Why Rezzable's Use of Unity Matters

Location: Rezzable Unity Test Site

I've been hollering for some time that the UIs for virtual worlds are not intuitive enough to get faculty to try them. That's why I jumped at the chance, recently, to preview Rezzable's implementation of the Unity Web Player.

The screen shots here show me, avatar-less, wandering about some of Rezzable's Heritage Key content and visiting "Tropical Paradise," a demo at Unity's Web site.


I've tested Rezzable's implementation of Unity Twice, and I'm only seeing a preview. Based on these two visits, it seems that Unity, for now, serves to give a hint of what lies in wait for those who create avatars and then venture into Heritage Key. In time it may do a lot more and, just maybe, obviate a stand-alone client.

Some of the shots at Rezzable's blog show a "basic avatar" who looks like a clay figure exploring. As Rezzable's blog notes:

The first objective was to present existing OpenSim content in some useful way inside the browser. The graphics are quite close to what we get via the SL 1.23 viewer. As the physic[s] are on the Unity client, the performance over the web is very snappy by comparison.

Based on a site called my trips to Heritage Key and Tropical Paradise, educators should take note of this technology and keep an eye on further development for a few reasons:

• No special client needed
• No customizing the avatar needed (yet)
• Ability to run virtual worlds on portable devices such as iPhones.

Educators would love to see the following:

• Ability to interact with those using avatars
• Ability to manipulate content in-world (clicking, answering questions part of a quest or game).

The unknowns:

• How soon can full avatars with inventory be driven through Heritage Key using Unity?
• Could Unity permit out-of-world inventory storage so we could take avatars from world to world?

If the answers to both of the last questions are "yes," Unity could change how we all interact with virtual worlds. Then someone could get very rich by hosting content creators for out-of-world inventory that we hypergridders would use.

The Rezzable blog indicates that, at least, avatars are coming:

Our prototype/test covered the presentation of prims and sculpted prims and results looks good. Our next wave will work on things like: Avatars, scripted interactions, pushing into Unity strengths, improving lighting as well as connecting up things like chat, IM, user log-ins.
One of the big opportunities is to be able to use mesh objects directly with Unity. From a content creation side this is a huge lift in productivity and photo-realism capability.

Jon Himoff has a five minute video about the project on YouTube. It's worth a look.

So far, for Rezzable's preview, movement is limited to the four arrow keys; in Tropical Paradise the mouse allows up and down and side to side views, like the point of view in a combat-oriented game.

I also saw a flock of birds that moved realistically as I explored, though of course they were looped. I would love to explore landscapes that look this realistic in Second Life or Open Sim:

Back at Rezzable,clicking the signs in the preview area, for now, did nothing, but it seems that sort of interactivity is not far away. Then Unity will be more than a gateway experience into Heritage Key, but a way to explore all of the content. It will become how many of us connect to virtual worlds.

Hulk now Tweet. And Hulk Drunk

Location: Tipping hat to Viv Trafalgar for this

Given my diversion from virtual worlds every now and then, I just have to note that The Hulk, in the guise of DRUNK HULK, is using Twitter. He types in all caps and says all sorts of things.

Say, who's that coming into my offic...

Give Hulk keyboard, puny professor! Hulk use Twitter now! Hulk get drunk and say funny stuff!

Hulk no need big words! 140 characters enough! Go read now, puny readers!

Drunk Hulk say puny Iggy roll on floor with laughs when Drunk Hulk say things like:

REALLY! THERE BETTER WAY TO REMIND PEOPLES YOU NO CARE ABOUT LIFE THAN KEEP USE YOU AOL EMAIL ADDRESS!

SATIRE CONFUSE DRUNK HULK TOO! PEOPLES NO REALIZE THAT THIS THE SERIOUS!

FED ASK FOR KEVIN COSTNER AND JAMES CAMERON STOP OIL IN GULF! NO EXPECT OIL CRISIS END! BUT EXPECT WORLD LONGEST MOVIE!

and

AL GORE DIVORCE TIPPER! DRUNK HULK BE SAY FOR YEAR! HUMAN AND ROBOT SHOULD NO MARRY!

(Iggy's note, cowering in corner: You have been warned. But read it anyway. Time for Pappy Enoch to start tweeting).

Why an iPad is Not in My Future (For Now)

Location: Valley of Uncertainty

Okay, it's not about the price. This is one thing that Apple did get right with their new toy. I will always pay a bit more for Apple hardware because, in my experience, it holds up longer.

My dozen Macs, with one exception since 1998, have been bullet proof. I have encouraged at least a dozen others to purchase Macintoshes since 1998, when we got our “gumdrop” second-generation iMac. It ran for six long years, after a processor upgrade, and a student in an Alaska middle school is still using it.

