7 Good Virtual Worlds Blogs (Read more...)

There are not too many blogs about virtual worlds, but the quality that many of them reach is quite remarkable. When a topic is not too much covered, associating is good. That's why I created a group in BlogCatalog called Bloggers For Virtual Worlds. If you have a blog about virtual worlds, virtual reality, or something related, I invite you to join.

Here are some of the best blogs that I've found. I'm a reader of some of them from a long time ago, to others I'm just a new reader.


The Psychology Of Cyberspace

John Suler is a psychologist that entered into the virtual world of The Palace to study the relationships of people inside it. Soon he was caught by the strong feeling of community they had, and became one of them (he even became a Wizard in The Palace).

http://psycyber.blogspot.com/

The Palace, 2D chat virtual world

If you read his blog and the papers of his studies of The Palace, you'll learn a lot about virtual worlds from a psychological perspective: why people make such an "human" relationship with their computers, why we use avatars and what do they show of our personality,

The Palace is an old 2D graphic chat community. They still have many thousands of users, and it uses to be many hundreds online all days. Although it's not 3D, what you learn of John Suler is applicable to any web community.


3D On The Web: CHEAP!!!

The purpose of this blog was to provide the free resources and info for worldbuilding, but it also has the thoughts and insight of Len Bullard about the Web3D.

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com/

One of the creations of Len Bullard: The River Of Life.

Len Bullard is one of the people that were part of the Web3D Consortium and the VRML group from the beginning, and he's also a musician and a composer.

I use to read Len Bullard's blog, as he always gives me interesting things to think about.


MarketSaw

MarketSaw is an excellent resource for something that is hard to find: news about real-3D movies. There are also news about virtual reality. He also runs some contests from time to time in which you can win 3D hardware for virtual reality.

http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/

Bang those PCs! Virtual reality simulation. Photo by Extra Ketchup.

This is really an unique concept of blog that deserves to be read for all those who love virtual reality and real-3D movies.



Zoe Connolly's Virtual World

Zoe Connolly is, amongst other things, the Owner/Leader of the Second Life Bloggers Group at Ning, an awesome and exclusive community of bloggers that write about Second Life.

Veyron Supercharge on the left, Zoe Connolly on the right. Photo by Veyron Supercharge.

Her blog is a compendium of all the news that are generated in this community. Recently she has stopped updating this blog, but she will continue posting to her other blog.

I hope she will continue with so good quality blogs and such an important community of SL Bloggers. Both are very worthwhile for all the SL inhabitants that look for quality blogging.


Virtually Time

This list continues with another SL blog, this time one full of tips and tricks for this virtual world. As many people fin Second Life very hard to use or understand, this blog has its value in making things much easier.

http://www.virtuallytime.com/

All kind of tricks from special scripts to how-to guides.


World of Simulation

This blog covers interesting news about virtual reality and software simulations of the real world.

http://www.worldofsimulation.com/

From virtual reality hardware to flight simulators, simulation games or virtual worlds that simulate the real world.


This Virtual World

A good place in which you can read reviews of virtual worlds, news about the existing ones and the new ones that emerge. It also contains articles that verse about cool gadgets and virtual reality hardware.

http://thisvirtualworld.com/

Active Worlds Reunion And More Events (Read more...)

New events have been added to the Hiperia3D News Calendar Of Worldwide 3D Events.

The Active Worlds Reunion 2008

From July 31st to August 4th, 2008. It will take place in Pidgeon Forge (Tennessee - USA), and as it says in their site "surrounded by the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains".

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/koolccg/reunion2008/

The Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Photo by FruitBatDesigns.

The fee for this meeting for Active Worlds users includes a winery tour, a dinner in a boat, and a visit to DollyWood Park, the theme park of Dolly Parton.

Active Worlds. Photo by Daniel Voyager.

I see that people in AW really know how to have fun... Don't miss it if you are in AW.


League of Worlds

This event will be in Hong Kong University (Hong Kong - China), From October 13 to 17, 2008.

