Best Use of Augmented Reality, Ever
I worked with Blaise last year, starting at about the time he took over as architect on Virtual Earth (now Bing Maps). I claim no credit for this work, but I’m proud just the same.
Entries Tagged as 'Featured'
The Unauthorized History of Virtual Worlds
I wrote the following essay to help us get going crafting a review paper for a major comp-sci journal. ‘Us’ in this case was Blaise Aguera y Arcas, one of the founders of PhotoSynth and Virtual Earfth’s new architect, and Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of VR, who thought of pretty much everything before I became conscious of the world.
Now, I should caution that Blaise didn’t ultimately want to use this text and Jaron equally had issues with it. The tone is all wrong for an academic journal, plus Jaron disputes some of the dates I recorded from my research (he may well know better). But I felt it might at least be entertaining to RP readers, so I’m posting it for you to enjoy. Still, don’t take any of it as official, just me being a smart-ass.
The Singularity is Nigh
IEEE Spectrum: Special Report: The Singularity
I’ll post more when I get a second, but it’ll take some time to digest.
For what it’s worth, my present take on the Singularity is a cross of Vinge’s and something Stoss said at a WorldCon party (or elsewhere), and Kurzweil, despite some inherent contradictions:
1. The future beyond a singularity is fundamentally unknowable. That’s the whole point. If we can accurately describe what’s past a so-called singularity, then it’s just your basic run-of-the-mill evolution, revolution or "disruptive" sea-change, which happen all the time.
2. People are good at extrapolating linearly, not exponentially. We can predict a few years out, but after that, reality diverges wildly from our naturally limited mental models.
3. We’ve already gone through multiple "singularities" throughout history, though perhaps increasing in frequency. Singularities are never the end of anything, but a new platform on which to complain about our current ways of life and ponder the color of the pasture on the far side of the next singularity.
Before their introduction, could people have predicted how the world would change with Writing? Or Computers? Or Corporations? Could they have even predicted the invention itself? If not, then these may also be singularities, points in history that we can only understand by looking back, not forward, like the approaching event horizon of a black hole.
That is not to say that some visionaries don’t imagine a world past that event horizon or see the event coming. But it’s all speculation, cautionary or wishful fiction at best.
Even the inventor of the mechanical computer, beyond genius for his day, could not have predicted word processors, virtual reality, AI, or even the CAD software that would have unquestionably helped design his mechanical computer.
One could argue that the One True Singularity will occur only when we (our heirs or errs) become smart enough to see through to the future beyond, i.e., the real Singularity is the last Singularity we will ever know.
The Future of Virtual Worlds
So my friend Cory Ondrejka (co-creator of Second Life) started an interesting thread last week that I didn’t see covered as widely as it should. Here are his slides — alas I didn’t get to hear the narration that went with it, but I can guess.
What he seems to be describing is apparently not too far from what I’ve been writing about for a while. The part I’m still skeptical about is the life-logging, and probably because of my own preference for privacy. You’ll notice I don’t twitter. I have a hard time believing anyone would even care to follow what I do from moment to moment. And I think careful editing is the secret to any compelling narrative. I just don’t want to put gigabytes of sub-standard, often mundane, prose out there into the digital firmament.
But putting that aside, the germ (and/or gem) of what he’s saying, and the part I totally agree with, is this notion of a pervasive synthesis of augmented, mirror, and alternate realities — no need to distinguish between those arbitrary categories. Turns out, there’s an old word for this which I think we can now safely revive to summarize the intent:
magic
Google Earth, for the Human Body
Researchers at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory claim a novel approach to accessing patient medical records — using the human body as the 3D framework in the same way that Google Earth uses the Earth as a framework to fuse and navigate geospatial information. Spin the body, click on a body part, and zoom in closer to get more information.
The [Predicted] Future of Google’s Street View
In guessing what Google and the marketplace have in store for us, I’m taking into account both what’s technologically feasible, now and on the horizon, and what I think people will demand.
