The future is here: Google Earth meets virtual worlds
When Google first announced in 2006 that it had purchased @Last Software, and its Sketchup 3D modeling tool, there were few people more excited than Jerry Paffendorf.
Paffendorf was at that time the futurist-in-residence at The Electric Sheep Co., as well as one of the people behind the Accelerating Studies Foundation's Metaverse Roadmap project.
And he saw, even early last year, that folding Sketchup into Google could mean magic for virtual world developers, since it meant there was a high probability of a 3D, social virtual environment built around Google Earth.
As a futurist, Paffendorf was spot on: Virtual world platform developer Multiverse Network has built a system, dubbed "Architectural Wonders," that will allow anyone building a virtual world with its technology to incorporate terrain and 3D models from Google Earth and Google's 3D Warehouse--models made using Sketchup--into their projects. My story on this, which ran Tuesday, is here.
A new technology from Multiverse Network allows developers who use its virtual world platform to incorporate terrain from Google Earth.
(Credit: Multiverse Network)This is still a far cry from a fully massively multiplayer social 3D world built by Google itself, but it's definitely a start, and it brings a lot of new possibilities and realism to virtual worlds, just as the mainstream is really starting to catch on to the potential of these environments.
So, Mr. Paffendorf, what should be look for as the hot innovation in the fall of 2008?
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
http://www.laudontech.com/google-street-view/google-street-view.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LN5JRl8_sU
world so we can be real being virtual... or it was, virtual being
real...
This remembers be the stories of Jorge Luis Borges!
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http://www.mediamachines.com/KML2X3D/
Cube3.com and Mediamachines produced these multiuser open x3d demos last year during the release of tools to publically do the same with google earth models. They are exactly what you're describing as "new" and "first" now...and they were based on already ISO approved open standards back then. I suggest some googling and fact checking.
and yes, there are MU avatar versions at www.vrmlworld.net that WORKDED last year while or futurists were predictering....;)
Im sorry Jerry , Ive been told your heart is in the right place, and I like Brooklyn too- but the stakes of VR worlds as the next mass media and your vision of total broadcasting from cradle to death really needs some confrontation and a reality check from those not included in this "cnet induced" love fest.
One day very soon you may find yourself on "60 Minutes" and i hope your "explanation" of "your future" goes as well as the "razorfish" founders explanation of "what they did for clients" went in their "infamous" interview in a forgotten history so long ago.:)
Its funny, while the "new" metaverati were glowing over a new 1960s like future last year in the vr worlds public rebirthing they blogged into existance. I,having been through many tech/media bubbles since '85 , suggested and hoped a more "1930s futurism" approach to the building of the 3d metaverse.This i hoped would give us a metaverse not unlike the united states "basic social systems and built structures" of the century. Not perfect, but not a bad place to live in...
What's becoming ironic now is that my "futurist" request seems to be adopted. Well almost, as it seems sadly its not the "American 1930s" infrastructural futurism that is being repeated in the press and buisness communities usage of the "new realtime 3d media".
This "1930's Futurism" and press/ seems much more like that mistaken path taken by German propagandists and industrialists around that "new" medium of radio and film.
BTW-last year the Virtual worlds conference was held at the Jewish Museum in NY. Irony save us all.
A decade ago in dozens of free seminars/events/ and meetings we spoke and explored realtime 3d immerssive media and many realized it would be be so much more powerful in its connection with humans than radio or tv ever was before.
a decade later "futurists" are now asked to "predict what will be? in faux press stories aimed at what and whom is the question?.
Well next year "james Cameron" may very well "be the inventor of the metaverse" as AVATAR gets sold to us with hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the 5 media companies into that venture.
After that many of us may be left "quoting" from "Terminator 2"-- "where the future is only what we make of it".
It was too bad "the business" needed a T3 to tell us you cant "change the future" a few years later.
sorry to those whole think "I got too real" as a reply to such an "unreal" cnet story but the media really is the message.And this website really needs a good kick in it's virtual - herman miller -see other pr story- sitting ass.
back to work.
c3
- In A Big Bubble, You Take Risks or Fail
- by Len Bullard October 10, 2007 6:54 AM PDT
- @Daniel:
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(5 Comments)It will be interesting to compare the reports from various sources about this gathering.
I tend to agree with Cube3. When the money gets suddenly very large, the space fills with the pundits who crowd out the builders. In the midst of that, we get the announcements of Great Leaps Forward and Mighty Coalitions.
One should remember that what is newsworthy is not always noteworthy.
The most ironic thing is to watch IBM which has touted it's commitment to Open Source and Standards (the new flags of the regime) announce it will partner with Linden Labs for "standards for interoperability" which very clearly from reading the architecture logs, LL has no intention of providing given their designs put their client at the center of the metaverse. So other than muscle, there is less than zero chance that will succeed.
On the other hand, if one parses out the announcements and logs one can see the meme of open systems and interoperable objects. The technical barriers here aren't that difficult although they will fracture along the same platform lines of the big companies.
Linden Labs goals have more in common with the goals of the W3DC than with say, Koster's work or Google's work. Once again, the difference is LL uses a code base to define its vision and the W3DC uses a standard language with the ancillary standards (eg, H-Anim for avatars). I think that is why the VRML/X3D community has beaten the metaverseMavens to the punch in demoing interoperable systems first as well as providing a market based on competition for content and cooperation on the standards.
You can't stay home and be an explorer, and you can't sit inside Linden Labs exclusively and claim to be pioneering. LL is risk averse.