The Clever Zebra guys have joined the OpenVCE project which aims to proved an open source set of tools and artifacts for collaboration, meetings and training in 3D spaces well integrated with traditional 2D tools like blogs and wikis.  See Nick Wilson's post for more details.

This interests me greatly as there will be significant overlap with some work that we're doing to provide an integrated system for taking content from a collaborative 2D content management system and allowing the collaborators to launch a meeting in a 3D space (currently SL, soon to be OpenSim too)  taking the content with them to display on a scrollable, clickable browser, and having tight integration and archiving of the meeting chat with the original CMS.  All part of a big push to make 3D environments easier to access and really useful. I'll be fascinated to see what come out of the OpenVCE project.

Analyst outfit ThinkBalm have published a detailed report 'Immersive Internet Business Value Study 2009' outlining the results of a survey of 66 organisations and 15 in-depth interviews covering 2008 and Q1 2009 focussing on the value to businesses of adopting immersive internet technologies, by which they mean virtual world environments.  The report makes highly encouraging reading, giving weight to the anecdotal evidence reported in previous studies that these environments are of significant value and utility.  I would urge reading the entire report, but here are some headlines:

• 95% of those surveyed reported some level of success ("Is or feels like a success")
• More than 40% saw positive total economic benefit, ranging from $10k to more than $1Million and 42% said they 'didn't know' (which probably suggests that they didn't have mechanisms to measure it, not that there wasn't any)
• 74% said they would or might expand their investment this year or next
• Learning/Training and meetings most prevalent use cases
• Reasons for preferring over alternatives - low cost, increased engagement
• Biggest benefit - enabling people in disparate locations to spend time together, followed by opportunity to show innovation and cost saving
  

There is a wealth of interesting information in the stats and charts, and the usual range of technical hurdles  were raised by the interviewed participants.  One of the most fascinating conclusions was that the level of engagement means that "Immersive meetings are more like real meetings than they are like web conferences"

Given the stature of some of the participants - Microsoft, IBM, BP, BAE - a report like this should be taken seriously by anyone wanting to improve the nature of collaboration in their organisation.  And if you've read it and want to know more, see a demo or launch a pilot - contact us :-)

IBM's Social Computing group have published an interesting paper entitled "Acquiring a Professional 'Second Life': Problems and Prospects for the Use of Virtual Worlds in Business".  It details the trials that the group have done with a variety of business users and outlines both the issues met and the benefits to be had.  Rather like the Forterra 'Recipe For Success' paper that I wrote about, the most useful aspect are the user anecdotes and quotes.  For example "Comparing other technologies, big step up. Can probably adequately replace F2F for some tasks.", or "I really do think there's potential in using Second Life to collaborate in teams".  It's worth a read.

So just as my interest in Sun's Wonderland virtual world platform starts to really kick in, Oracle goes and buys Sun.  Now what?  Is it worth investing time building tools and solutions on Wonderland?  I don't expect Oracle to allow resources to continue to be devoted to the platform given the rather speculative nature of the technology and the lack of any kind of prospect for income from it in the near or even middle term.  But the virtual world community is one of the most enthusiastic and committed of any I've seen, so I'd venture that Wonderland might end up as a truly independent Open Source project, like OpenSim and, from an enterprise viewpoint, a better bet for collaboration. 
My growing interest in Wonderland has been triggered by the incredibly hackish ideas I've had to come up with to do useful collaborative things on the SecondLife/OpenSim platform.  For example, I've got prototype ideas for a scrollable in-world browser/document displayer for SL, but there's a lot of work required to achieve something that Wonderland just gives you via the X11 shared applications support.  Similarly, collaborating on say a spreadsheet or a text document in SL involves either rendering it as a bitmap and uploading it (automating the upload via a bot is also a hack but one I've already implemented),  working in an online equivalent like google docs or a decent collaborative online CMS, or using a desktop streaming client viewed using the QuickTime capabilities in SL.  Again Wonderland supports shared apps, so no issue (especially if you already use OpenOffice).
I've got a lot invested in tool development in SL, and for the moment it is still the most expressive and immersive platform, so I plan to continue working with SL but any spare time I get I'll be pushing Wonderland too.

