Space defined from Webster’s dictionary:
1. that
which makes extended objects conceivable and possible
2. place
3. distance
from one object to another
Virtual, Real, Unreal, Cyber, and Physical: these
ways of defined spatial types
overlap. When a person watches TV or
reads a book, is he or she completely in a Real space or is their mind in
another space. The telephone translates
a person’s voice through fiber optic cable lines that can then be heard on the
other side of the planet; what space does this voice inhabit- real, virtual or
a combination of both? An argument can be made that some physical spaces are
not just real, but are beyond real, created to add an illusion to daily life,
i.e. nightclubs or Las Vegas. When a
person can control and influence a physical space through its online virtual
representation, do these varied types of space (Real and Virtual) meet and
immerse the user?
I enjoy nightclubs and discoteques. As a
place of interactive encounters where games, mating rituals, and social
codes are performed and acted out, the nightclub is a pure communication
experiment. This social interface is a
natural setting for the investigation of new technologies of communication,
including cybernetworking and telepresence. Adding a graphical element to an
online community could be a mistake or could be a benefit, depending on the
audience and/or the methods or devices given to the user. For this reason, it was imperative for me to
study how people identify themselves in a nightclub as well as on online
communities. As I will discuss later,
issues of identity and interaction play a big part in the development of a
online community and a virtual space.
Unofficially "doing research" on nightclubs for over 10 years, I have often aspired to design and own my own club. To some degree, developing a virtual space was a way for me to have a club without zoning laws, alcohol permits, and noise ordinances.
Delving into the creative medium of interspatial
relationships and considering the combination of the real and virtual opens new
topics of discussions and experiments to the nature and effects of space. The
combination of virtual spaces and interactive spaces under the umbrella of
entertainment is the basis for this project.
There are four major fields
which arise when considering the fields of reality
and spatial relationships:
1. High tech entertainment software design: the
development of future entertainment and communication software packages and the
desire to see increased graphical and auditory capabilities.
2. Interactive art and the invisible interface: the
use of alternative interactive devices instead of keyboards, mice, and
joysticks, and to allow the body and human movement to affect the user’s
surroundings visually and audibly
3. Telepresence art: the virtual and the RL (real
life)- allowing the movement in real space to affect the the immersive 3D
worlds and enabling intuitive and creative communication between real and
virtual in a nightclub environment
4.
3D graphical space: creating an immersive graphical nightclub
environment focusing on interactive devices for use in multiplayer environments
On the basis of these concerns and interests, I focus on the creation of a virtual
nightclub, striving toward the goal of facilitating what I call a “quest for unity” among the clubgoers. Use of the word “quest” is a pointed choice
on my part to represent the priority this goal takes in the discoteque and rave
scene. This goal is not secondary to the goal of and participation in rave and
club culture. This quest for unity has been described by several clubkids and
ravers in popular culture as the main goal for an evening out at a club. When I ask people what they want in a
nightclub, most people will state something along the lines of “good atmosphere, good people, good
vibe.” Current popular culture novels
like Ecstasy House and Cyberia by Douglas Rushkoff, discuss ravers who
seek this unity at a club. I would
argue that most clubkids would say that the music, lights, and drugs are there
to assist in reaching the goal of unity, a sense of togetherness, or a good
vibe, not for selfish purposes. Perhaps
this sounds like 60’s dogma, but in building a 3D nightclub, attention would
have to be paid to this support the goal of unity, in order to attract the
attention of those kinds of clubgoers.
This is difficult goal to attain and and the issue of identity arises
when discussing the unity quest in a nightclub:
1. Otherness: how people
identify themselves in a nightclub scene and add to the nightclub environ
2. Identity in online
environments: how have people used the
need for identity in virtual environments and how will that affect a online
virtual nightclub
Identity in the virtual and RL space directly affect issues of interaction would be twofold. Firstly, a virtual domain of simulation through representational avatars[4] and computer graphics. Secondly, there would be a relational domain of re-creation through insinuation of action. The real space should have sensors that would allow a person to move through a space and his or her movements would affect the on/off switches of lights, video, sound; this would in turn affect the light, video, sound in the virtual nightclub. The virtual club participant would also be able to affect the sound, lights, and strobe. There would be built-in “bots” in the virtual club as well as avatars representing people that are online in real time. The network would be dynamic in that each space would influence the other.
