R.D. HackathornR.D. Hackathorn

Create Your Own World

Richard Hackathornrichardh@bolder.com

Virtual

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Slide 2R.D. Hackathorn

Outline

• Wandering around Second Life• Features of a Virtual World• Various Virtual World Platforms• OpenSim – Open Source • Avaya Web.Alive – Browser-Based• Unity3D – Flexible Gaming IDE• CryEngine – High End• Immersive Intelligence • Fun Things to Do

Slide 3R.D. Hackathorn

Wandering around Second Life

• http://secondlife.com/ • First light circa 2004, 20M + currently

• Chakryn Forest• NOAA Virtual Islands: Real-Time Weather• Galactic Plane Mural• Asteroid Strike on Mars• Info Vis of ‘Death & Taxes’

• SL Showcase• SL Marketplace

Slide 4R.D. Hackathorn

Features of a Virtual World

• Immersive 3D space• Avatars: edit appearance, clothing…• Communication: IM, voice, documents• Social: groups, friends…• Open viewer architecture, many alt viewers• Multi-language • Currency, marketplace, economy • Land ownership• Performance, stability, growth

Slide 5R.D. Hackathorn

Various Virtual World Platforms

• Gaming MMO WOW, etc, etc

• Social MMO Second Life – the 800 lb gorilla! Others… Active Worlds, Blue Mars, IMVU,

Onverse, Kaneva, Utherverse OpenSim and its variations

• Gaming IDE Unity3D, CryTek CryEngine

• Collaborative Conferencing Teleplace, Web.Alive,

Slide 6R.D. Hackathorn

OpenSim – Open Source

• http://opensimulator.org/ • Open-source multi-platform, multi-user

3D application server• Has a varied community behind it

Intel Research is parallelizing the architecture IBM has contributed code

Slide 7R.D. Hackathorn

Avaya Web.Alive – Browser-Based

• http://avayalive.com/

Slide 8R.D. Hackathorn

Unity3D – Flexible Gaming IDE

• http://unity3d.com/

Slide 9R.D. Hackathorn

CryEngine – High End

• http://www.crytek.com/ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHNWj8HmWwQ

Slide 10R.D. Hackathorn

Immersive Intelligence

• Create your own Data World Visualize the patterns and trends in the data Collaborate based on shared experiences

• Holistic Explore the details in the context of the whole Micro to macro…and macro to micro Zooming through levels of detail Render the entire database…all terabytes of it!

• Creative information metaphors Visual objects shaped by data attributes Rendering the natural/familiar to abstract/unusual

• Persistent world, always on

Slide 11R.D. Hackathorn

Fun Things to Do

• Play with Second Life Free registration! Browse/explore with the SL Showcase Find a community with similar interests Build an interesting thing; buy a similar item

• Play with OpenSim Execute the binary on your laptop

• Play with Web.Alive …for 5 minutes only!

• Play with Unity3D Download IDE, load/play samples, watch tutorials