We have blogged several times about our internal metaverse (or one of them) and how we are looking at what we can do with the Garage Games Torque Engine. Our internal team has grown a bit recently and we have some interesing things we want to deliver. Sometimes it can be a little tricky to find the right examples of how things work so it was really nice when I bumped into this very nice creation, Blockland.
Blockland is written in Torque and has a community growing around it and its modability. It uses a slightly different metaphor for creation in that it uses established blocks from known sets that can be bolted together by a visitor to a server. The server itself can be a run anywhere. So this is not the sort of grid we are used to but the Torque/games model. However usually on a Torque server it is quite tricky to let others create content as the content creation pipeline is based around an Admin building a map and deploying it. We had been doing some experiments with some scripting that allowed objects to be moved around in the space to allow for some user interaction and emergent behaviour. Of course our metaverse is more about interacting with internal corporate systems and information so much of the work has gone into that.
Anyway the developer(s) of Blockland have created the ability to form collections of these blocks, colour them, stack them, and save them. People gather together on multiplayer servers both to game, but also to build. I think its a smallish community, but it looks really interesting.
Of course there is a certain similarity to a certain platsic block real life creation set, and they are doing their own virtual world down the line.
For now I am intrigued to learn how some of the problems and challenges we are solving have been solved by Blockland.
There is a free demo version, and the full version is a whole $20, so yes epredator is a fully signed up member of Blockland now.

There are avatar customization features under the player section.

When building you select bricks from a palette and spray paint them different colours.
Whilst Torque has a mission creation editor, which you can patch back in, this is designed to do the maps before you start the server. Here these are in world live running modifications. I am not quite sure of the persistence model, I know I can save bricks and load bricks like Rezzing in Second Life.

Check out the website and youtube for a stack of videos.

Roo wrote a post with a nice video here of AM Radio’s delightful piece of art creation. The Cornfield, 1920’s style with a fantastic textured train and some incredible prebaking of textures.
We had seen this buidl happen on our internal blogs, and it was good to see it go public. Now AM Radio has decided to raise some funds for the charity heifer.org but selling copies of his work that you can go and view here.
Its a subtle yet amazingly detailed set of objects and well worth a look. I will post some stills when they get through the system, but I needed to post this update for all you art appreciating and charity minded individuals out there.
*update here are some of the snapzilla’s from the build

The next big virtual worlds conference is looming large. Virtual Worlds Fall in San Jose on 11/12 October.
IBM is a gold sponsor and there will be a lot of the extended eightbar team at the conference.
Sandy Kearney has a keynote:
Virtual Worlds: The BEST platforms for Enterprise Value
An Examination of Virtual World Platforms From the Enterprise Perspective.
The number of virtual worlds platforms are proliferating from publicly operated virtual worlds to private world engines. Where does an enterprise start when evaluating a platform based on BEST: Business, Economic Value, Social Interaction and Technology? This detailed session will review the leading platforms for enterprise use, talk about the real business value being realized in virtual worlds today and have a look into the future of virtual worlds fit for business.
– Sandy Kearney, IBM Global Director, IBM 3D Internet and Virtual Business

Linda Ban is moderating a panel
Applications that Work
What applications work for large scale enterprises. This panel discussion will look at multiple applications, using actual use-cases as examples. What are the goals and objectives? Who are the participants: customers, partners or internal to the organization? It is channel communication or executive briefings to the public or manager training or is it employee collaboration. what applications work and under what circumstances?
– Greg Nuyens, CEO, Qwaq
– Ron Burns, President, ProtonMedia
– Robert Gehorsam, President, Forterra Systems
– Steve Metzger, CEO, VT&T
– Linda Ban, Client and Program Strategy Executive, 3DInternet and Digital Convergence,
IBM Research

and yours truly is speaking on business process management in the enterprise with John Jainschigg, Director, Online Technology and New Business, CMP Technology.