With this idea of a 3D nightclub formulated, the
next step was to explore how eye and camera perspective plays a part in 3D
virtual space motion, including the immersive quality of
nightclubber-controlled camera movements, sound, and graphics. I tested and/or
researched several software packages, with varying degress of success. I chose
to use Alice software from Carnegie Mellon. This software has a clear
interface, user's network and support, provides camera movement, sound,
graphics, and a powerful scripting language, Python[5],
that runs libraries off Microsoft’s DirectX[6]
nightclubbing- identity and
interaction[SoL2]
In designing a virtual nightclub, I first explored several different Real Life[7] nightclubs in Atlanta, Miami, New York City and several in Western and Eastern Europe. A selection of clubs I’ve been to on a regular basis at one point over the last 10 years include: the Red Zone, the Copa, Danceteria, C Club, Meow Mix, Mother’s, The Pyramid, China Club, Ozone, Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel, Roxy, Meow Mix, and Webster Hall in New York; Kaya and MJQ in Atlanta; Liquid and Jet Lounge in Miami; illegal rave warehouse parties in New York and San Francisco; Heaven in London and numerous clubs in the following European cities: Copenhagen, Paris, Strasbourg, Nancy (Fr.), Nice, Monte Carlo, Berne (Sw), Cologne, Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Athens, Mykonos, Rome, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I began to take notice of the settings of the clubs what types of personaes being expressed by the individual. I also noted that the atmosphere plays in a large role in how people react to the space and influence the atmosphere. My research was informal and anecdotal, I did not provide a formal testing method. I wanted to know what kind of experience/interaction does a nightclubber search for, what kind of media effects does a nightclub provide, and how could these be recreated, modified, and emulated virtually. I discussed with nightclubbers what sorts of experience they are looking for and I searched for ways of defining this in cultural terms and metaphors.
identity and otherness [SoL3][SoL4]
The nightclub is an
“inbetween” space inherently, a space which is somewhere between an illusion
and RL. People’s identities are varied
and experimental,depending on the club and the night of the week. I saw
bartenders, cage dancers, waitresses, door persons, guestlist holders,
bouncers, DJ's and the multitude of clubbers: rappers, rastas, drag queens,
baby dykes, transvestites, coke fiends, drug pushers, preying old rich men,
alcoholics, rich preppy kids on heroin or special k, and mixtures of the
above.
Nightclubs are notorious for
attracting people experimenting with their RL identities. The styles and fashions that people court
provide entertainment and certainly a rich opportunity for watching people
interact and affect each other. This
obvious experimental and sense of multiplicity[8]
is shown in development of a nightlife personality versus the daytime
personality. Many of the clubkids and
clubgoers I know do not dress and act the same way during the day. They are, in fact, creating an identity, as
people in online communities, such as MUDs and MOOs, do, which Sherry Turkle
discusses in her book Life on the Screen. I would propose that the behavior in MOOs
and MUDs and nightclubs are similar in the testing of identities. There are those people who experience
clubbing as a way of life and their daily life highly reflects their club
persone, in style, attitude, and dress.
However, others, only have a club side in the context of the club, like
some may change identities on a MOO. It
is the nightclub where the look and style and music experimentation is so
freely and fiercely tested. The club
life embraces the weird, the different, the Other[9], to a point
where it becomes the norm. Just as
people in MOOs and MUDs are creating a persona or personae online that are
often times different than their RL personae, clubgoers use the nightclub as a
source of refining and creating those identities that RL has made taboo to
express in other contexts.
Sherry Turkle suggests that
when individual identity is viewed as a unified whole, “it (is) easy to
recognize and censure deviation from the norm, (but considering multiplicity)
it is easier to recognize diversity and to accept an array of ours’ and others’
inconsistent personae”[10]. This acknowledgment of multiplicity and the
constructed Self is therefore making it easier to allow one’s identity to be
multiple, not as in multiple personalities or fragmented Self, in essence, allowing the person to formulate
identities appropriate to the context.
