New Polling Widget (Read more...)

I've decided to use a new polling widget, as the old one didn't work well, and this one has much more advantages, that go from eye-candy to better promotion of the poll and displaying of results.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Feel free to vote and comment here anything you like. You can also suggest new polls.

WhiteDune, VRML And X3D Free Editor (Read more...)

WhiteDune is a complete free (GPL) solution for VRML/X3D scenery creation.

It is widely known between the people that are using VRML since the beginning.
This software is based on "Dune", a portable VRML editor written by Stephen F. White.

Joerg Scheurich fixed many bugs, added virtual reality hardware support, many documents in English and German, and recently, he added partial X3DV export and import. The list of improvements he did is too long to mention.

This way, Joerg Scheurich took the application to another level, making it more full-featured, more powerful and user-friendly, making of WhiteDune one of the most popular software for VRML (and now for X3D).


It is possible to model with it, but its best use is to animate, merge and manipulate scenes, adjust values, etc. in 3d scenes from inside.

I've used it many times, for example, to make an elevationGrid or coloring a model easily, apply textures, etc. It has become one of the main tools that I use for worldbuilding.

Think in it as a versatile and quick tool to assemble scenes and manipulate them in a visual way.

It can also make interpolations and many things, and works on Linux, Windows, and Mac.

As it has Virtual Reality features, with the proper software and hardware, it can be also an immersive VRML editor with support for stereoscopic view and support for 3D inputdevices.


It has a good support for X3D in vrml classic encoding (.x3dv). This area is in development, but I have tested it, and the files generated run without errors in Xj3D. You can also load a VRML world and then export it as X3DV, as a quick way to convert scenes.

It has also a menu to insert many of the X3D nodes directly in the scene.


One of its most interesting features is the ROUTEs explorer, that can display the nodes in a tree view. It has a preview window in which you can move inside the virtual world while you edit it.

The ROUTE map feature along with the animation editor make of WhiteDune a very good tool for making animations in virtual worlds.

In its website, you can find tutorials, examples of code, and download it:

WhiteDune VRML (and X3D) Editor

If you like WhiteDune, save this button image, upload it to your site, and use it as a button to link to WhiteDune.

Recommendations
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Virtual Worlds Conference 2008 (Read more...)

The Virtual Worlds Conference 2008 is going to take place soon in New York City (USA).
The registration ends March 31 st, so there's only one week left. It costs 400$.

This Conference is for business, about "how to monetize their intellectual property using virtual worlds". This is: how can small and big business earn money making virtual worlds or selling services related to it.


There are dozens of speakers, and some of them are representatives of IBM and Electric Sheep (the worldbuilding company behind many Second Life worlds), and Barbie and Neopets worlds too.

This Conference may be interesting and is related to the previous one I posted here because in a scenery in which Second Life seems in decadence, many other companies have monetized the virtual worlds market. It may be a good event to discuss strategies: the failed ones and the successful ones.

Philip Rosedale Leaves Second Life (Read more...)

Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life and founder of Linden Labs, is going to leave Second Life.
The reasons to do this seem to be some problems with the other administrator, as seen in this article.

Philip Rosedale. Photo by Andrea Benassi.

"Cory and I have differences in how we think Linden should be run, differences that in the past few months have become irreconcilable."

But there may be another reason, and it is that Second Life exceeded the popularity of many virtual worlds due to the enormous marketing promotion they produced.

In the last times, there was not too much mentioning of SL in the media as in the past. The virtual world population had decreased and users are less active. The companies saw the selling of their products into SL had decreased too. So many companies have moved to other (and older) solutions like for example Active Worlds.

Most of the SL users stay for just 1 month and then go away forever. This is something normal for any community. But what I think that has damaged SL is the excessive hype they have generated. It was the key for their success but also for their decadence. To resume: it promises much more that it can give to users, specially in an economical point of view.

A photo of SL inworld. Photo by Cosmic Kitty.

Rosendale is a genius that was one of the most influential people in Internet. I recommend reading about him in this article, that can give you an idea of his great enterprise:

How I did It, by Philip Rosedale

His biggest merit is to bring virtual world to the center of the news, after many years of indifference. I also think that his worst contribution was to identify virtual worlds only with cybersex and making too much emphasis in e-commerce.

I think Rosedale is doing something very wise, and is to leave the company when it is still alive. The other alternative, much more noble, would be to change the company vision and change it to something less big, and more focused. For example they could specialize in what their users demand more often, let it be relations between players (sic) or virtual fashion contests.

Rosedale's avatar in a virtual symposium. Photo by Larsz.

But this would demand to earn less money, scale down, etc... SL faces the same problem as big empires do. Its enormous size is a drawback when bad times come.

i3D Symposium Of Virtual Reality (Read more...)

Eon Reality, the world's leading interactive 3D visual content management and Virtual Reality software provider, will be hosting a Symposium about the latest hi-tech in Virtual Reality:

Visit the next i3DSymposium web page

It will be from 8 to 11 of April 2008, in Florence, South Carolina (USA). It is also a good place for a short vacation, as you may see in that website.


There are three types of registrations, as listed here. Two of them seem to be free, but read deeply the infos there, and maybe contact them if you're interested.

Seems a good opportunity if you can go to South Carolina those days and are interested in virtual reality, high tech, and want to have a good vacation.