Chinese Language MMO

There have been many experiment in learning a language in an environment like Second Life. Now a language specific MMO has been opened in BETA for learning Chinese:

Zon!

A quote from the site details the purpose of the online game:

“By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.

The nice part about Zon is it is all browser based. No client applications are required, so you can log in and play from school, work or home. Zon is a persistant environment, so when you log off, the world still keeps going.

As you progress through the game, your character graduates from the tourist class, to a resident of Zon and then finally a citizen, where you can own businesses and create new content for the world. “

Hard Science and Video Games

Wired has a gallery of photos up at their website showing the hard science behind video game technology:

Gallery: The Hard Science Behind Video Game Technologies

There are seven technologies shown in pictures with full descriptions and comments by readers.

Fast Forward to 2058

Cosmic Log has a long post up about a new book “The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today“:

The World in 2058

The book, as you might imagine, ranges over many technologies and topics. There are some references to virtual worlds, one in the question and answer section of this article:

“Q: I like the idea that trying to explain the new jobs of the future would be as difficult as trying to explain what a Webmaster does to the man in the 1950s gray flannel suit. Nevertheless, do you have any thoughts on what any of those jobs might be, even in very general terms? (E.g., virtual-worldmaster…)

A: I can imagine people actually working in virtual environments where productive, cooperative work is undertaken, and I think we will find people helping others to take advantage of masses of information that are inaccessible or too vast to process in real time today. With billions of Internet-enabled devices or at least programmable devices on the network, there seems to be ample room for new services that manage these devices to be developed. “Hi, I’m your virtual entertainment manager! What movies would you like to watch next week?”"

There are many comments to this article that are as interesting as the article itself. Contributors to the book include:

• Vint Cerf, Vice President of Google; known as a “Father of the Internet”
  
• Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., a geneticist who led the Human Genome Project
  
• Dr. Wanda Jones, Director of the Office on Women’s Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  
• Ray Kurzweil, an inventor whose developments include the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first text-to-speech synthesizer
  
• General James E. Cartwright, Commander of United States Strategic Command
  
• Kim Dae-jung, the former President of the Republic of Korea
  
• Ronald Noble, Secretary General of Interpol
  
• Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner; called “the father of the Green Revolution”
  
• Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director UNICEF, first former volunteer to serve as director of Peace Corp, and current president and CEO of World Learning
  
• Gerardus ‘t Hooft, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands; Nobel Prize in Physics
  
• Craig Newmark, Internet pioneer and founder of craigslist
  

Cyberwarfare Training – DARPA Style

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has proposed a virtual training ground for tomorrow’s cyberwarriors. Wired Magazine has an article online about this new proposal:

Cyberwarfare: Darpa’s New ‘Space Race’

The actual proposal can be found at FedBizOpps.gov with solicitation number DARPA-BAA08-43 under the title ‘National Cyber Range’.

“Under a directive signed by the President — and OK’d by Congress — nearly every arm of the government’s security apparatus is starting work on a massive national cybersecurity initiative, designed to protect the United States from electronic attack (and strike at adversaries online, as well). Darpa’s role: Create a cyberwarfare range where all these new forms of electronic combat can be tried out. According to a defense official familiar with the program: “Congress has given DARPA a direct order; that’s only happened once before — with the Sputnik program in the ’50s.”"

Here’s a sampling of what they want to do with this new virtual platform:

• Conduct unbiased, quantitative and qualitative assessment of information assurance and survivability tools in a representative network environment.
• Replicate complex, large-scale, heterogeneous networks and users in current and future Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems and operations.
• Enable multiple, independent, simultaneous experiments on the same infrastructure.
• Enable realistic testing of Internet/Global-Information-Grid (GIG) scale research.
• Develop and deploy revolutionary cyber testing capabilities.
• Enable the use of the scientific method for rigorous cyber testing.

This goes a bit beyond any virtual world platform available today. How might this massive new project affect virtual world technologies in the future? Well, let’s look back to the early 1970’s for another DARPA project, and what resulted from that project (taken from the Internet Society webpage):

“In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which emerged from the research was known as the “Internet.” The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).”