It's an international conference on virtual worlds of all kinds, and will host a colloquium on Online Simulations, Role-playing, and Virtual Worlds. Seems very interesting too.

http://www.leagueofworlds.com/

Mr. Phillip Exhibition At MixED (Read more...)

MixED has already a date for the first personal exhibition, that will be from June 25 to August 25 of this year (2008).

The featured artist will be Mr. Phillip Sand Hansel II.

Image of the opening of MixED. Image by MixED.

Mr. Phillip has been a very active member of the VRML and Web3D community of worldbuilders for many years.
He was in VRML since the beginning.He has been in the main communities of multiuser VRML like Blaxxun's Cybertown from the beginning, and did great tutorials and 3d models in his site (The World Builders Guild).
Blaxxun and VRML had no secrets for Mr. Phillip.

Recently, his background story in VRML has been published in MixED, in French and English.

As new details of the exhibition are known, I'll post here. Also keep informed checking MixED frequently.

Videos Of The Tour Des Mondes Virtuels (Read more...)

These are the videos of the Second Virtual Worlds Tour that took place at February 16, 2008. The videos show the travel of the people that joined through many virtual worlds, during hours.

The show was directed and recorded by Jack Barlett. You can see all his videos here. He has many videos that may be of interest for virtual worlds fans.

What Are Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, And Augmented Reality? (Read more...)

Some people misunderstand virtual reality with other notions like virtual worlds and VRML. This article is an introduction to virtual reality and what it is.

"Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it a real or imagined one" -Wikipedia

This means that virtual reality are the hardware and software that allows the interaction of the humans with the virtual world. For example, a wired glove, 3d glasses, or the software associated with it.

Virtual reality. Photo by Marshal Astor.

The force-feedback features that are included in many gamepads can be considered a kind of home-amateur virtual reality hardware. The same can be said about the movement tracking devices that are incorporated in the Wii console.

"A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars" - Wikipedia

Here we are two new notions: virtual world, and avatar.

A virtual world is a simulated space, ambient or environment that is created inside a computer. Not necessarily it has to be a 3d world. It can be 2d, text-based, or whatever.

Virtual world. Photo by Torley.

In fact, a fantasy book in which the writer describes deeply the environment of a magic universe can be considered a virtual world depiction. And some board role playing games could be considered virtual worlds too.

Some 3d games, 3d chats, social 3d worlds, role playing games... all them can be considered virtual worlds.

Avatar is what represents the user (you) in a virtual world. Not always avatars take the shape of 3d figures that move in a 3d world. Sometimes they are 2d images, or text descriptions. And a 3d avatar doesn't need to be humanoid, it can be just a floating weapon or hand, or whatever.

Virtual reality lab. Photo by Alexeya.

As a final part to this brief introduction to virtual reality, we could talk about augmented reality.

"Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data" - Wikipedia

An affordable home system for virtual reality. Click to visit.

Augmented reality mix what is virtual with what is real. For example, you put on some 3d glasses, and walk through the street. The computer generates some monsters or people that cross your way, and you see them like if they were in the real street with you, but only you see them. This may sound a bit scary, but techniques like this are used very often in military or medical training, for example.

Vehicle simulation in virtual reality. Photo by Alexeya.

Have you had the opportunity to test some good virtual reality hardware? If you did, it would be great that you could share your experience with us all in the comments.

X3D-Edit Free Software For X3D Code Edition And Worldbuilding (Read more...)

X3D-Edit is a widely known solution for creating content in X3D (.x3d) using the XML encoding. It is an intermediate solution between visual editors like Flux Studio and pure-code editors, so it has the advantages of both for X3D editing.

X3D-Edit 3.2 was created by Mike Bailey and Don Brutzman.

Recently, the X3DV Module Suite was added as a compatible plugin suite. This means that you can install both softwares together, X3D-Edit and the X3DV Module Suite.

In the future I'll publish a long review on X3D-Edit, but for now let's examine the basic features of this software so we can have an introduction on what it's for.

