3pointD.com

Glitchy sends along a press release from General Motors about a 3D virtual reality technology the company is using to design its new plants: “GM facility engineers can strap on special 3D goggles, step into a virtual cave, and see how a plant looks before the first piece of steel is put in place.” The technology, from a company called GHAFARI Associates, is not very metaversal (it doesn’t seem to be multi-user, let alone avatarized), but it’s an interesting example of a productive real-world application for a technology that doesn’t often get a useful rollout. Obviously, this kind of thing has been done before, but it doesn’t usually involve “virtual caves” and “3D goggles.” What will be interesting is when this kind of thing gets cheap enough for broad adoption, and when multi-user capabilities come in. That will summon shades of the Vernor Vinge book Rainbows End, which I finished a few days ago. Interesting read that I hope to post more about shortly. For now, though, it’s time to sweep out my virtual cave.

Ian Hughes at eightbar (a blog co-authored by four people “working in and around IBM’s Hursley Park Lab in the UK”) has a fascinating bunch of screenshots and explanations up detailing a proof-of-concept build for some really nice functionality he’s created in Second Life, based around the Wimbledon tennis tournament. The build includes an RSS weather feed globe, a very cool data-tracking tennis court that seemingly reproduces every shot of a match (pictured above), a neat concept for ambient visual representation of the match score (consisting of two spheres that change sizes depending on who’s winning), and a bunch of other stuff. I really want to check this out, but SL is down for an update at the moment, so I’ll have to bring you the direct report later.

Reena Jana has a nice piece in Business Week updating the American Apparel story blogged here a couple of weeks ago. Some highlights:

The Los Angeles-based maker of trendy T-shirts is currently organizing a late-July soiree at its latest location: a computer-generated boutique within the parallel online universe of Second Life.

Next month, American Apparel will start hiring virtual sales clerks from among Second Life’s citizens.

The company is also planning to test-market its first line of jeans within its Second Life store this summer—two months before they hit physical stores in time for fall.

And in an effort to drive traffic to both the virtual and physical stores, anyone who buys clothes in Second Life after the grand opening party will receive a coupon for a 15% discount on merchandise bought in the real world.

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As we wrote about earlier on 3pointD, Linden Lab, creators of the virtual world of Second Life, has been met with an outcry over recent changes to their registration system, which no longer requires billing information or real-world identifying data of any kind. Now, to mollify residents’ concerns over unchecked griefing, LL is planning to scrape users’ hardware for identifying information, and to install tools that would let users ban non-paying members from their land, according to a blog post from LL’s VP for community and support Robin Harper. This is perilously close to jumping the shark, if you ask me, and certainly steers Second Life away from the open platform that LL CEO Philip Rosedale has said he wants it to become. (more…)