3pointD.com

In the wake of the Metaverse Roadmap (are you tired of hearing about this event yet?) a really interesting distributed conversation has developed that has as its main interlocutors massively multiplayer game designer Raph Koster, chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka of Linden Lab (makers of Second Life), and SL resident Prokofy Neva, one of the most outspoken activists in the metaverse for the cause of avatar rights. The main issues here seem to come down to how the metaverse will emerge and whether 3D is the right thing to emphasize. Raph presents a skeptical argument on the value of “social” virtual worlds, while Prok waxes eloquent on the “momentous occasion” that is the emergence of places like Second Life. As usual, I come down somewhere in the middle, though I do think both Raph and Prok are missing the point somewhat, while Cory is probably closer to the mark: Second Life is less a social virtual world than it is a tool or development platform. As such, its adoption curve will have less to do with games or traditional VWs and more to do with things like the Internet and World Wide Web. My vision of the metaverse horizon has SL — or something like it — moving out of the VW space altogether and becoming something we’ll think of more as an interface that will be useful for some things and not for others. Raph does get it right when he says “some of the best indicators of coming metaverses are Habbo Hotel, Cyworld, MySpace, Amazon, and eBay.” But I’d argue that some of these apps will naturally evolve at least partially toward 3D spaces, and will come to include geospatial hooks from flat Web pages to real places. (more…)

There’s got to be a better name for it than that. (A Minority Report interface?) In any case, it’s just gotten larger, with the release of IO2 Technology’s second generation Heliodisplay M2, which projects a video display in mid-air, and, in the M2i model, makes it interactive using 3D tracking technology. The latest release gives you a 30-inch diagonal display (87 percent larger than the M1), at up to 1,280 X 1,024 pixels. As many people have pointed out, this kind of thing is going to make your arms tired. But it’s still pretty cool.

John Swords is a fool for podcasting. Not only does he host SecondCast, the always entertaining talk show on all things Second Life, now he and I have started a new show, The Metaverse Sessions, which aims to be a weekly podcast conversation on the emerging metaverse and 3D Web, in all its forms. Our first show has just gone up on the site, featuring a rambling chat with futurist Jerry Paffendorf, who works for the Electric Sheep Company (who sponsor this blog). (more…)