Microsoft's Craig Mundie has dismissed the potential of "synthetic virtual worlds" like Second Life, saying that the potential for immersive environments will be likely realized through 3D tools that capture and model the real world.
Mundie, who oversees research and long-term strategy for Microsoft, devoted a significant portion of his "Rethinking Computing" presentation at MIT's Emerging Technology conference to what he called the "Spatial Web," a blend of 3D, video, and location-aware technologies. At the center of several of his demos was Photosynth, a Microsoft software tool that can create 3D models using 2D photographs taken with an ordinary digital camera. In one brief demo he showed how a small, camera-equipped robot could be used to model a large room. In another, he showed a 3D model of a commercial district in Seattle that had been created with Photosynth, and demonstrated how a virtual visitor could come to the district using the Internet, enter an art shop in the area, and examine and buy a virtual sculpture that had also been "photosynthed" by the shop clerks or the artist.
Mundie noted that Microsoft is counting on the creation of a 3D "parallel universe" modeled with tools like Photosynth. However, he dismissed the potential of social virtual worlds that include user-modeled objects. "Many people are familiar with Second Life, which is a synthetic virtual world that people came quite enamored with," Mundie said. "Our view was that there was a fairly limited audience who was willing to deal with the construction of avatars and operating in that virtual space."
Another location-based visual technology demonstrated by Mundie had a lot in common with the "augmented reality" vision that Ray Kurzweil and other futurists have described. He showed how a Sony hand-held computer could display live video overlaid with information about shops and other addresses in the field of view. Mundie predicted that the required processing power for such an application would be available in mobile phones within two years.
The host of the conference, Technology Review Editor in Chief Jason Pontin, pointed to the impressive demos and noted that Microsoft Research has had a reputation of being a "graveyard of good ideas." Mundie responded that his group had a "lot more effective transfer than you see with the naked eye," adding that for many Microsoft tools and features, researchers "have to do some incubation in order to make it more tangible and then figure out how to productize it."
Image: Technology Review video
Video of Mundie demonstrating robot- and Photosynth-enabled 3D modeling:
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Comments
Photosynth is a discovery, information-extraction, normalization, input and automated modeling tool that will be important for various things, including facilitating production of virtual scenes modeled on real places. These datasets will then be deployed on virtual world architectures so that people can walk around and interact with them -- via PC interfaces, location-aware augmented-reality displays, etc.
This application of virtual worlds is bound to be popular and is highly commercially viable. What I don't get is the passing swipe at Second Life -- which, like as or not, is where all the best minds in the world are meeting today (including many from Microsoft), to debate, experiment and figure out future architectures that can (among many other things) gracefully support these machine-generated renderings of the real world at usable scales. Like as or not, if you want to walk around a meticulously-constructed, life-sized replica of the cathedral at Amiens with a crowd of French architectural historians and graduate students, or follow a flock of teenage girls around a virtual Great American Mall -- listen to their interactions, learn from them, and spec out actual, moneymaking applications that can be deployed, five years from now, on a Photosynth-charged immersive social platform ... Where are you going to go except Second Life? It is the first, and so far the only arguably successful experiment in producing this kind of environment, nurturing this kind of culture and hosting this kind of experience; and it is the Athens of the socio-culturo-economico-technical movement you hope to profit by.
The fact that Second Life has largely been 'built by its residents' reflects, in some cases, the paucity of tools now available -- a lack that's now gradually being filled by integrations with mature modeling systems and perhaps soon by paradigms for model extraction, like Photosynth. But in another, very important sense, it underscores the viability of a whole OTHER, non-conflicting, essential paradigm, where virtual worlds are used to construct and socialize around and use environments and objects that _aren't_ real, ranging from fantasy playlands to roleplay game environments to engineering prototypes to models of as-yet-unbuilt cities. And in fact, including "imaginary conference rooms" and "imaginary data-centers" and other prototypic (incredibly comfortable and beautifully executed) imaginary spaces where (again, today) giant corporations like Cisco, and Sun, and IBM are meeting with far-flung global staffs and savvy customers in their thousands.
This is a very strange article indeed.
"unless it's a case of them testing the waters like Intel, IBM, and Sun"?
What else could we use? Microsoft's developer community in Second Life is not testing the waters we are developing educational and collaborative systems using ASP.NET and MSSQL server as the core.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30456505@N06/sets shows we are educating, collaborating and developing just as any user group would. What has happened here is people have mistaken the efforts of the MSDN and TechNet communities work in Second Life as official Microsoft efforts.
In fact our community does work WITH Microsoft as does my development firm G2 - http://ReactionGrid.com to hold events there and educate developers and IT Pros. But our communities also move forward on their own, planning events and classes as you can see here http://sldnug.net http://itprosinsl.net http://projectmanhattan.info .
As Microsoft delivers these 3D worlds described above we will certainly investigate them but for now we only have Second Life and C#/.NET based OpenSim as extensible platforms where our hardware and software integration skills can be used.
I will try and invite Craig Mundie into our OpenSim and SecondLife worlds especially Microsoft's own Microsoft Island which they own in Second Life. Perhaps we could collaborate more once Craig sees exactly what we are doing with the currently available tools and how we have separated the data layer from the presentation layer so we can feed any virtual world just as the 2D web has done.
In a company as big as Microsoft there is likely several virtual world projects underway so we will try and make our efforts even more clear while also looking forward to the promises made above.
Come by our island in Second Life and see for yourself what is going on! I am myself at Innovation Week on Orange Island in Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Orange%20Island/173/155/31 and will be demoing our efforts to date there all week long. See you there!
Kyle "G" aka G2 Proto in SL/OpenSim
Well said John!
Good one G Great comment i couldnt of put it better myself as a part of team of G2 im prowd to be part of such a great community!
Sour grapes from the Microsloth dude.
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