Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Sid Banerjee talking about browser based virtual worlds for business on CNBC

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

Update  Dec 9, 2009 :

The event was a very interesting and the video for the same is available here :

ThinkBalm Global Unlecture Event

Thanks to Erica and Sam Driver of ThinkBalm for editing and posting this video.

****************************************************

I am posting directly from Dr. Yesha Sivan’s blog who has done an excellent job of explaining the event here :

On November 6, 2009, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community will be holding an event called “Un-lecture no. 5: ‘Global’.” Three presenters will talk about Immersive Internet adoption trends and use cases in their region of the world: Yesha Sivan on Israel and the Middle East, Siddharth Banerjee on India and surrounds, and Claus Nehmzow on Hong Kong and region. Barbara Westmoreland will wrap things up by demo’ing part of nTeams island, which her company uses for global team-building activities.

How to RSVP: Reply to the LinkedIn group:http://tinyurl.com/yj2p2f8 . Please make sure “Follow this discussion” is checked off so you get the logistics details once we’ve finalized them, and you receive an event reminder via email.

* Who: Immersive Internet advocates, implementers, explorers, and tech marketers

* What: Three presenters will talk about Immersive Internet adoption trends and use cases in their region of the world: Yesha Sivan on Israel and the Middle East, Siddharth Banerjee on India, and Claus Nehmzow on Hong Kong. Then, Barbara Westmoreland will wrap things up by demo’ing part of the nTeams island her company uses to facilitate global team-building efforts. For more info about the un-lecture event format see this ThinkBalm Innovation Community video on YouTube: The Innovation Un-Lecture, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PiuJPmSQ_M .

* Where and how: Second Life, details TBD. We’ll use in-world voice.

* When: Friday, Nov. 6th from 8-9AM PDT (which is the same as Second Life time). Here is a link to link to the Time Zone Converter:http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc .

* Why: Share and gain insights into what’s happening with work-related adoption of immersive technologies around the globe. Learn what other members of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community are working on. Spend time with other members.

Please email or call with any questions.

Erica Driver, Principal
ThinkBalm
www.thinkbalm.com
ph: +1(401)592-0170
email: erica — at — thinkbalm.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EricaDriver

I recently attended the Engage Expo 09 at San Jose on Sept 23-24 and met up with a number of leading lights in the fields of 3D Training Learning and Collaboration ( 3DTLC) and Virtual Worlds in general. It’s a testament to the growth of Virtual Worlds or our understanding of them – that a convention organised around  them has to have 4 different tracks to address the issues surrounding their use and development.

Overall the main ideas that emerged for me  from the conference were :

1. Enterprise use of 3D immersive interactive environments is picking up but not at the pace desired by the VW community and industry. We are ‘Crossing the Chasm’ on this.
2. Use of immersive environments for training in Defense and National Security .
3. Mainstream adoption is at least 3 to 5 years away for Enterprise use.
4. Need to create unique learning methodologies for 3DTLC.
5. Growth of Virtual Goods as an industry.
6. Casual social games are kings of 09 ( think Zynga and Farmville etc.)
7. The Metaverse will probably not be the Universal Set but rather a sub set of the Web ( a very important paradigm shift in thought here – hopefully will write a more detailed post on this later).
8. Need for formulating open standards and protocol to better integrate different virtual environments.
9. Need for standardized laws to govern virtual worlds and transactions there in.

I think these are the main thoughts I took away from the conference. There was  some degree of skepticism and fatalism in some of the early adopters but there was also a growing sense of having to deliver on fundamentals like ROI etc. Overall the mood was serious but optimistic – I personally think that 2010 is going to be a make or break year for many early players in the Industry.

I think the growing awareness of these 3D immersive interactive environments for work and the growing recognition of their utility is a very positive development. I think in 2009 – Virtual Worlds ( I like calling them immersive interactive envionments) have definitely moved beyond the exotic to be more utilitarian and this is greatly encouraging for early movers like Indusgeeks.

- Sid