Antonio Barimen (aka skribe) is a versatile social marketer and digital media consultant. He is also a published author, screenwriter, actor, producer and director.
He has developed social media projects for clients including CBS, Evian, P&G, Discovery Networks, Pernod Ricard and American Express.
When he is not being a dad to his two boys he likes to pretend that he is a capable PC gamer. He is currently based in Perth, Australia.
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Science Fiction:
Frozen. Desperate. Alone. One ship must risk a weyr of dragons to save the human race.
Recently I reviewed Nortel’s web.alive beta, Lenovo’s elounge. web.alive, which is a 3d browser based virtual environment using the Unreal 2.5 engine. As a result of my review I was contacted by the guys at Mellanium who are also using the Unreal 2.5 engine. They’ve developed a way to import Autocad models straight into the Unreal environment. So effectively you can use the same computer models inworld as you use on the production line, whether it be for architecture or industry. By the way, this also reduces one of the barriers against delivering real world goods from a virtual world.
Mellanium have also been working with the web.alive guys and the video above shows me wandering around their proof of concept – an apartment block. It was filmed entirely within the web.alive enviroment – yes, that means it was shot using my browser and FRAPs. FRAPs isn’t supposed to be able to do that but it can with web.alive.
I found it a little laggy and I tended to spurt forward every now and again, but in general it was a pleasant experience. The Apartment model is fantastic with great textures. It really heralds a potential new yardstick for modelling in virtual worlds. Especially given that it only took 15minutes to import it in world. Truly amazing stuff.
Enjoy the video. Apologies for the ‘almost subliminal’ title. Both blip and youtube gobbled it during conversion.
Despite recent speculation about Avatar-Reality‘s fate, it seems that the creators of the virtual world known as Blue Mars are still alive and kicking. Although their latest news release dates from August 2008, they’re expected to be attending Engage! Expo in New York and GDC in San Francisco both in March.
Fonterra have announced that they have received the National Training and Simulation Association’s Modeling and Simulation Cross-Function award. The award recognizes the significant achievements in modeling and simulation innovation by commercial companies.
I spent another great session at the VIO seminar in Second Life on Monday morning (my time). Xander Newman covered how to deal with real life businesses that are using Second Life for vCommerce. All great stuff and it, deservedly, drew an awesome crowd. However, at the usual after-seminar discussion someone mentioned that they wished they could buy pizza using Second Life. Buying real life goods from a virtual world is not a new thing. Both Dell and American Apparel tried it in Second Life back in 2006. By all accounts both were dismal failures. Likewise delivering pizza (or any other real life product) faces some monumental hurdles to make the experience both worthwhile for the retailer and a valuable alternative to the comsumer.
Over the last few years business has shown a great interest in using virtual worlds for enterprise. Everything from seminars and conferences to virtual trade shows and retail. However, after an initial flurry of activity many soon abandon them. For some the required learning curve is too high to be an effective tool. For others the return on investment is not high enough. Whatever the reasons, no virtual environment seems to have really delivered what enterprise needs for its mass adoption. That may be about to change.
