How do we turn virtual worlds like SL into a business platform ?

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brock on April 15, 2008 at 2:11am

Super, thanks for your reply. I'll sure look up Dave inworld. I think you're right to make a destinction between 'public' VW's (similar to the web) and vw's that can be used for business purposes. So I'm guessing I'm gonna be doing some bug hunting soon...

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Permalink Reply by Ken Rigby (Tele3DWorld/MellaniuM/InterVerzaL) on April 14, 2008 at 11:35am

I believe we have all the tools we need; CAD, CG, MC, Photoshop, Maya, Max, etc. we need people with vision and the willingness to think outside the box and laterally. Small linear incremental steps will take an age.

Taking lessons learned from the print design world, which went from the utilization of drawing boards, acetate, razorblades and photocopiers for most of their work to switching everything to programs like AutoCad, Studio Max, Photoshop, and Illustrator, the interior design world is heading towards the Virtual Real World (VRW). Architects and Interior designers want a better way to keep the various aspects of their complex businesses together are relying on programs that let them budget their projects, plan their structures/interiors, manage all their choices in furniture, wall coverings, flooring, curtains, etc. To be able to have all these options in one place is now simply a matter of finding the right modelling software and a method of visualisation in a true first person perspective to scale and using hyperrealistic textures on the objects and artefacts.

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnEg6KCov8

Architectural and Interior design visualisation software can be a blessing, especially for project managers who have been stressed for years by trying to keep it all standard. The VRWs are computer programs that allow designers to show their clients different phases of the project along with multiple possibilities that exist for each phase. Some applications allow designers to enter room specific parameters or customize pre-existing materials/formats to fit the space in question. Many VRW programs incorporate the use of AutoCAD, have a substantial number crunching abilities, and enable designers the freedom to plan project timescales and budgeting guidelines with different customers. The interface is highly accessible, intuitive, user-friendly, and are easily navigable.

Some VRWs will even store and allow access to commercial project information online, through the use of secure servers, thereby eliminating the need for a hard drive or complex server infrastructure. This can be especially beneficial when one considers the possibility of server and hard drive crashes, data loss, theft, or those accidental spills that can ruin months of hard work. Customers can view VRW architectural and interior designs from their office or home via fast servers; reducing the need to travel.

The complicated workflow involved with large projects that encompass many collaborators, team members, companies, executives, and managers can make the process of achieving a standard on designs seem almost impossible at times. Architectural and Interior design VRW programs offer solutions to the taxing reality that coordinating several different levels of input can present. By taking the most complicated and labour-intensive parts of challenging projects and streamlining them into a format that can be viewed, modified, approved, and implemented by all parties independently, designers now have the ability to manage every facet in real time and at every phase of the project using the Virtual Real World process.

Mellanium Design and Tele3dworld have developed the VRW process (patented) to incorporate photo/hyper-realistic 3D models and textures into a real-time 3D environment. This enables designs to be created, monitored, modified, and recorded using a commercially available 3D engine that enables a distributed online network to be established.

For an example 3D VRW Architectural/Interior Design program; see below.

See http://mellanium.com and SKYPE joe on http://skype:joe133952 for a demonstration.

Ken Rigby © Copyright 2007, Tele3DWorld and MellaniuM Design.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brock on April 15, 2008 at 2:39am

Ok, so what we're all saying is... we're getting there. As time progresses, the reality will increase and the tools available will be more mainstream.

Tying into Ken's reply, this is the concept you mean right ?

Imagine a new residential housing plan being developed. The architect can rebuild/import the homes into the VW where the entire new area is visualized. People interested can go look and see what houses are build and if they're interested contact the real estate agent. Folks who already bought one of the houses being build are given the keys to their virtual counterparts already.

Since it's a scale model, they can remodel and decorate the interior with the object given freely (verified users only) by some local retailer who had his entire furniture collection virtualized. Virtual furniture is linked to RL counterparts with pricing information etc, so people can occupy their virtual neighbourhood before it's finished in rl.

True, their are programs outthere who can virtualize a tour for new home owners and yes there are programs available to decorate your house.

But there's not one solution that will allow you for 20 of your friends to come and judge your new interior plans. Not one where you can go to a kitchen store and walk through your new home together with the sales person and see the end result in place...

Who's gonna market and/or manage projects like that ?

Something like this is do-able right now no ? It's a matter of a couple of sims together with an accompaning website with vw-enabled CMS and a database server... A year from now, something like this will look more reallife, it will be easier to develop and run smoother but when do we start developing projects like this ?

