The first YouTube video shared to the service tagged ‘virtual reality’ was on November 14, 2005 by YouTube user menace:

You can have Time T generate TubeLine timelines from YouTube using the TubeLine online generator. I tried another dipity timeline search for ‘3D’ and this time chose a human generated timeline: the history of 3D hardware + software:

Interesting seeing Sillicon Graphics founded in 1982 and 3Dlabs in 1983. Who came first, ATI or nVidia? ATI in 1985, some 8 years before nVidia.

Creating your own timeline - the VTOR experiment

I decided to start working on a VTOR timeline. A resource that would track significant posts/events made to this site along with post number. I don’t think it should include every post, only posts where some notable event has happened to one of the VTOR authors who has shared it in a post and/or among the first time something has been discussed at VTOR.

This is a work in progress and I invite other readers and VTOR authors to help out if they want. Here’s what I have so far, which only takes into account the first 25 posts at VTOR:

As of this writing, this only takes into account the first 25 posts at VTOR back in 2006 when this blog was still hosted at Blogcharm. I added that Blogcharm.com ceased operations on January 1, 2008 as well. It needs to have topics added and there are like 5 or 6 more VTOR author first posts to add. What you see took a good hour or more to put together.

It’s kind of cool keeping track of our first experiences in virtual worlds / MMO as reported here at VTOR. Not sure how or if many others will find this interesting, but I did. Note to VTOR Authors: we’ll discuss this timeline at our next full meeting (the Friday after this one).

Happy timeline creation to you!

The beginning is absolutely boring. I mean, we’re talking a serious yawn fest. While I know it’s trying to create the mood, it’s hard to stay with a game when you go through what seems like forever of storyline that you can’t skip. What’s more is that most of the dialogue is not able to be skipped either. I had actually fallen asleep trudging through this part. And when I got to the tutorial, I was so relieved that I went to find a save point and quit the game.

The tutorial is a bit better, but it’s also pretty lame. Outside of the graphics that looked like paintings, the rest of it was just dreary. It wasn’t until it started hitting the main storyline that it started to get a bit more interesting.

In the main story, you actually go around collecting skills where you must wield the power of the “Celestial Brush”. It’s basically using the controller to do brush strokes which signify different types of powers. Pretty unique there and definitely more interesting than most of the other types of games since this was a bit different. But the enemies are not very hard, and the storyline is still a bit slow.

I have to say that overall, I’m not as overwhelmed as everyone else was with this game. It’s neat, but there were definitely some interactive sections that could have been better. While the graphics and game play were decent, it’s not one of those games that other people can watch and playing it by yourself just doesn’t give you the chills of wonder. Sounds terrible, but good thing I got this baby on sale.

A two world machinima by Gary Hazlitt exploring the themes of a cross-world quest for love, mixed-reality and online game relationships.

Machinima which explores love crossing the boundaries of two different virtual worlds: Second Life and World of Warcraft. I was intrigued by the title and theme and felt the 7:20 was time well spent. Thanks Gary.

Hat tip to Gary’s love Laurel Papworth who shared this in a blog post writing:

It might make more sense if you know that Gary works a bit in Second Life whereas I am a World of Warcraft addict. If we want to talk to each other, we have to boot up the other virtual world - or turn around and tap the other one on the shoulder.

Interesting.

Check out a Photosynth.net presentation of this show from 92 pictures I took.

I’ve seen many of his shows and still shocked at how good he can use textures, music and effects to make something so amazing. If you get to see his show be sure to pull back and move your camera around to see all the fantastic visuals. Best to be there before the show so you can be amazed how the world around you changes.

I was given a hat for this show I am attending which changes colors, textures and effects during the show. All of this is controlled by Tuna Oddfellow. His regular shows are 11am SLT on Sundays, and 7pm SLT on Mondays. Visit the Oddfellow Studios [research center at 128, 128, 652 (slurl)].

• Video from a fan of his show.
• Another video from this magic show.
• Another video of another show.
• Real Life Performance by Fish the Magish!

Google denies that it is beaten yet. Mark Young, a member of the Lively team, admits that it has a lot of problems: crashes, log-in difficulties and hard-to-read text. When asked what he hopes to tweak, he says: “Everything. Much of the user interface is not as complete or polished as planned in designs.” He promises a round of updates soon.

It was only last month that we wrote about Lively’s launch [VTOR search for "Lively"] and I’ll admit to only being back a few times since. Today before publishing this article I returned again to see if I’ve missed anything new. I’ve checked the box several times to “remember me on this computer” and yet every time I’ve returned on this computer all the information is blanked out and the Lively login doesn’t remember me:

Guessing this is what the Google Lively team member means by “log-in difficulties.” It’s ironic that yesterday VTOR author Evansmom was talking about login difficulties with Second Life. Darius and I were talking on Skype about technical problems that have plagued Second Life for as long as we can remember.

