California High Speed Rail: A Metaverse Vision

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The use of machinima for project proposals is an interesting move into the more traditional CAD world. Machinima may lack the highly polished visuals that architects and designers have become used to but it adds in the ability to communicate on a human scale and allows a much stronger ability to 'tell a story'. The movie below details Avatrian's proposal for RailLA.org's call for design ideas to revitalize downtown Los Angeles:



The machinima showcases various concepts, real world implementations and original designs. Avatrian used a virtual world platform in order to implement thier ideas in a manner wherein it can be communicated effectively with 3D content designed and built as needed.

We like it, indeed we presented something similar to Cross Rail in London 5 or so years ago. We may of been a bit ahead of our time on that one as im not sure the guys in suits were ready for a mix of 'Trainz' and virtual worlds. Machinima is starting to knock on the doors of more traditional 3D visualisations.

State of the Metaverse 2008

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Gary Hayes of http://www.personalizemedia.com has produced an insightful short film entitled The 'Social Virtual' World's A Stage. The film takes a look at over 50 virtual world systems that currently make up the Metaverse as we know it.

Its interesting to note that amongst the first person style words no one system stands out from the rest. Its been 10 years since we started work in the Metaverse and as we noted in our post Second Life/Web 2.0? Virtual Worlds Circa 1998 Is Where It Was At... not too much has changed in the last decade.

Gary's film is embedded below:



It is also interesting to note that the term Metaverse is coming back into fashion. It become distinctly unfashionable to talk about the Metaverse after the first web bubble burst with the term being replaced by 'Virtual Worlds' or 'Virtual Environments'.

Perhaps web based terms that come into and out of fashion is the subject for a future post - how many people have used the term 'Cyberspace' in recent articles or conversation (?) perhaps 1998 was where it was at after all...

Build a Virtual City - Shelter Buy a House Rebuild A Life

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Shelter, the United Kingdom's national charity campaigning on housing and homelessness, has set up a virtual plot of land with the aim of building a city to help the homeless.

Shelter's vision is that everyone should have a home - somewhere decent, safe, affordable and permanent.Shelter helps more than 170,000 people a year fight for their rights, get back on their feet, and find and keep a home.

Running in Flash the city is made out of iconic pixelart with plots available to buy at varying prices according your choice of bulding. Green space is available from as little as £5 with houses starting at £10, the money goes direct to the charity.

Being able to help the homeless by purchasing a house in a virtual world is a unique and clever concept, the image below illustrates the interface and our house (far left) in the city:

• A £10 terraced house could pay for a ten minute call to Shelter’s free national helpline.
  
  
• A £20 Victorian house could pay for a 'starting at school' pack to help a child who has been homeless settle into a new school.
  
  
• A £100 Georgian house could help provide a detailed consultation with a trained housing adviser.
  
  
• A £500 department store could help run a monthly housing advice surgery in a local community centre.

Come and be our neighbour in Shelters Virtual City, your be in good company, Steve Fry lives in the windmill over the road...

You can go direct to our plot from here.

For more information see http://www.buildacity.org.uk/

Back to the MetaVerse: The Roadmap

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Its not often we say this, but 'The Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D Web' is one of the best reports we have read for a long time. Written by a cross industry group of authors it provides a balanced, informed and educational overview of virtual worlds, digital earths and the concept of the MetaVerse.

The introduction to the report provides a good summary of its contents:

Taking its name from the immersive virtual world imagined by Neal Stephenson in his visionary novel, Snow Crash, the Metaverse Roadmap (MVR) is the first public ten-year forecast and visioning survey of 3D Web technologies, applications, markets, and potential social impacts.

Areas of exploration include the convergence of Web applications with networked computer games and virtual worlds, the use of 3D creation and animation tools in virtual environments, digital mapping, artificial life, and the underlying trends in hardware, software, connectivity, business innovation and social adoption that will drive the transformation of the World Wide Web in the coming decade.

The MVR explores multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web, not a single path to a "3D-only" web. An array of 3D web enhancements are emerging, visual extensions to the participatory web technologies.

You can download the 23 page document direct from http://metaverseroadmap.org/