The definition of Self is changing as more opportunities to experiment
with one’s Self come to the front. The
identity experimentation in clubs parallels the MUDs and MOOs character and
avatar creation, that I discuss later in the Virtual and Real section
interaction
Defining “interaction” as a transmission or
communication of actions or ideas between people formalizes an integral
foundation for an “interactive” environment, whether it be virtual or RL. The 3D
Diskoteque requires interactive possibilities. As mentioned earlier, the quest for unity must be a specific
element to consider with regard to interaction. If a programmed interaction is not adding to the sense of
participating and the creative energy to the space, then it is primarily
nonexistent as an interaction for the 3D
Diskoteque and the quest for unity.
Allucquere Rosanne Stone, in her book The War of Desire and Technology at the
Close of the Mechanical Age, discusses corollaries of interaction set forth
by Andy Lippman of MIT in the early days of interaction research. Lippman calls interaction a “mutual and simultaneous activity on the
part of both participants, usually working toward some goal, but not always.”[11] The 3D Diskoteque would provide an
opportunity to be entertained, but also to entertain others. The goals may not be singular as there might
be different events in different rooms of the nightclub with different
purposes. One of Lippman’s corollaries
of interaction is to give the participant the impression of an infinite
database.[12] Providing this illusion relates to providing
a structure for entertainment in the 3D Diskoteque. Nightclubs will often have different shows, fashion or otherwise,
powerful VR gear, carnival equipment, etc. that is brought in for the night
only, providing a rich spontaneity. One
night I went to the Limelight in NY and jumped around in a blown up carnival
room that everyone was bouncing around on; the next night, there was a VR game
that everyone was testing and a leather fashion show on stage. If a user in a virtual nightclub, senses
this infinite possibility of entertainment, they may be more likely to return.
Regarding interaction in the space of a RL club,
often clubs have videos that play along with the music, thus providing a highly
mediated arena, the lights provide special effects that can lift the dancer’s
mind to a higher level, the bassbeat transcends normal sound levels and an send
a dancer into a freestyle frenzy with heightened endorphins and emotions. How do people add to this experience? Their interaction of dancing, talking,
drinking is highly social and virtual space should allow multi-participant or
multi-player capabilities and chatting.
A multi-sensory experience would be the goal. Having too much going on is better than having too little when it
comes to clubs. Most people in a club setting want to have oversensory
stimulation, as they surround themselves with this and take illegal drugs to
intensify the experience.
Sometimes participant, sometimes observer, I have
reflected on several specific requirements that make a nightclub experience a
positive experience and a high energy vibe, focusing on the need for Otherness
in a club and yet the need for feel connected, questing for unity. They are[SoL5]:
1. Spontaneity
2. Overt interaction (i.e. dancing, talking and
drinking with other people)
3. Subtle interaction (i.e. watching others interact
- you rarely see everyone in a club always involved with someone, rather, quite
often you watch people watching people)
4. Lights/Sound/Video
5. Dancing
Similar to the
two types of interaction mentioned above, overt and subtle, artist
Jeffrey Shaw[13] in his 1983
interactive installation, Points of View, distinguished between “participation”
and “interaction,” allowing spectators to “watch” the participant steer through
a space.[14] As the participant is moving, others are
watching the scene and the behaviour of the participant. Though they are not actively participating,
their action of viewing is a form of interaction. If a dancer in the 3D Diskoteque has programmed some new dance
moves, the surrounding avatars will participate by watching the
procession. There are many artists
working in the realm of interactive
interactive art
American Myron Krueger started computer controlled
interactive art with the Glowflow[15]
in 1969. The floor had pressure
sensitive sensors, loudspeakers in each corner of the room and tubes with
colored suspensions on the walls. The
participant would affect the lights and sounds. Then other artists like Rauschenberg and James Seawright created
similar “responsive environments”. At
the same time, Ivan Sutherland [16]was
developing the first head mounted display to be used in virtual reality
applications; the HMD provided a stereoscopic view of a scene to the viewer,
while calculating perspective and roll, pitch and yaw coordinates, so the
viewer appears to be moving through a space.
These two areas, sensored space and
head mounted displays, of art and technology have greatly influenced the
present interactive art and computer technology. The 3D Diskoteque borrows greatly from the the combination of
these artworks and technological developments.
