Quest for Virtual Reality

Virtual Community - Accumulating Knowledge?

2009-04-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

Virtual or not, communities can achieve both good and bad things. Community is not just a sum of its members but rules and code of conduct govern interactions in the community. As any enterprise, communities ought to base their rules to basic principles of human psyche. “No rules” is a fitting basis for a cage fight and a fight it will cause, sooner or later. Community needs a structure and rules

Building Enterprise OpenSim Grid on 2nd Birthday

2009-01-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Building enterprise quality virtual environment services out of OpenSim is a complex operation but today you can do it all with open source software. OpenSim still enjoys alpha status and many of the core components are under active development on daily basis. Following the svn head and figuring out stable revisions to baseline your system to is challenging task and not suitable for faint

Demo for MXP Virtual Reality Protocol

2008-12-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Interactive bubble bouncer demonstrates MXP in real interactive multiuser environment. MXP is an open distributed virtual environment protocol with some novel ideas builtin. Detailed MXP specification can be found from: http://www.bubblecloud.org/MXP is one candidate to become standard means of client to server communication and server to server interoperability. Typical applications would be

Metaverse eXchange Protocol (MXP) - A Practical Virtual Reality Protocol

2008-11-29T22:19:00.001-08:00

We have been working closely with Ben Lindquist (http://greenphosphor.com/), Ryan McDougall (http://www.realxtend.org/) and Jon Watte (http://www.forterrainc.com/) to create a practical virtual reality protocol specification. Metaverse eXchange Protocol (MXP) is currently in 0.3 draft phase and a C# reference implementation exists. Detailed specification, source codes and binaries can be found

Improving Second Life and OpenSim Grid Configuration

2008-10-19T08:18:00.001-07:00

Second Life, OpenSim and many other virtual environment implementations apply simple grid configuration consisting of single layer of cubes. This is the most simple way to divide virtual space to separate simulation nodes in other words to do spatial load balancing: While this configuration is simple and effective it is possible to improve it significantly to provide better performance,

OpenSim Starts a New Era?

2008-10-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Chris Thorne I found the OpenSim project. There is a great promise in this project as there are major corporations behind it and they all have ambitious plans for the future of virtual environments. It is an open source virtual world server written with C#. The server functions with the open source SecondLife client and there are tens of grids in the grid list. Grid is a synonym for

Open Themes - Key to Coherent Media

2008-09-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

There are great amount of 3d models, sounds and music available as open source in the Internet. Building a good user experience from these incoherent sources is problematic. Open themes: color packs, style guides and examples would be an important catalyst for open virtual reality development. Once a theme exist the open media could be themed accordingly to become an open media pack with unified

Virtual Brought to Real World

2008-09-23T07:01:00.001-07:00

Polygon Playground is an innovative way to bring virtual phenomenon to real world for children and adults to play with. The video is worth watching. Reminds me of science fiction movies.http://www.polygon-playground.com/

Vision, Theory, Standards and Engineering

2008-09-18T08:30:00.001-07:00

The trend has been visible in many areas of computing...A great vision has been evolved by theorists and scholars to in depth model. The model albeit being detailed is not practical and subsequent standard have the same nature. Which brings us to the standard compliant implementations that do not work, implementations that do work but are nothing alike the standard and finally the implementations

Future Wikia Vision about Virtual Reality

2008-09-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

I recommended this Future Wikia article for anybody interested in virtual reality. If you think you have a vision yourself then contributing to this article is definitely a way to get your voice heard:http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Virtual_reality

Popular Open Source 3D Engine

2008-09-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

When I started to talk about the open source 3D engines one of my friends pointed out that Ogre3D should not be forgotten:http://www.ogre3d.org/Ogre3D is one of the most popular open source engines and has many stunningly beautiful rendering features.

Development in the Open Source SceneGraph Arena

2008-09-08T10:00:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the VR news I stumbled on OpenSceneGraph which looks like a solid c++ based open source 3d engine with several applications and active development:http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osgOne example of the applications:http://www.vr-fun.net/OpenSceneGraph may turn out to be the future standard for open source 3d. Solid open source technology combined with solid standard will make the

Following News about Virtual Reality

2008-09-07T03:18:00.000-07:00

I recommend following News Predator and especially the Virtual Reality category for latest information in the VR field. The nice thing is that if you happen to know additional news feeds to the ones listed at Sources page you can always submit those yourself for others to enjoy.The site also includes various other categories but VR category seems especially useful as there are not many if any

Interesting Virtual Worlds

2007-04-29T03:14:00.000-07:00

I have lately checked out few virtual worlds and produced a list of must see virtal reality environments for virtual reality tourists:http://www.secondlife.comhttp://www.activeworlds.comhttp://www.vlb.mtv.comhttp://www.kaneva.comhttp://www.there.comhttp://www.moove.comAdditionally I bumbed into couple of frameworks you can use to build your own virtual worlds:http://www.multiverse.nethttp://

Virtual Reality Architecture

2007-04-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

One way to craft architecture for virtual reality system is to rely on basic server client architecture where server is running an environment simulation and clients are user interfaces to the simulation. Essentially client consists of user interface framework (3D rendering engine, 3D sound engine, windows, panels, and widgets), virtual reality model (scene graph and media caches), session

SpaceNavigator Review - Real Value for VR Roaming

2007-04-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

It has been couple of weeks since I bought my first virtual reality gear. I expected another interesting but useless gadget soon to be abandoned to the graveyard of past interests. True enough the clerk at shop greeted SpaceNavigator order with 'Oh you gonna buy one of those weirdo space buttons!'. Right... Well it was too late to back down. I bought my new toy with meager 60 EUR which I secretly

Requirements for Virtual Reality

2007-04-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

One way to define a system is to list the requirements.Functional requirements:Environments are three dimensionalEnvironments have identitiesUsers have identitiesUser identities are shared between environmentsIdentities are governed by trusted partiesShared media is governed by trusted partiesAccess rights for entering and manipulating objects and spaces existAccess

Web 2.0 and Web 3D

2007-04-10T00:35:00.000-07:00

Moving from Web 2.0 world to 3D environments will give us new dimension which in turn brings expectation of presence and interaction. When I browse the web I don't mind not experiencing the other browsers. Consider the situation with three dimensional environments. Empty corridors are spooky especially if you know you are hopping inside popular sites. This analogy will bring interesting problems

Where Do We Stand on Virtual Reality

2007-04-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

It has been decades since the virtual reality was proposed in science fiction literature and the enabling technology has been there for a decade. Internet community at large is archiving the term virtual reality in the same basket with sentient artifical intelligence and nanotech. Big promises given first in science fiction and soon afterwards by technology oracles, the brightest minds aboard.