Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Indusgeeks Solutions is proud to announce that we are taking the next step in the company’s evolution.

We are launching a product and services line under the flagship brand ‘Metamersive™’. This will cater to the Serious Games, Enterprise Virtual Worlds ( including Second Life Enterprise deployment) and 3D Simulations market. We seek to fulfill the next generation training, learning and collaboration needs of Global organisations, SMEs and Educational institutions with our Metamersive™ solutions.

Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd. will continue to cater to the entertainment, marketing & advertising (advergaming) and casual gaming market under the ‘Indusgeeks’ brand.

Why this distinction ?

• Clarity of Messaging: As applications for 3D interactive, immersive technologies keep growing we needed to present a clearer picture of our products and services to our clients.

• Greater Internal Efficiency: The clear segmentation between entertainment & marketing and 3D training,learning and collaboration (3DTLC) led us to differentiate the product and service lines for the two.

• Better Service Standards and Delivery: This allows us to create deeper domain expertise to serve our clients within the specific verticals. And also to have dedicated client managers with relevant industry experience.

What’s new here?

Services under the Indusgeeks brand :

• Advergaming : We have been creating branding experiences in Second Life. Ref : Tata Indicom campaign, CRY etc. But these branding and marketing related immersive experiences are moving off standalone client based virtual worlds towards a more browser based virtual experience. To address this need we at Indusgeeks are now working on 2D and 3D branded immersive experiences (games, machinimas, virtual tours etc.) using Shockwave, Unity 3D and Flash and other technologies.

• Casual Games : In tune with the casual gaming revolution worldwide, we are using our expertise to serve clients within this domain.

Products under Metamersive™ :

• Improving ‘Metamersive™ Products by adding new 3D platforms like Unity3D , Open Sim and Project Wonderland, with the addition of authoring tools, SCORM support etc.

• Healthcare Education

• Security and Defense

Major theme for 2010 will be the same as 2009 – ‘applications of virtual world technologies’.

Motto for 2010 : Indusgeeks seeks to be the definitive company in the sector of 3D immersive, interactive technologies.

Since our inception we’ve been harping on about finding ‘killer applications’ for 3D technologies. It seems the time has come and 2010 will be a golden year for VW apps.

This change will be reflected in our website by February.

Our Company Motto for all times however remains the same:  And The Geek shall inherit the Virtual World ! 

Happy 2010 to all of you!

We are 1000 days old! This is a personal milestone for the company. The core team had set this up as the day when the company matures from being an idea to a true business. So to celebrate   we went to Karjat , rented a cottage and brought in the 1000th day with some champagne and lots of other kinds of alcohol, in true ‘Indusgeeks’ tradition .   That’s the good news!

We  have some fairly important announcements to make about the company and our road map going forward in early 2010.The bad news is that we are in the middle of writing up some very important bids for tenders and working on an awesome project on Unity 3D so we have no time to put up a detailed post now ( especially after missing Monday!). However, we didn’t want the occasion to pass without making a mention-so here it is !

Keep tuned for some important news and announcements next week and wish us all the best!

Indusgeeks was featured on the Business Channel ETNow recently. Find the video here : Indusgeeks on ETNow Technoholik .

The show featured Indusgeeks CEO Siddharth (Sid) Banerjee talking about  Metamersive Learning Spaces application developed on the Second Life platform  and an older marketing campaign done for Child Rights and You (CRY). It features client and partner testimonials from CRY and Learning Possibilities.

Indusgeeks is proud to present Metamersive Learning Spces  as one of the very few  3D Training, Learning and Collaboration( 3DTLC) related solutions featured on the Second Life Work website by Linden Lab. We are now extending the MLS framework to other virtual environments like Open Sim, Shockwave, Unity 3D and Flash.

Metamersive Learning Spaces features ( demo video here ) :

1) Fully functional 3d multiuser classroom

2) Automated converters for PowerPoint and other audio/video media

3) Easy Web Interface to point media to different screens in the 3D environment

4) Full Security with Private regions and group limitations

5) Text Chat logs

6) Customizable 3D Learning Environment

In the last post on the State of Virtual Worlds we covered my impressions from the Engage Expo’09 at San Jose. In this post we’ll look to answer why companies are moving back to basics with Virtual Worlds.

The phrase “Virtual World” became so popular in 2006-08 that almost anyone doing anything remotely 3D or 2D started ‘tagging’ their work as such. I think that led to a vast amount of generalization. Increasingly,now  the trend is towards the opposite end. We see most companies trying to distance themselves from the term. So words like “Immersive”, “Interactive” and “Real time” are being used with more frequency to describe environments which would have passed off as “Virtual Worlds” about a year back .

Ironically, these words were being used to describe “Virtual Worlds” back in 2007 as well. This movement back to look at fundamentals of what “Virtual Worlds” mean and do, is not limited to semantics only. Most companies including ours are trying to go back to basics and keep what is important and shed what is not. I think the need to make 3D environments complex started when people thought that all virtual worlds had to mimic something like Second Life.  Which meant most 3D environments needed :

1. Multiuser capability -with very high concurrences ( without any thought for whether those levels were required for the solution)
2. Full 3D – high graphic requirements  ( again without any thought for whether a 3D environment was even required for the solution let alone high graphics)
3. Ability to author objects – ( most environments do not require users to be able to create content- most clients still insisted on this capability!)

These requirements led to over engineering and unnecessary cost and timel; with real Return on Investment ( RoI) falling  as the capabilities were rarely used. Or in the worst case, due to the necessity to include these features costs would shoot up ; and the client would back out due to budget constraints.

Over a period of time though the vendors and clients have become more aware of  the what and how of using  these 3D environments.  Expectations have become more realistic and so have outlays and billings. This rationalization was necessary and good for the industry.

Thanks to spectacular early failures, the recession and increasing realism in part of the industry advocates and vendors; in 2009 the market has become more realistic and sustainable. Now these environments , especially for enterprise deployment, previously grouped under “Virtual Worlds” as a whole get categorised as :

1. Interactive – at this stage it can be 3D or 2D
2. Immersive – mostly 3D but could also be 2.5 or 2D.
3. 3D – Only if required
4. Online – hosted on a server either connected or not connected to the Internet.
5. Multiuser – only if required with defined concurrency levels;usually between 10-100 concurrent users for most enterprise type environments.
6. High graphics – only if required. Infact most clients are willing to compromise high end graphics for the ease and savings associated with being able to run these environments on  commodity grade computers.
7. Closed authoring – almost no enterprise asks for content creation capabilities for users. In fact it’s considered a nuisance in most cases.

Thus we see an increasing shift towards distinguishing between features which were previously bundled together into what came to be defined as a “Virtual World”. And this modular approach has led to higher Returns on Investment and faster deployment time. In doing so, the lines between Serious Games, Simulations and what used to be called “Virtual Worlds” is becoming more distinct. This is healthy and lets virtual worlds like Second Life do what they are good at doing,namely create a virtual community based around art, entertainment and virtual goods, while keeping a limited and focused tool set for other immersive applications. Ultimately, I think the industry really didn’t have any choice but to get back to basics and this may yet lead to the redemption of 3D , multi-user, online, immersive, interactive environments aka ‘virtual worlds’

- Sid Banerjee