Another interactive installation entitled “Dark
Pools”[17]
by Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller was created at Banff Arts. I saw this
piece at the Morrie Healey Gallery in
New York City. It seems there is a
story being told as I move around in the space This piece allowed the
participant to walk through a space and,through the user of sensors, turn
audio, video, and lights on, actively showing the use of the body as an
interactive device and allowing the user a sense of true influence on the
space. Without awareness of where the sensors were placed, the visitor wanders
through the space affecting video, sound, and lights in the atmosphere of an
apartment.
The word “telepresence” was first used in the early
1980’s, in reference to telerobotics.[18] By the end of the same decade, the word also
referred to artwork that explored telerobotics as a new art medium.[19] Telepresent art, then is the merging of the
virtual “telematic space” with the hardscape of the physical space. It is no longer limited to the study of the
aesthetics of telerobotics, but encompasses several science and art
domains. The difference between
telepresence art and virtual reality may be in the kind of sense data the program
imports and outputs. If the data is
synthetic, then it’s purely virtual reality; if, however, the data corresponds
to a remote physical reality, then it is within the realm of telepresence art,
allowing a remote user to “perform a action and see the results”[20]
The end goal of the 3D Diskotecque
project is to include the use of telepresence.
The virtual user would control and move the discoball and influence the
RL space discoball at the same time. At
the same time, the physical space dancers would be read by sensors that would
affect both the real and the virtual space.
A clear example of this give and take feedback is in the “VirtuAlice[21]”
project, which links the virtual and the real through use of a wheelchair and
video camera that are controlled by the virtual and the real user as a
collaborative artpiece. The web
participant controlled the camera while the gallery participant wheels the
wheelchair around. The camera view then
is affected equally by both participant.
“The Trace[22]”
is a telepresent artpiece that problematizes the notion of telembodyment. Two stations are placed in two different
cities. The station consists of a rear-projection screen on the ceiling,
slides, robot lamps, 10 speakers, and a wireless ultrasonic tracker, which tracks
the participant’s exact position. This
coordinate data is transferred over an ISDN line so that each sensor controls
audiovisual elements in both stations.
A 3D shadow emcompasses the real space of their bodies. The Trace
is re-creating a semblance of a person.
Telembodyment occurs when the two participants enter each other
coordinates. What is it like to inhabit
or be inhabited by another? One of the purposes of this system and why I think
it important in the context of a virtual nightclub, is that it addresses the
“lebensraum,"[23] the physical distance we keep between
ourselves and others. Most of the time
people in a nightclub bump into people all the time, but personal dance space
is an issue with more than just a few.
Whether collision detection is turned on or off may affect people’s
experiences, depending on their willingness to get bumped around or have
someone walk through them.
Issues of telepistemology[24]
come into play as networked environments introduce issues of scale (thus time
and space). This extreme of spatiality,
Peter Lunenfeld of the Art Center in Pasadena states, is a new terrain for
electronic media artists.[25] This has great impact on our understanding
as far as how space relates to scale and time.[26] In creating the 3D nightclub, this would
affect the feeling of how long a person has been in the space. The smaller space nightclub would cause
the person to feel as if they have been there longer than they actually have.
Virtual spaces provide the ability to express space and time differentials and
proportions, with scale as a parameter of space.
In analyzing the social
structures and needs of a nightclub and connecting the nightclub to a “virtual”
discoteque, I analyze issues of online communities and the Otherness (Alterity)[SoL8] found in the escapism of
the nightclub. There are many, many
text-based communities that have existed over the years through MUDS and MOOs,
analyzed by Howard Rheingold, Amy Bruckman and Amy Jo Kim; I look at some of the
strategies that worked for MUDs and MOOs in retaining interest and getting an
audience to return, including Amy Jo Kim’s “9 Timeless Design Principles for
Community-Building”.[27] Several of these principles can be found in
current chat communities, text, 2D, and 3D, such as JazzCentralOnline and
various graphical chat communities I discuss later in the Software section.