X3D-Edit is written in Java and XML. This means that it can be run on most of the operative systems (Windows, Linux, MacOSX, Solaris). As it was built with Netbeans, it is available as a Netbeans IDE plugin and as a standalone application. Again, you can install X3D-Edit as a plugin into Netbeans IDE, and X3DV Module Suite too, at the same time. One will deal with .x3d and the other with .x3dv files (and VRML too).


X3D-Edit edits X3D scenes in XML encoding (with .x3d extension). It also has a 3D preview of the scenes using Xj3D, the opensource library and browser for X3D and VRML.

Its license ( BSD-style ) allows to be used to build worlds in X3D for commercial and personal use.

It can also validate your scene and find errors in the XML encoding.

This is a list of its basic features:

• Syntax highlighting for XML encoding of X3D files (.x3d extension).
  
• Drag&Drop palette of X3D nodes in XML encoding.
• Navigation window support in Netbeans IDE.
  
• Specific editors for each node.
• Validates X3D files in XML encoding.
• X3D tooltips and X3D Specification support.
• The preview can use Xj3D or an external web browser.
  

As we've been seeing in the last months, the range of available tools for X3D authoring is increasing. There are commercial and freeware tools, and also opensource tools.

X3D-Edit is one of the most successful opensource projects for X3D editing. It is feature rich, and will have more features in the future. Some of them are specially interesting, as the binary encoding support, which can increase the downloading speed of X3D files, and increased security for content authors.

We'll be longing for further news of this great project, and it's great news that the X3DV Module Suite is compatible with their project.

Association Of Virtual Worlds (Read more...)

It was only some months ago that the Association of Virtual Worlds (AVW) was born,an now it has more than 1500 members. What is the reason of this? Because they've filled a real need for virtual worlds: a place in which to collaborate, associate and share strategies.

Virtual worlds have become a familiar notion for all humanity since the success of Second Life, although there were many of them before, like Cybertown, ActiveWolrds and Travellers Network.
But in the latest times, the buzz that SL created has make many industries, businesses and individuals pay special attention to virtual worlds.

There are many different technologies for virtual worlds, though. And many different purposes, publics, etc.
Some of them share a technology (for example, VRML/X3D), or public (teens and kids, for example).

Wouldn't it be good that they had a place to work together?
And what if someone could help them to get the necessary skills, publicity, etc?
Or expand the interest of people for virtual worlds?

"Paper Verse 1", by SideLong.

Well, AVW was created for that. And not only for virtual worlds platforms, but also for anything related sites that promote virtual worlds and technologies, like Hiperia3D News.

It's leaders are Edita Kaye, who was its founder, and Dave Elchoness, its Executive Director. Both are very experienced people in virtual worlds and media.

The AVW has 2 websites. One is their main domain:

http://www.associationofvirtualworlds.com/

The other is their community website, which has an intense activity, and is hosted at Ning:

http://associationofvirtualworlds.ning.com/

If you join the Association Of Virtual Worlds, don't forget to add Hiperia3D as a friend. Our profile page:

http://associationofvirtualworlds.ning.com/profile/Hiperia3DJordiRCardona

Here follows a list of the last news from the AVW:


Person of the Year Award

This is an award that will be given to the person that has made the most extraordinary contribution to virtual worlds in 2008. The election of this award will be done by the AVW members, so start thinking in the candidates. Soon, they will open the nominations.


Global Ambassadors Program

A Global Ambassador of the Association of Virtual Worlds is one of a group of people that will represent the AVW in their region of the physical world.

Be an Ambassador of the AVW. Photo by Torley.

As an Ambassador, you will talk about the AVW with the people at your physical location, invite people to join the AVW, inform the AVW about opportunities in media, events, sponsorships, ect to spread the AVW existence in your country. Note that here we are talking about local ambassadors.

The Global Ambassadors also post news about virtual worlds on their locations and blog about them.
He/She will also serve as a local contact for AVW members in his country/area.