October 10th
Wednesday, 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Business Process Management
How do you manage a virtual worlds presence for a large organization. What processes need to be put in place for a public virtual worlds effort such as Second Life vs a private dedicated virtual world? What variables need to be considered depending on the applications and goals expected?
– Ian Hughes, Metaverse Evangelist, IBM
– John Jainschigg, Director, Online Technology and New Business, CMP Technology, LLC

Our pitch is scheduled at the same time as Reuben, Sibley and Wello’s session

Entertainment in Virtual Worlds – It’s Not Games. it’s Not TV. It’s….
With the advent of virtual worlds television networks, individual channels and individual shows can now create interactive versions of their franchises and engage fans directly, immersing them into the environment. Find out how to successfully extend a television brand, including measuring audience participation and extending the advertising business model. Speakers will discuss activities on multiple virtual worlds platforms.
– Blake Lewin, Vice President Product Development, Turner Broadcasting Inc.
– Daniel Schiappa, General Manager, Strategy Entertainment and Devices Division,
Microsoft Corporation
– Reuben Steiger, CEO, Millions of Us
– Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
– Jerry Paffendorf, CEO, Wello Horld (moderator)

Of course I will be there all the time and around in sessions and at the IBM stand with many of the others who will be attending, so there is a whole crowd to come and meet. Peter Rodriguez who runs our CIO metaverse project (amongst other things) will be there, so if you would like to meet the person who officially took Roo and I on as metaverse evangelists within IBM last September, then I can introduce you.

It will be interesting to see the scale and focus now we have reached this stage an an industry. It also shows that real life is a great place to meet people. I am sure there will be many huddles and conversations about projects, ideas and the future. The backchannel at these things is obviously as important as the presentations.

So look out for me and or my striped leather jacket and come and say hi, or find and IBMer and ask for epredator 🙂 Remember though its not just me that knows about this stuff now.
See you there, or just follow some people one twitter

Many of us have just been at a virtual world presentation by Sandra Kearney, Director of IBM’s 3d internet group and very much a founding member of eightbar and the virtual universe community.
I am going to pull some of the content together to show what this actually looked like but….
We have Sandy in Cornell speaking live, the video was fed into Nick Wilson’s island Metaversed to a Second Life crowd, but we also had people in IBM’s instance of active worlds. The video feeds were also sent out to the web by SLCN.tv and skyped.
This was an amazing blend to show the potential. I just need to make a bit of video look good for the follow up post. It even ended in Sl with massive twitter id exchange blending further the social connections.
Sandy was explaining the depth of what is going on with virtual worlds to the live audience but also interacting with the virtual world audiences.
It takes a little time to get used to being in both worlds at once AW and SL as I was. Watching me dance around on camera in AW whilst I was sitting in SL was a little freaky to say the least.
Still, thats another problem to help consider about the nature of persona.
Here is the SL screen showing a feed of me (the godfather on the left) and Dave Kamalsky from Almaden with Sandy in the video mixed inset in RL.

Who could not be confused but also impressed. Epredator watches epredator 🙂

There were some great questions from the SL end. One about were employees of IBM being productive in virtual worlds. My back channel comment was that I was sitting at home at work at 9pm still representing IBM, but think slicing with some other things like twitter. Sandy answered very much the same about trust and passion for virtual worlds and metaverses being such a big driver. Organizations have to allow people to want to do good things for them.
So in general I think this showed that there is a whole lot more that can be done and will be done with multiple virtual worlds. Us all being there woudl have helped Sandy’s RL audience understand what it is we all see in things like Second Life.
This feels like another watershed moment as the virtual worlds collide. Well done all.

So well done 57 miles our SL host. Thank you for the invite. It was good to be able to augment Sandy’s talk and help people along with Ultravox Freeman and Locutus Qi and later Yossarian Seattle and Algernon Spackler being present in SL.

All pictures from Snapzilla
Video to follow…..

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream have a great new build in Second Life. I only just got to visit it.
It just goes to show that, as has been found with going cell shaded in games, photo realism is not everything. It is of course good to have both cartoon and photo real options, but the right place, designed well can look and feel right in so many other ways.

picture from snapzilla

Interestingly they have a seperate sign up using the SL api and thier own orientation island. This will mean the rest of SL will be quite a shock to newbies.

What is interesting is that whilst its odd I still seem to fit as an avatar in this picture despite the clash of design and culture.

Most of the objects I clicked on seemed to be by Damien Fate. Its a very nice piece of work.

Whilst Roo was off at the serious virtual worlds conference I was of in the Netherlands and Belgium presenting too on the inspiration for innovators tour.  