Is the person in the inbetween space in two different spaces at once, or is it a space of its own? Affecting the interactive requirements of a nightclub then should make the experience transcend space and the place between the virtual and the real: a true interactive telepresence of entertainment. Allowing the virtual clubber to control the strobe in the real space nightclub or lights or the music would allow an opportunity for people and nightclubs all over to connect and allow guest well-known New York City DJ Keoki, for example, to "telepresent spin". A user may create a room in a nightcclub and be their own DJ for a group of people in the virtual club; this cyber DJ can then be heard in a room in the RL nightclub that is open to guest cyber DJs.
The blending of the virtual
and the real is clear in the aspect of IRC (internet relay chat), MUDs
(multiuser domains) and MOOs (Multiuser Object Oriented). MUDs and MOOs are text-based virtual
communities that use that metaphors of physical space. IRCs are chats using the TV channel
metaphor, with users often logging on for hours a day. A classic example of the blending of virtual
and real life is when an IRC user once used the phrase “on RL,” as if real life
was a channel on IRC.[28] MUD and MOO users log in as their own
created character name and can go to different “rooms” and type in commands
that then show up on other users’ screens.
The user is usually anonymous in that the real gender and name of the
individual is private. My own
experience with different MOOs (ie. tkMOO) chat softwares(i.e.Active Worlds)
shows that this anonymous social interaction allows for a great deal of role
playing and gender switching.
Allucquere Roseanne Stone discusses the gender crossover in the Story of the Cross Dressing Psychiatrist,[29]
where a male gender switched to being a female and handicapped psychiatrist who
was extremely outgoing and well-liked by others on the MOO. MOOs allow the user to take control of the
action, unlike television, and to play an active role in the participation in
the storyline.
MUDs have been called
laboratories for the construction of identity[30]
and many players use MUDs to express a different identity they may not feel
comfortable doing in RL. The
transference of relationships as well as psychological benefits from MUDs to RL
is why many users consider MUDs very important to their RL.MUDs and MOOs need
to be controlled by the user and they transfer control to the user. The freedom to create their own identity
melds into the graphical VE’s in that the VE’s need to provide a way for the
user to create their own avatar.
Several online virtual worlds, Active Worlds[31]
for example, has some prebuilt avatars that the user can use. The Palace[32],
though only 2D, allows the user to pull in whatever graphic he or she wants to
to use as a 2D avatar. Oz Interactive has an avatar builder that
provides the user with a basic selection of avatars, but then the user can
resize parts, recolor, and rename.
Providing a 3D avatar builder is technically more difficult than
providing 2D avatars, however, the Oz avatar builder is the beginning of the
next level of 3D avatar builders, allowing the user more control of the
appearance of their character. There is a software program called
AvatarMaker1.0[33], which
starts with a basic human form, allowing the user to resize the body, change
colors of bodyparts, texturemaps for photo images to be wrapped around the
face, and body positioning.
MUDs and MOOs sometimes
incorporate “bots”, that is, computer programs that respond to users and can
appear to hold a conversation. It is a
creative use of artificial intelligence, perhaps, but also an interesting
psychology experiment when people realize they are conversing with a bot. In the MUDs, the conversation with the bot
may become competitive, the user wanting to outwit the bot.[34] Since the bot is programmed to only talk
about certain topics of conversation, the user will usually end up feeling
superior.[35] In the 3D
Diskoteque, characters such as the bartender would undoubtedly be
“bot-like”, having a semi-programmed response to characters. In a rave club such as the 3D Diskoteque, the emphasis would not be
on having a supportive, political, kindly conversation with the bartender as an
Irish pub might. Rather, the bartender
would respond to basic drink and price requests, and perhaps talk about the
loudness of the club music or tell a story about some drama the night
before. These interactive bots would
definitely pull the user into the space by providing some some form of
interaction.
For all the talk of
“virtuality” in popular culture, the quest for physical movement and
emulation of what is familiar is desired in MUDs, MOOs, and virtual online
worlds. LambdaMOO has a bar called
Dred’s Bar where the user can order a drink and users can perform programmed
dance segments, the text showing them dancing the tango. On Active Worlds, an online 3D graphical world,
there is a sports bar where that connects to the web and shows streaming real
video of sporting events. These virtual
spaces are in fact, attempting to imitate more than the chatting between
people. Dancing by text and watching
sports via real audio while in a virtual sports bar, is providing people a
familiar context in which to interact.
