Getting Virtual

[robinturner]

my "virtual worlds" course continues to take shape slowly. When I first got the idea, I was motivated in part by laziness and time constraints, so a course that would enable me to recycle some of the best bits of my previous courses sounded like a good idea: a few texts from my "games" course, a few texts from my "Matrix" course, a few articles about Second Life, a few pages scanned from William Gibson and Bingo! a course. No way. It's widening out in all directions as I realise that there are elements of virtuality in everything from 3G phones to FaceBook (this latter prompted by an excellent post from tsenft).

Anyway, after messing around with various online applications, I've decided that it is high time someone produced World of Second MyFace.

Comments

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a religious cult.

Snowcrash is my favorite VR book, though I like The Diamond Age a lot too.

Hmmm...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard anybody (yet) make the joke :

"Get the fuck out of MySpace", or maybe "He's really getting in my FaceBook".

"ArseBook" ? "Twatter" ?

VRML

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

SGI pulling away from the virtual world in ?what? '99 or 2000 was the death-knell, but what really slowed it was processor speed: back then 233MHz was screaming fast. With clock-speeds now, woooof, many many frames per second is no problem
Thing is: VRML is way easy to write!

101 or 102?

[(Anonymous)]

So, will that be a 101 or 102 course?

Re: VRML

[solri.livejournal.com]

I never really looked into VRML/X3D but yes, it does look pretty straightforward. Writing online 3D apps is now within anyone's reach, but writing good ones - now that's something else. I mentioned before how I liked the idea of Second Life, but was totally unimpressed by the world's performance, whereas I've just started playing Guild Wars, and it's awe-inspiring. OK, that's partly because SL content is user-created by people with varying levels of skill and taste, whereas GW has a unified feel provided by talented professional artists, but even on the technical side, most non-game VRs seem to be very weak. Still, these glitches will be ironed out with time, and I don't think Idoru is a long way off.

Re: 101 or 102?

[solri.livejournal.com]

102. And who are you?

Re: VRML

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

None of my machines have the umph required by such as 2ndLife (all three are 300MHz) so can't say, but can imagine: as with everything else, you get 80% of the buzz with 20% of the effort it would take to push it all the way, so few entities commit to realization of potential.

Funny you mention GW: a friend (arohanuijust yesterday introduced me to a D&D wiki and, looking through related resources (I've never played D&D) came across a GW site ... impressive!

[solri.livejournal.com]

I've not read The Diamond Age yet. Snowcrash is great fun - kind of Neuromancer meets Illuminatus!.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

I love YT, but she makes me glad I don't have daughters.

The Diamond Age is about an educational scheme gone "wrong." I like its idea of nationality based on temperament and interests rather than geography.

[flux-pendulum.livejournal.com]

I am not familiar with the material that you would be presenting in this 'virtual worlds' course, but it seems that any discussion of 'virtual worlds' should include the late Robert Nozick's 'experience machine' thought experiment.

[solri.livejournal.com]

You're right. I've discussed this briefly in other classes, but it's obviously relevant here. Cypher's choice to be plugged back into the Matrix ties in with this (though it's not an exact analogy, since in the Matrix, unlike the experience machine, we still interact with other people).