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11 Oct 2007
IBM and Second Life creator Linden Lab have teamed up to further advance digital 3D worlds.
The partnership seeks to accelerate the development of open standards to promote the creation of more digital 3D environments.
The project will look at secure transactions and ways to increase the stability and quality of service of 3D platforms. The companies will also seek to introduce interoperability by creating universal avatars.
Most 3D platforms currently lack interoperability. A Second Life player, for example, cannot stroll around in a Google Maps projection.
Such interoperability would allow 3D worlds to rapidly increase their appeal, argued Collin Parris, vice president for digital convergence at IBM.
"As the 3D internet becomes more integrated with the current web, users will demand more from these environments and want virtual worlds that are fit for business," he said.
3D applications are believed to offer a better user experience than traditional 2D environments.
Beyond games and social playgrounds such as Second Life, examples of applications that incorporate a third dimension into the interface include Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth.
IBM kicked off a research initiative last year to further explore 3D internet applications as part of a larger project.
Sun Microsystems is eyeing the 3D internet as a way to enable employee collaboration.
The firm released an open source project earlier this year called Wonderland which offers a 3D platform similar to Second Life's.
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All this is good and well but...
... why now? 3D communities have been around since the 90s and the only reason why they haven't taken off big time was the lack of proper hardware. I remember when Alpha World first came out, and the concept was flawless: walk around in a fast and interactive 3D environment and meet people. Today Active Worlds still stands by that same principle, providing completely free experience at a tiny yearly cost, with the ability to built what i want where i want. Second Life is a horrible concept typical of the no-nothing business tycoons who have no interest in 3D communities but that of making money, and i haven't read better reviews about Entropia Universe either. Why should people who already worry about mortgages and banks in the real world, be worried about money in the VIRTUAL world? Why can't a game be just a game? IBM should consider working and enhancing people with actual integrity and business ethics rather than teaming up with Linden Labs, whose negligence in the past went as far as costing hundreds of thousands of users information being exposed for all to see in what it is still not clear whether it was a hacker attack of simple greedy stupidity. Establishing a system of 3D virtual land auctions is not only a ridiculous concept but it's yet another blow to the middle-lower class who feels frustrated enough having to deal with real world money problems, let alone struggling to pay... "virtual mortgages"??. And then what? Are we going to have a virtual credit report? Virtual repossessions? Virtual officers coming to kick our 3D avatar out of our 3D home for unpaid rent because we were busy paying our real rent? Is this the bright future that IBM and Linden Labs have in mind for 3D communities? Or is it more in line with the good old fashion IBM trend started in the 30s when IBM was building punch-card computers to keep track of the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps?
Posted by: 3D Sould be free 04 Nov 2007