Way back in the beginning days of the Net
When we still had 100 Megabyte hard drives
and floppies that were floppy
We surfed on 9k modems
and were in awe of the first vga gui on win 3.1
still riding over DOS beneath it
Way back then
when we first started to see software like Imagine 3D and PovRay
Then Lightwave and the video toaster
we wanted to create virtual spaces
once we learned how to create objects and scenes
we wanted to share them
Decades of forward thinking speculative fiction writers
William Gibson, PK Dick, Connie Willis, Neil Stephenson, ...
so many
Way back then I worked for a college in Thunder Bay
and as I saw the birth of webpages as a marketing and communication tool
I saw within academia this simplistic conceptualization
of the virtual spaces on the net that could be
It was called VRML
Virtual Reality Modelling Language
and at the time I actually thought,
being in the academic system as an employee
that that was the way virtual reality would start
It was far too simplistic for people to accept it
and it never caught on
because it was really for ivory tower nerds
and academics riding the VR funding wave
the geeks of the Matrix never used it at all
Up from behind the snotty carcass of VRML
came the real winner in our search for virtual reality
the true beginnings of interactive multi user 3D spaces
were games.
Games and the nerds who modded them
and created, eventually
their own player avatars
modelled and textured by themselves or their friends
to represent them
in the 3d space
Arguably the most influential game in the birth of virtual reality
was the original Quake by IdTech
It was the first full 3d game
that multiple people could play at once together over the net
the first really popular one
So many people became part of that game
and that was the birth of true virtual reality
Now we have MMO's with vast landscapes
Our main problem in the creation of virtual reality
is what do people do?
together?
Originally these games had military content
and subsequently the beginning of virtual reality through games
was funded by the military need for cutting edge combat simulations
further advances in vehicle modelling, multiuser interaction, large landscapes and weapons modelling was also funded my the military and as new tech was adopted the previous tech trickled down into the public as a game.
So what now?
Almost everyone has had enough of being a virtual soldier or gangster.
If we use the technology that is GPL now
we can create a new open and free virtualization system
virtual reality that isn't controlled by the military or "owned"
virtual reality spaces
servers we can log into
to collectively interact
There are a number of GPL game engines
The two that I think are most useful for our foray into openvisualization
At this time
2015
are Idtech 4 and the Torque 3D engine by MIT.
Both are GPL.
Both allow normal mapping techniques and mippmapping, have particles and fx systems, and can be customized and modified through external scripting without compiling the engine again necessarily.
Both allow multiple users to log into a server on someone's machine and everyone can see the same environment and each other.
Now.
Take away the guns/bombs/weapons
No terrorists or zombies.
a group of people logged into a server in a 3d environment and they are able to see each others avatars/player models
What do they do?
if they chat or video chat
the avatars faces/phonemes/gestures
need to be generated
or we lose interest
as humans
most of our time is actually spent
looking at other people's faces
but in games
actions of the limbs are the common game types
What would people do
with their time in the Black Sun of Snow Crash?
We could see how
with the idtech 4 engine especially
The samurai swordfight of Hiro Protagonist
and the Daemons that whisk away his opponent
would be easy
but what of the rest
the large long Mall with thousands of people walking along
showing off their Avatars
that they bought or spent time creating
the separate external buildings or addresses
with an external look
and a private interior that has nothing in connection with the external architure of the address, which is for show, once you enter a private space, only the players with access to that private server can interact in the rooms of maps or environments or chatspaces within.
What kind of interactive group activities would keep people
like parlor games or good company or a mystery to solve
games that require X number of players
places where we can walk around and look at interesting things
peoples creations on display
If we don't have a specific game mechanic
any public server can be an interesting riddle or gallery
perhaps the academic servers could host the central mall as mirrors
and separate addresses
are personal or virtual servers.
We've actually reached this point
but we haven yet been able extricate ourselves
from the war and combat of the beginning influences of openvisualization.