Publications

"The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds" is one of their first titles. Available in PDF for printing, list over 250 virtual worlds and is free to download. All the virtual worlds are listed alphabetically and include website url and brief description. It also gives you important data like if it's active or in development, whether is appropiate for teens and kids or adults, or its type (MMORPG, social virtual wolrd, social network...).
If you are a virtual worlds explorer, this is your book to get a quick view of most of them all.

Soon they'll publish "The Green Book: A Business Guide to Virtual Worlds", also available for free. This will be another different approach. It will be useful for businesses.

All the AVW books can be downloaded from this url:

http://www.associationofvirtualworlds.com/publishing.htm

Virtual Worlds Day

August 20 will be the day that the AVW has chosen as the Virtual Worlds Day. In that day, all of us will try to bring virtual worlds to the attention of the public.
More info on this subject will be posted soon. But in the meanwhile, I will add it to our Calendar.
Don't forget it: it's, after all, our day.

There's a world day for us. Photo by Cyrus Khamak.

Let's Collaborate. Follow Hiperia3D in AVW

You may have noticed that here in Hiperia3D News the AVW badge is displayed in the sidebar, with a link to our profile.

If you join the Association Of Virtual Worlds, don't forget to add Hiperia3D as a friend. Our profile page:

http://associationofvirtualworlds.ning.com/profile/Hiperia3DJordiRCardona

View my page on Association of Virtual Worlds

Joining is free (FOR NOW!), and it's good for you if you have a site or project about 3D worlds, virtual worlds, or VW news, resources, etc, or if you are a worldbuilder.

Blaxxun News And Problems Fix (Read more...)

Blaxxun, one of the first solutions for 3d chat communities, and the only one serious solution that uses VRML, is having problems at the Outers (the free server) where many people have their worlds.

This happens from time to time. The people from another community that is Blaxxun-based, 3D Planets, have invited the worldbuilders of the Outers to join their server, as can be read here:

http://www.cyworx.com/viewtopic.php?t=179

"3-dimensional collage", by DerrickT.

Anyway, the Outers community have found a way to make the Outers' server work, at least for now:

Open the 'hosts' file that is in:
Windows 95/98/Me ---> C:\windows\hosts
Windows NT/2000 ---> C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP ---> C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

and add the following two entries:
80.190.134.206 www.blaxxun.com
80.190.134.206 developer.blaxxun.com

After doing that, you may enter in any Outers world without problems.


Recommendations

Certifications like 70-297 and 640-816 prepare one well enough to fix such problems. However, going for an extra 156-215 credit or a 70-528 never hurts and you also become eligible for 650-393.

Calendar Of Worldwide 3D Events (Read more...)

The calendar may not be up to date as we are trying to find a more agile way to add and organize events. Sorry for any inconvenience. In the meantime, check the Meetings category

Follow the upcoming worldwide 3D events with the Hiperia3D News calendar.

Email any event that you wish to add to our calendar to info@hiperia3d.com, or post it in the comments if you wish a bigger exposure.

Join Google Calendar and get automatic reminders of the events to which you subscribe in this or other calendars. You can create your own calendars and also subscribe to our calendar events easily.

If you have some special calendar that you may like to share with our readers community, you're welcome to post it in comments too.

You can also check the hour of the day in different countries in the sidebar, on the right.
When posting an event, please tell the time zone.

List Of Virtual Worlds Meetings For 2008 (Read more...)

This year there are some important symposiums and meetings related to Web 3D, virtual reality and virtual worlds announced. Here you are the dates, locations and details.


X Symposium Of Virtual And Augmented Reality
Location: João Pessoa, Paraíba (Brazil)
Days: May 13-16 (2008)
For everybody interested in VR, virtual worlds, VRML and X3D and Web3d.

"SVR (Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality) is the major conference in VR and AR in Brazil sponsored by SBC (The Brazilian Computing Society). It will cover many virtual reality topics, and VRML, X3D and related web-based technologies."


This is maybe one of the most interesting meetings this year. There are conferences, and mini courses of great value.
If you have some opportunity to go there, don't miss it. You can register in site. Check their website, all is explained there.


Virtual Worlds Expo
Location: Los Angeles, California (USA)
Days: September 3-4 (2008)
For virtual worlds business people.

