IBM’s Virtual Australian Open In Second Life
Stephen Hutcheon of the Syndney Morning Herald has a nice piece about a new build by some of the IBMers in the virtual world of Second Life, which does for the Australian Open tennis tournament what IBM did for Wimbledon on a smaller scale last summer. The virtual stadium re-creates the tournament in real time, shot-for-shot, based on real-time tracking data fed into the world. The Herald also mentions that spectators can choose to watch the matches “from a player’s perspective,” though I’m not entirely sure how that works. To see more, watch the YouTube video.
The project is more or less another demo by IBM of new business and service models that might be viable in virtual worlds. Virtual goods are on offer, and visitors can click through to Tennis Australia’s e-commerce site, according to the article. The build, which looks pretty impressive, was done entirely by IBM employees. There are well over a thousand IBMers in Second Life by now, and it should come as no surprise that some of them are expert builders. IBM is not a company known for its lack of enterprising geeks, after all.
More information on eightbar, and check epredator Potato’s Snapzilla stream (from which I’ve stolen the shot above).
Thanks for the heads-up on the IBM Australian Open build, looks worth checking out. My hope is companies like IBM, Cisco, and others with credible names/resources will help bring needed scaling, security, and other technical features to virtual worlds such as Second Life.
–JJF
Yes, but where is it? You can’t find it in places or events, or classified. Its all very well having stories about this, but without a SLURL nobody’s going to visit…
I just wasted 45 minutes trying to find it… no luck.
Does anyone have an Austrailian Open player towel I can purchase?
thanks.