Might DARPA’s efforts in creating a virtual Cyberwarefare platform eventually spawn the next iteration of the Internet, the ‘Metaverse’ holy grail of virtual platforms? If you were reading an article in National Geographic or Popular Science in the early 1970’s about the proposed networking project by DARPA, could you in your wildest imagination think that it would ultimately lead to the Internet as it exists today, along with its rapid absorption into almost all facets of our lives today?

Virtual Universe x 2

There are now two new ways to travel the known universe virtually from your desktop:

Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe in Vivid 3-D

The New York Times has a story on two new ways that you can travel through the universe while viewing scientifically accurate models of celestial bodies. One is from Microsoft, the other from Google.

Microsoft has launched the WorldWide Telescope project. You need to download software to your PC before blasting off into the cosmos.

“There are many online astronomy sites, but astronomers say the Microsoft entry sets a new standard in three-dimensional representation of vast amounts data plucked from space telescopes, the ease of navigation, the visual experience and features like guided tours narrated by experts.

“Exploring the virtual universe is incredibly smooth and seamless like a top-of-the-line computer game, but also the science is correct,” said Alexander Szalay, a professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins. “No sacrifices have been made. It just feels as if you are in it.”

There is even a professional version being developed with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The other virtual universe platform is from Google. This project is Google Sky, and layers space data on the existing Google Earth platform. The one surprising fact about these two services is that there is no advertising in either. This should shock anyone who has watched Microsoft’s pursuit of an advertising platform (the latest in the form of an attempted purchase of Yahoo).

“Microsoft and Google are spirited competitors and antagonists in the rough-and-tumble commercial markets of Internet search and software. Yet in online astronomy, both sides proclaim mutual respect and say their sole rivalry is in scientific discovery and public education. They say they have no plans to sell advertising on the astronomy sites. “

Jump to the full story and read all about the motivations and champions of these two projects and how they will supplement education in the classroom for media starved students.

Where it all started?

Bruce Damer has been busy building the foundation for the Virtual Worlds Timeline. He started this project last year, and it’s starting to take shape and get some content. He is hoping that everyone will pitch in on this effort and help to document the worlds that have passed on into the virtual ether (with videos, screenshots and personal accounts).

For a trip in the Wayback Machine (where’s Mr. Peabody when you need him?), take a look at these videos from Lucas Arts Habitat. I once stumbled on an interesting paper that was presented at the First Annual International Conference on Cyberspace in 1990 on The Lessons Learned of Lucasfilm’s Habitat. It’s obvious from these videos that this was all so new when this was released by LucasArts.

From the early days of Worlds Chat to our current virtual world platforms one thing has stayed consistent, the humans behind the avatars (though we have all aged a bit). Looking back allows us to see what’s changed, and what still is deeply embedded in these worlds. History is important if we are to avoid the errors of the past.

Latest Wonderland Videos

Metaverse U has a video interview with one of the development team members from the Sun Wonderland project online:

Deron Johnson – Project Wonderland – SUN

New Media Consortium’s announcement at Sun WERC:

Open Virtual Worlds Project

Sun Microsystems employee video on Wonderland:

Project Wonderland DEMO Walkthrough

VirtuED Wonderland Servers are Online!

Yes, the day you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived! The VirtuED Wonderland servers are up and running. One is a Wonderland server, the other is a World Builder server. We have both servers running in a VMWare environment (read, easy to pop out as many as we will ultimately need). If you are part of the VirtuED project you should have already received your URL and login instructions via email.

The Wonderland client currently runs on both IE and FireFox, both need Java to run. And that is one of the best things about this platform, it is launched from a webpage and auto updates to the latest build (very network aware and friendly). To get started just jump to the project URL and click the Wonderland link.

The World Builder server is a little different. To run this you need to have FireFox and Java installed (it does not work with IE at this time). To launch World Builder go to the project URL and click the World Builder link. Once in the editor it’s pretty obvious how everything works, especially if you’ve ever played any builder games on your computer (like the Sims). You’ll have to look to the forums for FAQ’s and unofficial docs for Wonderland. There are several libraries of objects to test out on our World Builder server. Keep in mind that this is v0.3, and that v0.5 will have a new rendering engine and graphics.