New and interesting uses of
electronic media and connectivity of real to virtual spaces include the
Cybertheatre Club[36],
a live RL club space in Brussels, which uses the web to garner another
community. Providing email accounts for users, as well as video
and audio live streaming and archived shows, the Cybertheatre Club truly combines
real space and virtual space; it is not simply a static advertisement for the
physical space.
The notion of the Real is being emulated virtually in many domains and facets of our daily lives. There are virtual chemistry experiments, virtual financial exchanges, virtual photos of events that never took place, virtual self-representation. Our culture is becoming more virtual before our eyes. But no matter how virtual we get, as long as we have a body, we will have desire, pain, and mortality of the physical to deal with on a daily basis.
As I tested and researched various software
applications and techniques, I found several different programs to be
well-suited for different tasks in the construction of a virtual space.
In creating the 3D
Diskoteque and being most concerned with the above issues of an interactive
nature, I researched and tested several software packages currently available
for building 3D games and environments.
Many of this systems are very high level, and allow the user or builder
only certain and specific types of interaction and creative input. Others are low level, working with
programming languages, requiring a steeper learning curve, though in theory
allowing the user more freedom to develop his or her own system.
The needs of the 3D
Diskoteque fell somewhere in the middle of the high- level and low level
application requirements. As a
non-computer scientist working to create a rapid prototype, I needed a high
level scripting language, however, I did not want a system/world that already
had a predetermined interaction design with preset animations like several
virtual communities on the internet. I
did not want prebuilt buttons; I wanted to create the interaction devices
myself and allow users to click on items in the diskoteque to trigger events.
In the following section, I will discuss the graphical virtual builder
applications and technologies I researched.
I will provide a SWOT analysis of Alice, discussing strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that the program provides.
Software:
Motivate[37] is a software from Motion
Factory. It provides support for
intelligent characters, that is, one character’s actions can and will affect
others, providing a rich interactive environment. However, when I tested this software, the tutorials weren’t always
working and the software was still beta.
Animations were created using keyframing which was nice. I couldn’t get texture maps to change and
didn’t want to use the prebuilt characters and scenes. According to what I read in the support
documentation, Motivate included built-in multi-player capabilities, however, I
found they had not shipped this software section out yet.
Commercial virtual world builders allow a person to
create a miniature world. In the
following worlds and world builders I researched, none actually conformed to a
physical space or affected or controlled items in a physical space.
Oz Interactive[38] is a company in Iceland that released the first client and server
solution that enables delivery of real-time streaming 3D animation over the
Web. In a partnering with RealNetworks[39],
Oz intended the Real Player G2 server, creating the RealSystem G2[40]
renderer, the basis of Oz Live, the
first application that enables streaming of 3D animation synchronized with
other multimedia data to a standard PC with a narrow-band dialup
connection. Oz has a proprietary system
including Oz Live Creator, which is an authoring tool that converts geometry
and animations from file formats such as VRML 2.0 into the Oz Live streaming
file format. This transparent
conversion supports all 3D authoring tools.
In a partnering with RealNetworks, Oz entended the Real Player G2
server, creating the REalSystem G2
renderer, In 1998, they made public
their 3D server that allows users to move in the premade spaces from Oz. The
user enters in Ozone, where he or she can teleport to another room. The soundroom opens with spatialized sound
(sound cast into space) The sound gets
softer as I move away from the “center” of the room. Sounds change as I move to a different part of the room. Sound pans from one speaker to the other.
Avatars have realistic motion captured by motion capture plugged in performance
artists.
Oz Interactive’s avatar builder is quite good,
allowing the user a lot of freedom is choosing types of characters, molding and
resizing them. Avatar movements are
separated out by body part and and the speed of the movement can be
changed. Avatar color, size, and motion
can be changed
Active Worlds[41]
Active Worlds provides easy accessibility on low bandwidth
connections, robust client server stability, and the only platform which
currently supports streaming VRML geometry online today. You can surf the web, play java games, and
participate in a multiplayer environ. There are several options to create your
own avatar and you need to be a member to have full access to travelling in
spaces, but must be member to build worlds.
