this problem.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.