And typing out those fractional version numbers reminds me of something.  This platform is not even in BETA code yet!  I get so many emails from people complaining about Wonderland, the graphics engine, and the fact that it is not flashy and can’t possibly compete with a platform like Second Life that has been online five years now (even longer if you count its development and BETA).  The fact that this platform is already online and available for anyone to download and host is amazing in and of itself.  Show me any other major platform (or even stand alone game) that is put out in the public this early in the cycle (excluding Croquet and OpenSim).  To complain about these factors at this stage is just silly, and shows no understanding of software development cycles. 

So getting back to the post, here’s a quickie conference room that John Newton tossed together while testing the server in VMWare:

Feel free to wipe this and start a new project if you want. Save your space and email me if you want it loaded up on the Wonderland server to play around with. John has a script that he wrote that allows him to quickly copy a model from the World Builder server over to the Wonderland server and restart/reload it.

John’s test room is currently active on the Wonderland server:

We will be setting up a time after school is out in a few weeks to do a test of our group with voice. We’ve done a few tests with a couple of avatars and the voice works very well. We just got instructions tonight on integrating applications into the environment, so look for another post later in the week on this subject. We will start with Open Office apps (if you look way out in the distance outside the door you will see one window floating on the horizon, an artifact from the MPK-20 build?). After we test Open Office a bit we will try VNC and Windows applications. Since these will be critical to our efforts in next year’s pilots, we are anxious to get these up and running.

I feel a little background is necessary for those who are following this blog (or have recently discovered it), and might have some familiarity with other virtual world platforms. We decided to get involved in this project from early on in the development cycle. We got involved with the Immersive Education Initiative last year (back when we were only running PacRimX), and followed the early announcements of the Wonderland project and Sun’s inclusion in the initial platforms of the Media Grid (1, 2, and 3). We made contact with Sun right after their Wonderland announcements and initial videos (as a result of them seeing one of the PacRimX blog entries), and we asked to be early partners. We even went over and met the development team in February during their Open Lab day and got some face time with the dev team talking about possible pilot projects we want to do next school year. We’ve assembled a team of educators from around Stanislaus County to get involved in this project. And I just got word that our Kyoto partners in the PacRimX Project would like to join this project as well (pictures and bios to be added soon to the Members page).

We see a lot of potential with this platform. It’s not Second Life (at least not yet), that’s pretty obvious. Pretty much all development to date has focused on indoor spaces. The early focus has been on application integration, voice, and web/Java integration (all the components for distance learning and collaborative meetings). These features are also what set it apart from platforms like Second Life.  Better graphics and avatar models are coming. It’s exciting to be involved this early in the development and to have such close contact with the development team and the developer’s community (which is still coming together in various ways). We are hopeful that we can be advocates for education’s needs in these early tests of the platform.

Since kicking off this project I’ve received emails asking “Why Wonderland? Why not some other project like Croquet or OpenSim?”  We already have a mature project in Second Life at Modesto City Schools (PacRimX). We (and I am speaking for Modesto City Schools with this comment) only have so much time to invest in these technologies. We decided to work with Sun and their new platform because of the size of their company and the people involved with this project. We like what we see in this early release, and have some idea of where it is going. And we are impressed with some of the people and groups that are also joining in on this project (including the New Media Consortium) this early in its development. And most important, we really support the open source model they are using for the Wonderland platform. We are excited to be working with a large group of educators from across Stanislaus County with this project, as we all are interested in new technologies that can engage our students.

For anyone wanting to follow the development of this project you can keep an eye on the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative, join the Sun Immersion SIG, bookmark the Sun MPK20 page (complete with downloads to run your own server and clients), follow the Wonderblog (blog of the Wonderland dev team), and of course keep an eye on this blog (VirtuED) for all the latest virtual world news and updates on our members and their Wonderland projects. And last, but not least, our friend at Sun, Kevin Roebuck’s Almost Daily Blog is a great source of information. Kevin is an intelligent guy and really committed to promoting this platform. He’s got a mix of videos and links on his blog related to the Wonderland project.

There’s a lot out there on Wonderland, you just need to know where to look. Now that you know, get going and see what might interest you about this open source project. 