"So as you can see, the colour of this panel is OK but that one needs to be brighter".... "then you have to touch this button."...."At this point the graph shows how changing to super-bright saved us quillions of pounds..."  Come on it must have happened to you - despite all their amazing immersive features,  even the best virtual worlds don't convey direction of gaze as well as we might like - SL makes a really good attempt, but nine times out of ten you still end up thinking 'What panel, which button, where on the graph?'.  So I set out to look at ways to make this better when giving presentations in SL at least.  The video clip shows my first experiments, first just enabling the in-built selection beams, then supplementing them with my own unmissable pointer :-)

I found out a few interesting things along the way, partly courtesy of the wonderfully helpful folk on the SL Forums.  Firstly, the colour of the in built 'selection' magic beam of dots can be changed in the viewer preferences - managed to miss that all these years!  And that you can't turn them off, at least not as seen by others (which is the point, literally!) You can turn them off using Advanced menu Debug settings, but this has no effect on what anyone else sees.  So for the moment I have a chat switchable pointer that swaps between 'normal' particle chain and 'unmissable' modes.  Should make demoing the other tools I'm working on like whiteboard and noticeboards a lot easier.  And those impromtu whiteboard games of pictionary - "That bit is never a moustache..." :-)

vComm solutions have released a video showing some of the features and architecture of their Aula enterprise training and meeting environment for OpenSim and SL. 

For a higher resolution look - go here
I was lucky enough to get involved in helping make the video, and it suddenly occurred to me that just in getting together to do that, we were demonstrating the power of immersive environments for virtual team working - there were three of us in different parts of the world, and yet we were able to complete the filming and work well together as a team.  This stuff works, and for anyone wanting a ready-to-run way to get started, Aula looks like it might be a good contender.

Update:  I should make it clear that this video was shot in Second Life.  The architecture and facilities offered in OpenSim will apparently be very close if not identical although speech gestures are not yet implemented.  When I get to see the OpenSim solution I'll provide more details.

The announcement on the companies website is currently only available in German, but it says roughly:

vComm aula is a complete virtual world, which is designed for training in the enterprise. Geographically dispersed users can work together in the highly realistic 3D environment. This saves travel and infrastructure costs. vComm aula is based on the platform OpenSim and can be installed on an Intranet.

If you read German, more details of Aula are available at the LearnTec 2009 show website
I was lucky enough to get a tour of the virtual spaces a while ago, since they also exist in Second Life, and I believe that the facilities in SL can also be rented, or set up as a private sim.  I can tell you that Volker Gaessler and his team have done a great job. The quality of the architecture and furnishings is first rate and the feeling of being in a real meeting is quite strong.  The presentation screen and the associated web uploader make displaying presentation slides a quick and simple affair.  I haven't seen the desktop sharing as this is currently only available in OpenSim, but I hope to soon.  This is a very promising project for any enterprise that wants to get started in using virtual environments with the minimum of effort. The current polar conditions in the UK mean a lot of people stuck at home - wouldn't this just be perfect for allowing them to keep working together?

In what is being billed as a 'world first', new school buildings funded by the UKs 'Building Schools For The Future' initiative have been Middlesborough City Learning Center which in itself looks like an amazing IT resource for Middlesborough schools. New buildings for the Acklam Grange School, which hosts the MCLC facility, have been built in Second Life and transferred to the Teen Grid so that pupils can explore them.

From a great video on the Project A page of their wiki, it seems that the MCLC have created some kind of technology for converting the building plans into a set primitive objects inside a controlling object (rezzer) which then instructs them all to move themselves into their correct positions. I've contacted the creators in the hope that they'll tell me more about how the data is fed into SL.