I blogged a while back about virtualization and privacy issues for both Street View and Maps/Earth, which, for starters, implies to a [predicted] future version of Street View that erases people and even cars from the imagery you see. So let’s start there.
How Google Earth [Really] Works
Introduction
After reading an article called "How Google Earth Works" on the great site HowStuffWorks.com, it became apparent that the article was more of a "how cool it is" and "here’s how to use it" than a "how Google Earth [really] works."
So I thought there might be some interest, and despite some valid intellectual property concerns, here we are, explaining how at least part of Google Earth works.
[Read more →]
Second Earth
Technology Review: Second Earth
Now that Linden Labs has open-sourced the Second Life client, if any Google Earth engineers chose to study it, I might no longer be the only person lucky enough to know both the Google Earth and Second Life internals well enough to make a bold statement on a mashup of the two. It would be great if others (besides me) could do so soberly. Because all I’m hearing lately is a lot of “wouldn’t it be great?” and not much “here’s how” and, better yet, “here’s why” practical discussion.
Scenegraphs: Past, Present, and Future
Updated: 4/8/2003 for spelling, headers,and added links to “Scenegraphs Today” section
Updated: 9/13/2005 updated bio, added link to scenegraphs
Updated: 6/30/2007 moved to wordpress to allow comments — old URLs should forward here, but please update your links.
Sections:
- Scenegraphs: a brief history and evolution,
- Scenegraphs Today
- Scenegraphs Future
Google’s Virtual World, Redux
Rumors persist that Google is in the process of turning Google Earth into a virtual world. Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but GE already is a virtual world. It’s a virtual earth. It has all of the features of a virtual world (spatiality, point of view, presence, information modeling), minus a few we’ve come to expect from a game or socially-oriented space (seeing yourself, seeing other people, and directly interacting together).
First, a step back. Regular visitors know that I know a bit about the internal workings of Second Life and Google Earth, though, as I always repeat, I don’t know any of their current plans. What you don’t know is that I’ve also consulted for and even considered roles in some of the newer crop of social MMOs. I think I have a pretty good sense of the field, both good and bad. And I’ve also heard the rumor that Google wants to get into this space.
I can’t speak for anyone at Google, but I know this: they’re certainly capable of it if they invest the bucks. John Hanke was the business/marketing guy behind Meridian59, one of the first 3D online multiplayer games. He’s now in charge of Google Earth. So I’m sure he has a passion for this space and could find great designers and technologists to help him pull it off. But the big question I have is one of fit with Google’s overall mission to organize the world’s information, especially after their "better products, not more" mandate came down.
The thing about GE is that it’s a so-called "mirror world." The whole point was always for GE to accurately and compellingly reflect information about the real world. Opening up 3D content development via SketchUp and COLLADA import allows one to put virtually anything on the planet. That’s extremely useful, even if the information is speculative (like a new home plan or a proposed stadium). But the point is always to relate even the most speculative information back to the overall context: the real world.
So what happens if/when a purely fictional data layer is intentionally introduced? Does GE become a big open sandbox with a nice, but vestigial picture of the Earth on the floor? Is it SecondLife on a sphere? [edit: in case it's not clear, I think mixing fictional and real content is a mistake, unless it gets its own distinct context, like a game. Right now this separation is regulated by what gets promoted to an official layer. In a free-form SL-like world, perhaps not so much.]
So people talk about the technical challenges a lot. But that’s the easy part. Adding avatars certainly wouldn’t be hard. It would require a new server intrastructure. It would require the client to be improved somewhat, mostly to hide communication latency and handle thousands or even millions of active objects (esp. those pesky moving avatars).
Some have said that "resolution" is the limiting factor — this is true for real-world imagery, though this is more a data-availability problem than a technical limitation (1mm pixels are not out of the question). The system could probably support very detailed 3D models for buildings as well. But relying on users to create these may not produce good results in the near term. It takes a lot of work and it’s not yet important to do so. Procedural tools, unlike today’s SketchUp, would be essential. Without paid artists making these things, competition and collaborative rating/filtering of content is also essential.