First a web page opens up,
allowing information to show about the world and discussion groups. The program can be quite slow if the world
is detailed. Teleporting to another
space is allowed through doors and also by typing coordinates. Citizens (paying members) can build up a
list of contacts to easily find friends later.
Under Help there is a list of
webpages that assist a person is creating a world. I met people at a tiki bar
and a sports bar with televisions broadcasting an image out every 30 seconds,
and I also visited a new home of a new
builder and he showed me around his VRML world.
Builder School, Active
Worlds
This world within Active
Worlds assists beginniners in building a world. Clicking on signs can teleport you to a space where a there is a
teacher. A teacher showed me how up
duplicate objects and move them around.
There is a section of this world
that shows all the object examples in graphic form and explains how they
were built and how to copy
them for your world.
Philips Vevo, Active Worlds
This Active World is a virtual replica of the company
offices in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Moving through a door opens a web page about the room that you have
entered. Clicking on a virtual photo on
the wall opens a web page about that future product. Obviously used for commercial purposes, it is a distinctive way
of showing perspective clients a product.
WorldsChat[42]
This software comes with a
proprietary avatar builder program and is based on the meetaphor of exploring a
space station, floating in space, and is easy to get lost.
ComicsChat
This
software provides built-in avatars that can change expression on the touch of a
button in 2D comic format.
Chatting is communicated in
balloons or in private boxes, which are whispered. A user can be in several rooms at once, and have several
conversations at once. It provides an
easy search for users names and rooms’ names.
WorldsAway[43]
Originally Habitat[44],
it is a 2D world, difficult for me to find any people at first, then difficult
to find buttons to ask for help.
WorldsAway works on an economy basis, collect tokens and buy things- the
more you log in, the more tokens you get.
New characters have to be careful they don’t give someone their heads;
they have to be bought back at the pawn shop. Different objects that can be
bought are linked to the web where more information is given.
The Palace[45]
The Palace is a 2D world with messages appearing in
bubbles over the avatar’s head. There
are sound and music options, interactive possibilities that can be programmed,
and it is easy to move from one palace world to another by clicking on a door.
Guests are only allowed partial access to the avator possibilities and
interactive possibilities (no painting on the room for the Guests).
Pueblo[46] is a hybrid of a multimedia
MUD or MUSH client, allowing MUDs to gain graphics and sound effects and VRML
avatars. This is important to note the convergence of text-based communities
that are combining with graphics capabilities. One company, Metaplay,
successfully used Pueblo to host improvisational “Simprov” events,[47]
which were entertainment events that were created online.
AvatarMaker1.0
Starting with a basic human form, the user can
resize the body, change colors of bodyparts, texturemaps for photo images to be
wrapped around the face, body positioning.
Black Sun Passport
Blaxxun Interactive was the
first company to offer VRML-based multi-user interaction. They have a free server one can download for
evaluation and access to the Blaxxun bot scripting language, which enables the
application developer to link 30 different pre-defined Blaxxun bots actions to
20 different system events, and to define new events and responses, including
invoking 3rd party functionality (e.g., database commands).
VRML 2.0 or VRML97
VRML is a standardized
markup language that allows 3D rendering and movement through a space on the
web. It is fast becoming the Internet
standard for 3D spaces. Although one
can use a text editor to code VRML, several packages with GUI interfaces allow
simple building of rooms and objects.
Virtual Reality Markup Language employs many of the concepts of reality
regarding physics of space, light, sounds, gravity color, and movement. In order to build VRML worlds, usually one
needs a VRML modeler and a VRML authoring program to add interactivity,
Cosmoworlds includes both, simple modeling program and a keyframe animation
editor. 3DstudioMax provides complex
modelling program but low on authoring capabilities, except that it supports
inverse kinematic animation.