It was great to not only present a fair few times to invited audiences of customers, IBMers and press in elective sessions, but to also get to meet some fellow activists out there in metaverse land.

The audiences were very receptive at each presentation, from the 2.5 hours with the press through to the final hour stand up session in La Hulpe with business leaders.

The focus was very much across the entire spectrum of virtual worlds, about people and social change and about how web 2.0 lets people get around the command control structure in a good way.

For business leaders it is important for them to know this is actually a good thing and good things can happen from it. For technical leaders its important to know that this quirky technology does have a serious place.

So the story of eightbar is one that shows change in a large corporation like IBM and the pattern can be applied to any idea in any organization.

On a personal note I was asked by a few people before the presentations if I was nervous. I do understand getting nervous, but when you are sharing personal experience and also something that is really part of your life then you can never get the presentation wrong. Unlike presenting facts and figures which requires a different sort of approach.

I managed to do parts of my ppt in various ways and with a different tone each time. So for me the risk is that I just get half way through and think “you know what this really is a load of old rubbish” 🙂

That of course has not happened yet 🙂

The presentations were in Almere and La Hulpe (this used to be an IBM education facility). Almere was very amusing as I ended up with a real dressing room, lights and all.

The stage at Almere was quite large.

Though I think I preferred La Hulpe even if it was for the madonna microphone and the in the round setting, no laptop just a remote control and a seperate plasma screen to see the charts.

Hi to all the people I met customers and collegues. I was really impressed by how many other eightbars were there with customers and with a real understanding and passion for virtual worlds. A year ago this would have seemed impossible, but now the business is here and is booming.

The presentations are going to be posted on the IBM event sites so I will update with a link to that once they are live.

I could not help moving eightbar into yet another virtual environment. In this case Forza2 on the xbox 360.
Forza has a great custom paint application built in. You cant just upload images, you have to craft from clip art. I am by no means an expert, but I was quite happy with me representing eightbar and epredator in this styilized way. See what you think. The original 8bar logo is by Judge of course.

Below is the Lancia Stratos with custom spikey green hair, racing stripes and 8bar logo in times square New York.

This can of course be raced online. Also the 8bar decals are able to be applied from car to car and cars are even able to be put in an auction for other players to buy for game credits.
This shows the rise of user created content and creative freedom in a specific game type. The original Forza had this, but with next gen and HD some of the designs I have seen have been breath-takingly good.
Its not all posing either, this is about racing too, but with some style.
So we have a fantastic car physics model, focused on the racing experience but I am able to be in there as epredator and take eightbar with me. Which I think shows the benefit of specific virtual environments for specific things, as well as striving for a generic metaverse.

See you on the track, my gamer card is over on epredator.com in the side bar.
**update

And here is an F430 customed up too. The same car I got to drive last weekend in real life along with the murcielago

I turned 40 this weekend as part of the celebrations this rather excellent creation was made by a local shop.
Its not as “serious” as many of the virtual to real movements but it seemed worth sharing with everyone.

Just for completeness the thread of these is explained here and here

I came across Archipelis out there on the web. A tool designed to take 2d free hand drawing and turn it into 3d objects. I was instantly struck with the simplicity of just being able to draw. It is certainly not aiming at the high end 3d engineer market, but it is so simple and easy to use that I think many people may find the approach of use. If nothing else for just prototyping things in 3d.
You are able to import a photo and draw around it, the resulting object takes the texture as that photo. Objects can then be exported in standard formats like OBJ. I am not going to explain all the features, as their site is the best place for that.
I did do a very quick exploration with some of the masked off images I had of Roo from some other real to virtual experiments. None of this approach aims to replace the proper way to scan and capture real objects, but as a quick way to see what works, with a simple “at home” approach is it good to explore the potential.
I imported the image into Archipelis, drew around roo and then exported him to a standard format. I then used another tool to convert him into one of the internal metaverses we have going.
The result is not perfect, but it was quick. The Roovatar from real life to virtual in just a few minutes.

It has also been very theraputic to just draw and model in 3d in a freeform way, very similar to the prim modelling we see in SL. Lots of curves, the ability to cut away and add etc. Its very impressive.