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Permalink Reply by Ken Rigby (Tele3DWorld/MellaniuM/InterVerzaL) on April 16, 2008 at 12:03pm

This do-able and has been available by the games engine producers for over 5 years. It is only now that the power of the average PC can Virtual spaces comfortably be populated by up to 32 users with a 'good' global server or LAN. The future is with high resolution artifacts and FPP environments that trick the brain into thinking it is RL. With the new hardware and intelligent control software these 3D VRWs will become to dominate the Virtual Reality market. Viva the future.
LANs, peer to peer, global to peer, will emerge very rapidly when the population start to "get it".
This generation cannot understand why we haven't got it now; they saw the concept years ago with the FPS like Doom that dominated the games market for years.

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Permalink Reply by AWM Mars on April 15, 2008 at 3:11am

My belief is that the emergence of the OpenSim's, some being dedicated to forms of art, business, culture, created by individuals and organisations, will become linked into a true internet platform. Crossing a Sim border will be as seamless as clicking a hyperlink and seeing content arriving from another website source.

The only real logistics are going to be who, will become custodians of the content as we travel this vast new world. The answer may lie in the creations of firewalled 'safe stores', a depository where you can store your goods, linked to each user of the combined platforms merging together. Much like those organisations that currently hold our Credit Card details such as Paypal, we trade in Virtual comodities, cashing out at our chosen depository.

The creation of stand alone VR worlds in not a new concept, the ability to content create on the fly is. During construction of the VR simulation of a RL project, Architects, Designers, Clients etc can all make adjustments, literaly at a scale of picking up whole building structures and turning them to show a different aspect, on the fly in a VR Environment such as SL. The attractive part is, time and cost, its value being very small for each to make such adjustments before comiting to any RL project. The variety of projects that fall into this catagory would include, whole city developments, to choosing a new kitchen for your home.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brock on April 15, 2008 at 3:46am

It would be great if we'd have software we could install just as easily as for instance IIS or apache on our own servers and hook up to a grid. Wether that's gonna be a OpenSim flavor or SL.

Wouldn't LindenLab be a natural choice to act as custodian, when they release server code Q3/Q4 2008? Or should we wait another year or two before one of the opensource variants becomes more mature ?

Although they offer more features and a more realistic expierence, they still lack the infrastructure to provide for a solid platform...

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Permalink Reply by Mark Burhop on April 15, 2008 at 10:39am

You need to understand that OpenSim almost is SL to some people. OpenSim uses the same Second Life client and OpenSim and SL developers work closely together.

So the first (real) step to interoperability will probably be between SL and OpenSim. YOu don't ever leave the SL Client.

The next step would be a much broader interoperability... probably not with the kids VW's because they need a bit more security...but hopefully with some of the business or more general purpose VWs.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brock on April 15, 2008 at 11:55am

True, haven't followed the developement that closely last month, but I think they were breaking with interoperability due to some inventory alterations and mono ?

Not sure though... will need to refind that..

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Permalink Reply by John Breyault on April 28, 2008 at 8:29am

The business effects of any disruptive tech like VWs take years to become apparent (think how long Blackberries took to catch on). With that in mind, I think that you need to develop the tools first. As they become more useful the user base will grow.

But from a non-MBA's PoV (i.e., mine) I think there needs to be some defining of what business problems VW's address. And once you've identified the problems, you need to consider what (if any) tools already in existence address the problems. If such tools exist, do they do it better/faster/cheaper/etc. than VWs can?

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Permalink Reply by Amilie Anatine on April 28, 2008 at 3:57pm

I have seen very successful SL businesses launch into RL, and make very good money. The tools are there to do it, it takes dedication and good communication between partners. It also takes very inventive and technically skilled people.

as for RL companies going into SL: I have only developed for a few RL clients, but i have heard lots of stories from other developers, and the trend is that the RL presence is only as good as the RL company itself. Clipeze is my current client and it is too early right now to say how this will turn out. I will however comment on a previous client (will remain nameless) who has failed so far at their SL presence, (not logged in for a few months, traffic @ 0) This was an extremely successful and fast growing technology business in RL. I had every indication that their employees were loyal and open to the SL presence. The failure was not in the technology available, but rather the time (or person hours) that this company was willing to contribute to the project, however they had plenty of money. With this particular client, i found it very difficult to be taken seriously as a woman avitar (the flirting wastes alot of time) working purely in the virtual space, as opposed to a real life person (man or woman) with a real life office, physical paperwork, physical address and maybe the legal definition of a business.