90% Corporate Failure Rate in Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds News has an article up today about an updated Gartner study:

90% of Corporate Virtual World Efforts Fail in 18 Months (Chalk It Up to Experimentation)

No, this is not a doom and gloom article on the state of virtual worlds. Instead, this study highlights that many corporate virtual world projects to date have been mostly low cost experimentation efforts.

The Gartner study does not recommend ignoring virtual worlds.

“Companies need to start thinking what their virtual world strategy is, incorporate it into their internet strategy and merge their two-dimensional web pages to support a ‘3D web place.’ Virtual world presence is not to replace the ‘2D world’ but to supplement it,” Prentice said.

The article closes out on a positive note:

“A ray of sunshine at the bottom of Gartner’s press release balances out the dark cloud headline: “By 2012, Gartner estimates that 70 per cent of organizations will have established their own private virtual worlds and predicts that these internal worlds will have greater success due to lower expectations, clearer objectives and better constraints.”

BusinessWeek Article on Virtual Wordplaces

BusinessWeek has an article online about virtual workplaces:

The (virtual) Global Office

This article talks about the now past trend of using virtual worlds as marketing platforms, and how the current trend is to use the platforms for employee collaboration and communication. One quote from the article touches on density in worlds like Second Life as it pertains to marketing potential:

“As of Apr. 30, there were more than 13.4 million residents of Second Life, but only 340,623 had logged on in the previous seven days. Those users in turn are spread out over 65,000 virtual acres, so foot traffic in any particular place—say, on a company’s branded island—tends to be light. “It’s fair to say we saw a bubble when companies began to market in Second Life, and now companies are entering less publicly but for internal enterprise use than for external marketing,” says Dave Elchoness, founder and CEO of VRWorkplace, a virtual world consulting firm. “There’s not a large population for marketing in Second Life or other virtual worlds,” he says.”

The article also points out that the pilot projects taking place now are not the multimillion dollar projects of a year ago. Smaller and more focused projects at companies and educational institutions are more of the norm:

“But is using virtual world technology cost-effective? Marketing can be expensive: According to a 2007 estimate by Parks Associates, companies spent $15 million advertising in virtual worlds in the U.S. in 2006 and the figure is expected to rise tenfold by 2012. Other pursuits are less pricey. The costs of creating a virtual world mainly reflect the time to build and customize an environment, according to Forrester Research (FORR). “Our goal has been to say that for a whole pilot for a year they better be able to do it for $10,000,” says Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq, which focuses on lower-end graphics to keep costs down. Companies that want something more elaborate can spend much more with other vendors, Nuyens says.”

IBM’s efforts are mentioned at the end of the article:

“As unproven as these new digitized worlds may be, IBM is adopting virtual world technologies with gusto. The company has begun a mentoring program that encourages people who are retired or are about to retire to share knowledge with newer employees. Many in the program are using virtual worlds to meet, mentor, and make presentations. Globally, IBM is finding that virtual worlds are starting to help bridge culture and distance. IBM’s Hamilton says virtual worlds actually make employees want to start working relationships with one another, adding, “Geography doesn’t seem to be the barrier it once was.”

The push to move big business into these virtual worlds last year was terribly premature. Linden Lab leveraged the wild success of platforms like World of Warcraft in the media to tout Second Life as the next big thing. The media went into a feeding frenzy and all kinds of hype developed around the story, fed by a few highly touted success stories (of which BusinessWeek published the most popular on a multimillion dollar virtual real estate baroness). Thankfully this hype cycle ended towards the end of 2007.

The platforms, specifically Second Life, were not ready for this marketing push, either with active user populations (customers) or the ability to support large numbers of people concurrently in an online virtual world. User concurrency will be an issue for years to come with any of the virtual worlds, including the ones just now coming to market. The most success will be found in small learning communities, workgroups, and any other collaborative environment focused on a real world group (classroom, team, group or community). Any virtual world use that leverages geographic distance to pull together groups of people will be the early winners in this new shift in focus away from marketing products.

Another trend that will accelerate over the next two years will be the privatizing of virtual worlds, or the ability to ‘host your own worlds’. Explosive growth and acceptance by the mainstream will occur when all of these private servers are linked together for a global Metaverse. Think early 1990’s and the Internet, and that’s where we are sitting today with virtual world technologies.