Virtual Home Space Builder,
now marketed by CosmoSoftware[48],
as Cosmo Home Space Designer, allows people to build in VRML 2.0, using an
object-oriented interface. VRML offers a scripting language, however, no VRML software program provides a
visual way to provide interactivity for the script-challenged. This would have
been a problem in building a 3D
Diskoteque which was very focused on interactivity. I was also concerned with the texture
mapping which vastly increases file sizes, negating some of the virtues of
VRML, speed and realtime interaction. Multi-avatar VRML spaces are available
with servers like Black Sun’s CyberHub[49]
and a free server at Aereal Inc.[50]
Two 3-D-rendering libraries
for Web browser plug-ins, authoring tools, and graphics hardware are OpenGL and
Direct3D (D3D), which is more accessible. Among VRML 2.0 authoring tools that
use Open GL are CosmoWorlds and V-Realm Builder, and the browser is CosmoPlayer[51];
among those that use D3D is VRCreator and browser WorldView. However, Microsoft and SGI are developing
Fahrenheit, a rendering library for Windows that will look very similar to
OpenGL. Several file translators exist[52]
for VRML, which makes it a viable option for those building virtual
worlds. A VRML world basically consists
of :
1. A geometry(polygons) and
an appearance (textures),
2. Position of camera viewpoints,
3.
Lighting
4.
Optimizations
to make the world load faster over the internet
Alice[53]
Alice is a software in beta from Carnegie Mellon
University. Providing low level
scripting with Python, an interpretive, object-oriented programming language
often compared to Perl, Tcl, or Java.
Some of the strengths of Alice include
the fact that Python does not need compiling, allowing for rapid testing
and input. The interface is clear and
non-threatening, there is an email list for support and the software is free of
charge. Alice allows multiple animations
to occur at a relatively quick speed.
Alice provides flexibility regarding world building, in that one can
easily start from scratch, using
prebuilt models or bring in one’s own models, in theory.
Several weaknesses of Alice became obvious as I built the 3D Diskoteque. Alice did not accept .dxf files as it was supposed
to; therefore, I did not use my own models. Alice has no built-in file
converter and primarily uses a proprietary format called a3d. The use of
a proprietary format might be commended in file shrinkage, however, there is no easy way to convert
files to this proprietary format. Also
see Appendix B which is a technical report of
my experience with Alice.
Alice has a feature to test scripts; however, every
script that you test in this feature is not saved in the program. Using this test script feature is the
suggested method of bringing models in, placing them, situating them, and
resizing them because the results are automatic. Unfortunately, this feature causes significant problems because
the program will crash without known cause, corrupting the world. Since it did not save the test scripts, the
models and their placements would disappear and the world would have to be
rebuilt.
There is no clear description of the way Alice uses
file paths (one Alice 1.0 version has all the necessary models in the same
directory, another version separates them out into folders). If the user doesn’t know how to save his or
her models correctly, Alice doesn’t find the models.
Alice does not have a built-in texture mapping
feature for painting on models. The
models CMU provides have been painted using a program called Amazon Paint[54]. This is not available for free and it is not
included in the current Alice. I was
able to open the current texture maps in Photoshop as they were bmp files, and
then I could alter them, changing the colors, and adding new photos for
faces.
The final problem with Alicet is here are no
prebuilt human models other than Alice in Wonderland. This made it diffcult to design for a multiuser space in which
everyone looks the same. I attempted to change the bitmaps for the drag queen
and the bartender, but they are still wearing a little Alice in Wonderland
dress.
Alice opens up several opportunities for freedom within the environment of an existing software. Working with a scripting language gives the user freedom to be creative without only having to relay on preexisting codes for interactivity. The menu-driven interface of Alice opens up room for more menus that can later be added, including click and drag programming for novices.
Threats that can hinder the usefulness of Alice are first and foremost prominently the hidden coding in the test script that disappears. Too much information is hidden from the user in this case. Also, a proprietary 3D file format is a serious downfall without a built in converter as it really holds back the user/designer regarding creativity. Corrupted worlds codes cannot be accessed at all which is a serious problem. Alice should save out code to a separate text based file, which can always be accessed through a basic text editor. Not having a texture painter built in also hinders the user’s ability to create a desired look and goals.
After discussing the issues of identity, the specs
of Alice and other current softwares, and the combining of the real and the
virtual, the “killer” virtual environment builder specifications and
requirements emerge.
Several underlying technologies are necessary to
understand when discussing virtual environments. Some of the topology concerns include: ; 1.
Direct3D vs. OpenGL systems vs 2D modeling vs. text 2. Collision
detection 3.. Client side vs. server side rendering which
speeds up the process of animations and movement in the virtual
environment; 5. Loading distribution across multiple servers
for speed and access.