While i am very confident of my marketing and technical skills in SL, it is hard to put these into practice when the client doesn't gain confidence to begin with and seems to be focused too much on the ultimate beauty of the avitar. Regardless of what i communicated to this client in countless emails, and text chat, the messages i was sending somehow didnt get across. I was not seen as the SL business expert, but rather the game player, while the client relied on spotty journalism by people who claimed to understand virtual business but had no presence.

so what to do:
make the avitar less beautiful? NO. I am a woman and have a right to present myself in the best way possible, and yes, i was wearing business suits.

improve the interface? besides the occasional chat lag and the limits on groups and other complaints like the weird confusing voting in groups, the interface is just fine. it may not be as intuitive as a web browser, but SL is not the web. it is a 3D world interface. nothing big to change besides colors and fonts, but that is just silly spoon feeding.

improve the service? YES SL is getting better but is in dire need of service improvements. grid slow down, IM window error messages, crashing on TP, memory leaks.. we all know what these are. submitting support tickets has gotten better and its a much faster turnaround from since i was born. wow in 2006 it was a joke. an email would come to you after 2 days and the person would say "what was your problem again, i dont understand?" so service has improved for sure, graphics too, but still a long way to go.

improve the transition of rl businesses to sl? yes, but let consultants such as myself do this, this is not up to linden labs. In fact they have taking huge liberties in making this happen. i do applaud them for creating the second life grid website and providing logos for branding. I also applaud the creationg of the consultant listings, but there are still problems with these listings and there is a redundant listing in the main website that hasnt been removed (and one cannot edit their listing) I believe Linden Labs should only provide the basic grid service and leave commerce, marketing, and all other activities on the grid, to the residents. Linden Labs is a service provider, not a government.

That said, RL companies would be making a mistake to be quick to judge the potential of SL if they were not actively engaged in SL activities. Too often i hear opinions from people who will not begin SL because of their prejudices, or of what they read or thing or heard, usually from others who do not use SL. ~A.A.

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Permalink Reply by AWM Mars on May 1, 2008 at 6:03am

I agree.
However there is a completely new form of business accumen required in the new fronteir. Mainly immediate accessibility. Clients that would have to communicate via relatively slow emials, and or phone calls, whereby they could be deflected to a time when you could perhaps deal with them with quality time, you can now be bombarded with IM's and clients TPing directly to your location, or expecting to be with your immediate presence to discuss their business at their time, not always yours.
Another aspect is that you can deal direct with people that would have perhaps otherwise been aloof, gaining a direct persepective with their Avatar that could only be mimic'd in RL by an actual face to face meeting on predetermined means. You then gain a 'opinion' of that person going beyond a vision you may produce over the phone, or via email etc.

This platform is almost alien to the vast majority of business models we have seen develop over the years, much like the internet presence of the office environment into an extension, this now even more. 'People' actually going out into the 'world' and portraying their business/themselves in a more personal way. Many business people may shy away from that directness of contact or simply cannot yet cope with it.

Future Works deals exclusively with 'minorities' or those perhaps perceived as not being viable/serious business people, such as women and ethnic minorities, whereby they are under valued. It is a very real issue for the human race, let alone SL and other such immediate platforms of business. Previously, the 'face' of a business person could be 'disguised' behind a layer of 'distant' communication, are now brought right into the frame, whereby opinion and judgements by natural human instincts, are formed with this immediancy.

I leave you with this thought... why do we sometimes speak slower and more pronouced to a person in a wheel chair, or assume they need our help? Do we do the same to someone that has lost an arm?
On the flipside, the same person in a wheelchair in RL, would not be subjected to that 'judgement' in their abilities, they can literaly fly. :¬)

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brock on May 2, 2008 at 12:51am

Amilie,

I totally understand what you mean, changing the ‘mindset’ of RL businesses isn’t done overnight.
It’s clearly the company you spoke about went for the “we’re on sl” exposure and had no intention to really reach out to the community.

Changing people’s expectations about virtual worlds like SL is only achievable through proper education. Most businesses gather their knowledge about VW’s from the media who played a major role in establishing this prejudice hyped environment.

As to your female avatar, personally I think women have an edge in the SL environment. The constant inappropriate flirtatious approach from the companies employees is another example of how the vast majority of people still consider SL a ‘sex’ game. Hence my question, on how to raise the level of professionalism….

So for the moment, stay confident about your abilities and your vision. Like RL, there will always be companies and people who just don’t get it. Although a project like that isn’t as rewarding as a company who really gets it and wants to get involved, consider it a learning curve for yourself and move on to the next one.

J.

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