And so let’s say Google does add whatever is needed and suddenly you can see and even chat with all of the other users of GE in your virtual proximity. That’s cool. But what then? I mean, the key thing for any experience is that it must either be fun or useful (or, ideally, both). So what would make it fun or useful? That’s the hard part. And as history shows, simply having the implicit marketing muscle of Google is only enough to get people in the door.
Here’s a short list of some good (and bad) applications of this strictly potential technology:
Collaborative editing – work together on models in-world. Minimally requires SketchUp functionality to be merged into GE (which is possible, but not at all easy). Initially, it could just be used for guided tours, like for selling real estate. That’s something, but it’s still fairly niche.
Socializing – To talk to people, you first need to find them. Say you fly to NY and see a hot-looking avatar nearby. What do you say? "Hey, I see you’re also searching for French restaurants near 42nd st. Ooh, la la." Second Life (and others) offer the concept of personal spaces, or what I’d call HomeSpaces (like home pages on the web). Where is yours in a social GE? Is it tied to your real home? Do we invite people to come visit our HomeSpace, full of virtual furniture from Ikea and appliances from Sears? Yawn. Beyond the basic 3D MySpace everyone wants to do, the key to socializing is sharing context and doing (hopefully fun) things together.
Networking. It might be cool to discover likable real-world neighbors (assuming knocking on doors is too intimidating). But apart from the obvious privacy issues, I’m not sure you need access to a whole virtual planet to meet the kid next door. The "dating" angle could certainly be made to work, after the privacy issues are solved. Adding a social network like SL has might ultimately allow you to find new friends easily, if Google works on the profiling and discovery tools. But what then? Social Networking by itself is fickle. Again, people need something to do together, or at least a purpose for spending time and forking over their personal information to a big corporation, even Google.
Creative Exploration – Ah, here’s something. Say a group of people get together to turn a bit of empty virtual real estate into a hub of creativity, like Burning Man, where people of similar (or similarly altered) minds know to come. GE then becomes more of a showcase tool. Here, adding scripting to the client would be essential. Just looking at 3D models gets boring. They need to come alive, perhaps even with physical simulation. Go a little further and you have games (some of which are already done as mashups with Google Maps — but these could live inside the system, not outside). This is what SL seeks to do. So could Google do it better?
Alternate Reality – AR is usually about overlaying fictional worlds onto the real one. But why not add fictional places to GE’s map too? So a group of people take the NY skyline and turn it into a fantasy land (middle ages, futuristic, etc..). That might be fun to build and explore. And there could even be a few games built there. But apart from the interesting juxtaposition of an Elven Forest across the Hudson from Jersey City, why does this need to live on a map of the real world? Certainly, GE wouldn’t want people searching for French restaurants to wind up with unreal results. (I can just see the mapping directions now: turn left at the big oak tree, down the rabbit hole, and 1.2mi across the swamp of eternal tears…). They may need some better separation between these two products, without sacrificing fun accidental discoveries. This has always been an issue for the "layers" approach.
Frankly, the most profound thing Google could do with Google Earth right now is like what they did for maps: enable 3D mashups. Any and all of the ideas above would get developed, tried and tested by others. But for 3D applications like GE, this is probably the most difficult technical hurdle of any I mentioned. Had Intrinsic Graphics (the makers of the 3D rendering layer inside GE) survived, I imagine it would be easier to have a nice, free Google Earth Toolkit for building new 3D apps, using GE and its powerful servers under the hood. But that didn’t happen, at least not yet.
On the other hand, two of the founders of Intrinsic Graphics are now at Google. So rather than have Google try to solve all these virtual worldly problems (as they tried with Orkut for social networks), I’d much rather see them open up the system in the way Microsoft has for its VE offering, as a component that others can build on or integrate, for free, but with ad revenue flowing back to Google, of course.
The risk to Google is much lower. They can still make gobs of money. And the potential wins are much greater than going it alone. At least, that’s what I would do.