Sadly, despite having such a wonderful ICT resources and futuristic ideas, the old problems don't go away. The most recent news on the Acklam Grange school website is from 2007.

Well finally, my summary and thoughts on Forterra's 'Recipe For Success...' paper. The paper, a recommended read for anyone interested in enterprise uses of VW, was produced by Forterra after their work with the MASIE Center, a New York think-tank for corporate learning. The focus of the work was to have a second look at virtual worlds for enterprise learning, after spending some time in Second Life during the hype cycle of 2006.   more »

There has been a rash of articles and publications recently emphasising the real benefits for enterprises in use of Virtual Worlds, including Forterra's paper 'Recipe For Success' and Jani Pirkola's discussion of developing realXtend using agile methods based partly in the VW itself. (I still plan to write in more detail about both of these soon!) Now CyberTech News has a post that includes a very succint set of reasons why Second Life misses the mark as a platform for enterprise use, the main ones being:

• No way to connect other grids or platforms and teleport between them


• No easy way to extend the API or influence other technical aspects


• No choice/control over service level


• No local install for behind-the-firewall use or as a private walled-garden


• Voice solution won't work with most company firewall policies

I think this is spot on, and I would add to it that getting the SL client itself installed and working within most corporate IT networks is a huge challenge, requiring many steps that run counter to corporate IT policy, starting from downloading the client from a location that is often blacklisted as a games site to then being actually able to do the install to configuring the necessary proxies to opening countless firewall ports (even if VOIP isn't required). Add to that ensuring that the graphics capabilities on a corporate PC are up to the task and you have a huge uphill battle.

Despite this there are still people trying, because SL is I believe the most comprehensive, stable consistent, immersive platform with an unbeatable range of content and social activities. But for how much longer? OpenSim and Wonderland are both catching up, and in the case of OpenSim in some respects overtaking. I still spend time in SL to socialise, to explore and to feel part of a living, evolving big world, but for business meetings and enterprise use? It's starting to look as if OpenSim will be the platform of choice for the next couple of years and maybe Wonderland will be in beta by then. Exciting times.

I've had a few minutes to try the new public beta of Sony HOME, the virtual world for the PS3 that is free to all broadband-connected PS3 owners. Actually it had to be more than a few minutes since with repeated connection errors it took at least 10 minutes to get in. That was after downloading two huge updates to the PS3. Once in, there is a simple tutorial which leads you through the fairly intuitive avatar customisation, then you are dropped into your sparsely furnished apartment. The views are fabulous but purely for show - you can't get over the balcony to actually explore any of it. You are encouraged to head for the hub area, which can be reached either from the lift in the apartment or from the 'world map' which isn't a map at all, but a stack of tiles that spread out with locations on. This reveals that underneath HOME is not so much a world as a a set of separate virtual rooms that you can travel between. Heading for the hub you are faced with a 47Mb download, and similar large downloads will occur when you head to any new area. The advantage of course is that once that's done, the graphics are on the hard drive for good, and since there's no user generated content, you get a more or less lagless experience after the download. What does take a while to appear though are the other characters. HOME has it's own version of the much missed SecondLife 'Ruth' - a translucent glassy AV that you see before the actual shape and clothes download. Once all the other characters had appeared, I was struck by how little variation there were between them. This is partly down to the limited clothes and hair styles available at the start, but even within this it was disturbingly uniform and male - I don't remember seeing a single woman at the time I explored.
The graphic environment is almost garishly bright and sharp with super-saturated colours and lighting effects, but overall it looks pretty good. The hub had several media screens, none of which were showing anything initially - it seems that these don't show streaming video, but instead have to download the full clip and then show that clip over and over. I presume therefore that there is no way of knowing if you are seeing the same thing as your colleagues at the same time. There were also one or two poster boards - everything was of course an advert of some kind. The presence of a locked gate through which an escalator can be seen was interesting - maybe it will be a transport system?
I walked round the hub to the bowling alley and tried to walk in. Unfortunately it is a separate virtual environment, so there was the obligatory tens of Mb download first, then I was able to wander round with around 50 other AVs and play pool, bowling or one of the arcade games machines.
There were numerous huddles of people chatting and when I got close enough I could overhear the odd conversation that was clearly happening using voice - the way the sound falls off with distance seems to work well to keep groups isolated from one another. I don't know if there is a way to have private conversations, I presume so.
On trying to leave the bowling alley I was disappointed to find that despite now having both the hub and the bowling alley on my hard drive there was still a substantial pause going between the two. And there my exploration ended.
So my immediate impression is that it looks pretty good, the current population all look the same and they are nearly all male, and there's not a lot to do. As a way to introduce casual users to the ideas of avatar customisation and moving around in a virtual world it could be valuable. But more importantly I wonder where it's going to go. Who is going to really use it? It is fundamentally a social platform. There are some 18m PS3s in the world. How many of those have keyboards attached, or users willing to pay for and use a bluetooth headset? Without one or other of these there's no social aspect - the onscreen keyboard is basically pointless. So I'll be interested to see what developments Sony roll out, but I don't see this being the next big thing in virtual worlds.

