Flying Saucers for the Commute

From The Guardian:

"In fictional visions of the future they fill the skies, zipping people around in air-cushioned comfort. But flying cars have been conspicuously absent from real life".

The M200G | The Guardian | The Telegraph

Ambient Orbs - Making Data Visible

An ambient orb is a little ball that changes color in coordination with a selected data input. The orbs were originally used to track stocks, but now Southern California Edison is beginning to use them as tool to allow people to track, and hopefully change, their energy consumption patterns. Wired | On The Media (listen)

Scaling Second Life - A First Person Report

Yesterday I had a chance to attend an online meeting at the Architecture Island in Second Life on the issue of scale in the Virtual World.

This was the first meeting I have ever attended in Second Life, and to be completely honest I still have problems even sitting down. Let's just say that I am still learning how to use my avatar.

Clumsiness aside, it was an interesting discussion about the scaling of objects, including architecture, in Second Life. Objects in Second Life are a larger scale mainly because as you move around the spaces you are watching your avatar from a camera on top of his, her, or its head. The subsequent scalar illusion makes that most avatars are about one and a half times larger the size of a typical human. How do you then use Second Life as a tool to create prototypes for real projects? The group decided to create a universal standard to help that transition.

But the most interesting conversations happened when the participants where questioning the very idea of scale and even built environment in Second Life. Do you need things to be scaled correctly if through clever camera manipulations you can inhabit a small model as much as you can a full-scale version?

On the issue of the virtual world of the future some people where saying how it will begin to look more and more like the cities that we are used to. Except that they would be inhabited completely differently, as a digital representation of your space but connecting you to information and, as mentioned before in Archinect, as a way to augment your Real Life. It seems that even when anything is possible people still seek that which is familiar. I would have to agree that it is nice to be able to interact space in ways that you can relate to, after all we have enough globfrag in the 2D virtual world, I could not imagine how it would be if on top of learning to digest the new information you also had to learn how to negotiate your space all over again.

Overall it was an interesting meeting, I was a little surprised no one was using SL's new voice capability, but instead everything was typed (good way to keep a transcribe though). What will the virtual future look like?

If you are interested in helping or want to find out about other events go here.

This entry was posted originally in Archinect.

democratizing virtual world design and browsing

As mentioned before, there is a great move now towards realizing that virtual worlds are just at their infant stage. Recently, Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs predicted at the Always On conference that within ten years the number of people in virtual worlds (like Second Life) will overtake the number of web users.

Looking towards that future, Netscape alumns launched Multiverse, the first direct competitor to Second Life. Instead of a single virtual world, Multiverse is a platform that allows you to create and browse different worlds and games using the same avatar. Their economic system is also different from Second Life's, allowing you to sell anything and taking a 10% tax.

Finally, an article in which Architect Lesley Gavin, BT futurologist, looks ahead to a time when real and virtual worlds mix as easily as making a mobile phone call. BBC News