"Virtual Worlds Expo is dedicated to helping businesses harness the power of virtual worlds to engage with their customers, partners and employees. Conference agenda will include consumer worlds, enterprise worlds, investment and strategy, education uses of virtual worlds, virtual law and visionary/future development."

Los Angeles at night. Photo by QuinTes.

The call for speakers is open. This is an expo thought mainly for business people from the virtual worlds sector.


Web3D.org Symposium 2008
Location: Los Angeles, California (USA)
Days: August 9-10 (2008)
For everybody interested in virtual worlds, VRML and X3D and Web3d.

"The Web3D 2008 International Symposium will address this wide range of topics covering 3D Hypermedia on the Web. The annual Web3D Symposium is a major event, which unites researchers, developers, experimenters, and content creators in a dynamic learning environment. Attendees share and explore methods of using, enhancing, or creating new 3D Web and Multimedia technologies, such as (but not limited to) X3D, VRML, COLLADA, Croquet, MPEG4, MPEG7, Java3D, and Canvas3D. The symposium will also focus on recent trends such as interactive 3D graphics and applications on mobile devices."

This is a major event in Web3D, organized by the Web3D Consortium. The registration was opened April 29, so now is the time to inform yourself about it and consider joining the symposium.


SIGGRAPH 2008
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, California (USA)
Days: Conference: 11-15 August (Monday through Friday)
Exhibition: 12-14 August (Tuesday through Thursday)
For all the computer graphics enthusiasts and professionals.

"The SIGGRAPH conference attracts the most respected technical and creative minds, focusing on: research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web from around the globe.(...) SIGGRAPH is widely recognized as the most prestigious forum for the publication of computer graphics research. In addition to SIGGRAPH's leading-edge technical program, the conference's installations provide close-up views of the latest in digital art, emerging technologies, and hands-on opportunities for creative collaboration."



The biggest computer graphics and Web3d event in the world. It is an interesting event for everyone. There are different activities and fees, so you can join those that you like best.

It will also host the world computer animation festival (FJORG!).


Virtual Worlds London
Location: London (England)
Days: October 20-21 (2008)
For virtual worlds business people.

"Virtual Worlds London the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies within virtual worlds. Virtual Worlds London is produced by Virtual Worlds Management (VWM), the leading virtual worlds trade media company."

This meeting is focused to business people that are interested in virtual worlds as a business.
In 2009 this meeting will take place in New York (USA), on the Spring.


ACM Solid And Physical Modeling Symposium
Location: Stony Brook University, New York (USA)
Days: June 2-4 (2008)
For academic scientific people.

This series of conferences and courses instruct about modeling for physics and scientific modeling.


Recommendations

Indeed the success of virtual world owes part of its credit to successful pay-per-click. Not the website design and definitely not the domain name, if it was not for webhosting growth and the advent of dsl, we would still have been in the dark ages of the web.

Build X3D Worlds For Free With Flux Studio (Read more...)

Flux Studio is now Vivaty Studio. Although the links to Flux Studio may remain live some time, I recommend you to download Vivaty Studio, as it keeps the same features and adds many more. Read about Vivaty Studio and the developers program Vivaty Create here.

Mediamachines did this wonderful and complete application to develop X3D (and VRML) worlds visually, without having to code. It allows people that don't feel conformable with coding to do beautiful worlds.

But if you have a good understanding of X3D nodes and notions, it will be even easier for you.

Download Flux Studio

I know many people that did great worlds with this free tool. It is based on a previous program that became very famous (Spazz3d, later Vizx3d).


There are some good docs about how to use it in its Wiki page. You can also check the feature list and see all that Flux Studio is able to do.

In the last times, Mediamachines, the business that developed Flux Studio has changed its name to Vivaty. Seems that the virtual worlds server that they were developing has been adapted to make the Vivaty server.

The core of Flux Studio has changed of name and company many times. It may be a good idea to download this great free tool, that is comparable in quality to others in the market that cost several hundred dollars.