Subject: Re: [mmox] mmox Digest, Vol 1, Issue 48

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:17:15 GMT

<representatives from 3 different virtual worlds met in a virtual world to hash out the details of how to bring the MMOX meeting into their respective virtual worlds and allow meeting participation from within them

Excuse me, but you do not "represent" these virtual worlds. You did this without the public's consent. It's also not up to you to do gate-keeping and "allow" meeting participation from within them.

Prokofy Neva

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From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:21:39 -0800

Can we please stop the sound-byte-ing. We're not daring pioneers in the 
larger sense -- virtual worlds have been around forever. There have been 
many attempts over many years (Habitat, ActiveWorlds, The Palace, all 
the VRML in the '90s...) , and interoperability between dozens of 
vendors, including imagery and real-time voice, has been done since the 
'80s. What's new is that the technology is being popularized to more 
users. I suggest we focus on building features that users want to pay 
for, because that's how things actually get done on a larger scale.

Btw: If it's a regular video stream, served by video streaming servers, 
and watchable through a regular web browser, does that even count as 
"bringint the meeting into the virtual world"? It's just video 
streaming, not interactive. I agree it's useful and worthwhile, but I 
really do wish that the sound-byting would end...

Sincerely,

jw

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From: Lawson English <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:39:25 -0700

Jon Watte wrote:
>
> Can we please stop the sound-byte-ing. We're not daring pioneers in 
> the larger sense -- virtual worlds have been around forever. There 
> have been many attempts over many years (Habitat, ActiveWorlds, The 
> Palace, all the VRML in the '90s...) , and interoperability between 
> dozens of vendors, including imagery and real-time voice, has been 
> done since the '80s. What's new is that the technology is being 
> popularized to more users. I suggest we focus on building features 
> that users want to pay for, because that's how things actually get 
> done on a larger scale.
>
> Btw: If it's a regular video stream, served by video streaming 
> servers, and watchable through a regular web browser, does that even 
> count as "bringint the meeting into the virtual world"? It's just 
> video streaming, not interactive. I agree it's useful and worthwhile, 
> but I really do wish that the sound-byting would end...
>
> Sincerely,
>
> jw
>

Well, the in-world meeting seemed productive to me. If you're not 
familiar with the Metanomics and Science Friday venues, you don't know 
how powerful a shared inworld/outworld experience can be even with 
minimal hardware (nothing as elaborate as what Qwaq apparently can do).

Sharing text chat, a visual space (or more) and the ability to interact 
live in-world and RL is different than what your describing, at least it 
feels different to me. Croquet's app sharing appears to take it to a 
higher level in many ways, but the principle is the same. People get a 
sense of shared space better in 3D than simply looking at 2D, even if 
the shared space is a bunch of avatars watching a movie screen.

And multi-world chat should rock if we get it working right.

Lawson

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From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:41:51 -0800

> minimal hardware (nothing as elaborate as what Qwaq apparently can do).

Being that our company sells virtual world systems based around the 
power of virtual world meetings, and we hold all our corporate status 
meetings in our world, I would say I know very well how powerful it is. 
I'm one of the biggest advocates of using virtual worlds!
However the specific case I was talking about was the perceived attempt 
to frame a discussion about setting up a live video stream from an 
upcoming meeting as something that's somehow groundbreaking and new. I 
find that trying to sound-byte things like that end up confusing outside 
observers, and obscuring the inside work that's really going on.

Sincerely,

jw

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From: Lawson English <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:39:52 -0700

Jon Watte wrote:
>> familiar with the Metanomics and Science Friday venues, you don't 
>> know how powerful a shared inworld/outworld experience can be even 
>> with minimal hardware (nothing as elaborate as what Qwaq apparently 
>> can do).
>>
>
> meetings in our world, I would say I know very well how powerful it 
> is. I'm one of the biggest advocates of using virtual worlds!
> However the specific case I was talking about was the perceived 
> attempt to frame a discussion about setting up a live video stream 
> from an upcoming meeting as something that's somehow groundbreaking 
> and new. I find that trying to sound-byte things like that end up 
> confusing outside observers, and obscuring the inside work that's 
> really going on.
>
>
It's groundbreaking and new to:

1) try to make it work for multiple worlds at the same time
2) discuss the whole project in-world
3) figure out the details of sharing in-world chat between worlds

Ideally, we should be able to TP or even walk from one world to the next 
while keeping our avatars' appearance as we like and not require 
everyone to log into SL wtih the SL avatar.

You seem to prefer having some kind of window into the other world but 
keeping the avatar in your own.

Or something.

Lawson

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From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:58:10 -0800

> 1) try to make it work for multiple worlds at the same time

Has been done since the '80s.

> 2) discuss the whole project in-world

Has been done since the '80s. Any real VW developer really needs to do 
this, or he's just blowing smoke.

> 3) figure out the details of sharing in-world chat between worlds

Has been done since the '80s (although it started out with voice chat, 
not text chat).

Note: there was a large and thriving virtual world, virtual reality and 
interactive simulation industry before 3D graphics cards became 
commodity hardware on consumer PCs. And, as it turns out, those 
communities did a lot of research and development that may now either 
become relevant, or serve as bad examples. Those who ignore history are 
doomed to repeat it.

>
> Ideally, we should be able to TP or even walk from one world to the 
> next while keeping our avatars' appearance as we like and not require 

I'm sorry if you feel that my proposal was hard to understand, because 
that's not at all what the proposal is. In fact, to the user, the 
experience is that the user can invite someone from another world, or 
the user can travel to some other world, and meet other people from 
other worlds, and while that is happening, voice chat, emotes, objects, 
and other things the user is used to doing keep working as usual.

The specifics of my proposal address such issues as "how do I make sure 
that my car actually still works when I'm visiting another world?" and 
"do I have to learn a new user interface if I visit another world with 
different capabilities?" and "will other people see my 'dancing the 
Riverdance' emote?" which we've run into when we've done these kinds of 
integrations before. Also, my proposal addresses business realities, 
such as what actual users with actual money are asking for, and what 
real problems can be solved with interoperability. It turns out that if 
there's money in a solution, that solution tends to be more concrete and 
happen sooner than if it's just a few interested people doing it out of 
altruism or curiosity.

And, no, I don't think the solution to those questions is "everybody 
should use a run-time compatible physics, scripting, networking, UI and 
code execution environment."

Sincerely,

jw