Well finally - a mainstream media outlet, none other than the BBC, publishing a story that shows Second Life and other virtual worlds in a relatively positive light. Tech journalist Bill Thompson has written a fairly skimpy article about his time at the ReLIVE08 education in VW conference. Whilst repeating as everyone seems to need to that SL is used for 'cartoon-like sexual encounters' he also notes the education and research use of virtual environments and has a subtle dig at The Register for always dismissing SL as 'Sadville'. His most interesting points are his summary of the work of Sarah Robbins-Bell in characterising virtual worlds against various metrics, and his suggestion that by labelling themselves grandiosely as 'Worlds' these Persistent Immersive Environments set themselves up to be too readily dismissed by the media. He may have a point there, and many people, myself included, try to avoid the term Virtual World as much as possible.

My copy of LittleBIGPlanet for the PS3 arrived this week. What a beautiful, amazing, addictive thing it is. At heart it's basically a 2D platformer, of a type that has existed since the dawn of home computers, but now with photo-realistic 3D graphics, a wonderfully animated and configurable character ('Sackboy', so called as he is made of rough knitted cloth!) and a deep physics model that means problems can be solved in many many ways. It is presented in rich 3D graphics, although movement is constrained to a stack of three 2D planes - you can move freely up, down, left, right, and then hop into the screen by one or two hops. What can we call this - 2.3D?
So what is the relevance to Virtual Worlds? Read on to find out!   more »

Thanks to Vint Falken for spotting this great vision of the future of business meetings posted by Jon Brouchard. Personally I can't see it working. I mean in a First Life meeting everyone would complain that I'm not making enough eye contact. In Second Life, that's just what you expect. I think we should hold business meetings in the PS3s amazing LittleBigPlanet, more about that soon (yes, I know it's basically a 2D platforms and levels game, but it's oh so much more too).

Dusan Writer has published a lengthy and informative piece on the emergence of business collaboration as VW application showing real ...   more »

I've finally put together a document summarising the benefits of using immersive technologies for enterprise collaboration and teamwork, aimed at folk with no experience of the technology.  It is particularly targeted at software development teams that are dispersed, since that is an area I have real experience of.  The PDF is attached.  Please let me know what you think.

I was recently invited to gve a demo of a new whiteboard product I've put together for use in Second ...   more »

My interest in Sun's ProjectWonderland is growing and growing. After great presentations at the Serious Virtual Worlds conference, and more at VW London, the Wonderland team have now produced a series of short videos highlighting the features of the current 0.4 release and what's to come in 0.5 - I recommend them. (More after the break)   more »

While scanning through my notes from VW London and pondering the right way to describe the kinds of virtual environments that would be useful to enterprises, three words cropped up several times.. the spaces we are creating and trying to use for real work need to be Persistent, Immersive Envronments.  So I'm going to try using that from now on.  For any US readers, everyone likes pie right?