The iPad hype should make a Mac zealot like me happy. To quote from a Bloomberg story, Apple, “the computer maker turned mobile gadgeteer,” has reached a plateau I never thought I would see, in the mid 90s when I defiantly stopped using Windows. The company “overtook Microsoft Corp. to become the most valuable technology company on optimism the company will keep adding customers for its iPhone, Macintosh computer and iPad.”

Maybe not for this Applehead. I have to admit that while the iPad is a seductive gadget, it’s not yet what I want: a device that lets me collaborate with others, live, using “the cloud,” which to me means Google Docs and Flash support.

At that very moment, I read Steve Jobs’ Tweet that “The future of computing isn't Apple versus Microsoft. It's Apple versus Google.”

In my house, the future of computing is collaborating with others. And Apple’s antipathy to Google, the venue for my collaboration, makes it seem a lot more like the Microsoft I have so long ridiculed as arrogant and single-minded, even when doing so hurt it.

The failure to support Flash on the iPad encouraged NBC and several other content providers to state that they will not be converting their content for Apple’s tablet. From a story at the New York Times:

“With support for Flash in both the upcoming Google TV platform, as well as in Google's Android mobile operating system (an OS that's now outselling Apple's iPhone), Google is making it clear that for the time being, the Web still needs Flash.”

Find the rest here.

These decisions will be a terrible mistake for Jobs, akin to his botches with the Macintosh lineup in the mid 80s, just before John Sculley replaced him as CEO and became the fall guy during Apple's long twilight. Now it just might happen all over again.

If Google can produce an e-reader the size of the iPad with Flash support, I’ll be buying it, not Apple’s offering. Given the success of the Android phone on the market as well as Google Books presence, such a device would be a small step for Google to take. There’s a twist to this story. On Twitter, a parody page claims the following as Jobs’ bio:

“I don't care what you think of me. You care what I think of you."

How true. This is the world of Steve Jobs. For now, however, the iPad aura seems just another radiation from the famous "reality-distortion field" that he projects. He disdains the very customers who have kept Apple afloat, introduces products that he considers insanely great, then moves ahead.

So far, he's mostly been correct. I keep buying Mac hardware even though I think that some offerings, like the latest version of iMovie, are poor when compared to its predecessor. Apple selectively removed features, apparently to encourage content creators to pony up for Final Cut Pro. So far, I've not done so. I also canceled my mac.com account and switched to Bluehost.com as my site-host because Bluehost offered better Web hosting, lower prices, and the ability to edit content with my own software, not Apple's extremely limited templates.

Even considering such gaffs, Jobs’ company has long been an innovator, unlike Microsoft. Bill Gates’ and Paul Allen’s brainchild was superb at making their OS “good enough,” then leveraging their products and establishing a standard for desktop computing, especially in the business world. Microsoft could afford to be arrogant for many years. Apple cannot, because now they have another competitor that is as innovative as they have been: Google.

In education Apple hung on to market share, as it did with creative professionals. That second category seems secure, for now, but education has not exactly gotten the red-carpet treatment from the House of Jobs. My wife’s school system, Henrico County, is gradually switching to a Dell contract, because Dell was flexible with prices for laptops and service. Apple was not. Ten years ago, Jobs flew to Richmond to give a speech to the teachers to trumpet the county-wide laptop initiative with the original and second-gen iBooks.

Aside from Google’s threat to Apple, Microsoft is far from out of the game. Windows 7 is really strong, jettisoning the bloatware of Vista. Some of Henrico's older Dells limping along with Vista will work far better when they are re-purposed to run 7.

Jobs does not listen to customers like me, but here's my take. Sometimes having a better product, as I believe Apple does for hardware, the OS, and for media applications, is not enough. Thus the lightweight tablet in my future may run Windows 7 or Google’s Android OS. I’ll need such a device for a big trip in 2012 that will feature a running set of posts , and by then the iPad may have evolved into something I’d buy. Or maybe not.

Like you’d care, dude, if I dared to “think different.”

Virtual Harlem to Downsize

Location: SLED list

image: Bryan Carter presents about Virtual Harlem at VWBPE 2009

I'm sorry to see that once again, Linden Lab's pricing has led a colleague to reduce activity in Second Life. Bryan Carter, whose work I've praised here, noted in a post that one of the three islands he uses in SL will vanish after June 6.

One would think that, in light of Princeton's departure and moves such as Bryan's, that the Lab would come to see that gradually more and more of us are moving to OpenSim worlds where pricing is far lower. Those worlds do not yet enable builds as seamlessly as in SL, but that utility will come, and better premade content will as well.

In the interim, Linden Lab's latest advertising campaign encourages avatars to get married and post photos with their SL partners on Facebook. Good luck with all that. There may be a void still left from the end of The Sims Online, but I think that exodus ended years ago.

And best of luck to Bryan. I'll continue sending students to his two remaining SL islands as long as they are around, and to any OpenSim content he develops.