How long before Second Life can be labeled a flop?

Or maybe Second Life is already a flop in your book? I know a couple of the VTOR authors have moved on from Second Life, dismissing it as failing to hold their interests. I’m holding on — barely. Logging in a few times a week, hoping to get re-energized over the service. I think the only major thing holding my interest is my friend connections in world and waiting for the server side software to be made open source like the client.

Signs seem to be pointing to Second Life flopping already, as it continues a downward trend of losing paid accounts. Personally, I think Second Life missed its golden opportunity in 2007 to be the next big thing. What we’ve been seeing in 2008 is a slow, painful slide toward obscurity. The opensim integration stuff is interesting, but might not be enough.

When or if the last of my friends leaves and turns out the lights, I don’t see anything that will keep me there any more. Linden Lab can still make one big last push by making the server open source, as they’ve promised repeatedly to do, but if they don’t hurry it might be too late.

Do you consider Second Life a flop? Would love to hear your answer in the comments below and/or via trackback from your blog.

Vivaty wants to avoid being a flop, plans ability to be embedded in websites and blog

I wasn’t too excited that Vivaty was only available through AIM and Facebook and according to Vivaty CEO Keith McCurdy, within the next two months Vivaty will be available as an embed in websites and blogs like Lively allows. It’s ironic considering The Economist’s flop talk to see McCurdy tell Reuters that Lively has validated the virtual world in a browser model:

McCurdy said Google’s presence only validates Vivaty’s idea. “Before we launched, people asked: Why be in the browser?” he said. “After Google launched — or echo-launched — we get almost none of those questions.”

Clearly, flop status is a subjective thing.

I didn’t see any mention of this on the SL blog, and I didn’t submit a support ticket, so I don’t know what the problem was. But Alice Klinger, who writes the excellent Beatenetworks blog, suggests it could be a concurrency problem (too many avatars on at once) and if it is, bots could be to blame. Bots, as in the phony avies sim owners use to populate their islands and increase their search rankings, or bots that people create to make money.

She also mentioned a promise by the Lindens that paying members would get log-in priority over free members. I’d be on board with that for sure.

Alice also suggests that because the login-failure message is new, the Lindens might be experimenting with some changes and preparing for a concurrency problem. Like I said, back to the bad old days. It would be nice to know. I mean, Mono is great but I just want the program to run correctly. Am I expecting too much?

This is one of those teasers that I just can’t wait for. The graphics look absolutely amazing when it comes to harnessing the Cell processor of the PS3, and the game seems to be a thriller type where it’s storyline driven. At least considering the in-game teaser from Joystiq.

Quantic Dream has done wonders in changing the way storyline gameplay is done with fantastic graphics and pulling out all the stops on the next-gen console. While, this might not be one of those games for those that don’t like interactive storytelling that blurs the lines between gaming and cutscenes, I believe that this will definitely set a new precedence for how games will be developed. Many games these days pay attention strictly to physics, or detail, but nothing quite the same as the in-game trailer of Heavy Rain.

And I have to wait until 2009 for this? [groan]. At least there will be a few games coming out to help ease the pain while waiting out this storm.

Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London has developed a region in Second Life that aims to design game-based learning activities for delivery of virtual patients that can drive experiential, diagnostic, and role-play learning activities supporting patients’ diagnoses, investigations and treatment.

One of my Twitter friends, Andrea Vascellari, thinks this is a “terrific example that demonstrates the value of virtual worlds like Second Life” and is interested in other folk’s thoughts after watching this video:

Good to hear a lot of uses of “washed my hands.” 

Andrew, this video reminded me of the May 2007 VTOR post: An opportunity to try virtual knee surgery where I wrote:

The other day I learned about a social networking site for doctors to discuss difficult cases with other doctors called Sermo. 15,000+ doctors are signed up. They don’t have any virtual reality going on there, but it would be interesting to see a virtual component of some sort if or how it could work.

I just checked back on the status of Sermo and see the number of physicians signed up has grown to 70,000+. A 55,000 physican increase over 15 months, impressive. Clearly interest among doctors sharing information on patients with each other and to quote the Sermo website: “exchange clinical insights, observations, and review cases in real time — all the time.”

While case details can be exchanged textually probably faster than bumping around in SL, I still see value in using a virtual world to play out what-if scenarios with patients and for training. I’m not sure how much I’d rely on Second Life as the go to platform with so many other choices these days. Perhaps something in a browser would be better. I wonder if Sermo has thought about integrating something like this with their site.

Caught this poison pill at Boing Boing via the official McCain website and wanted to pass along:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd [editor: Boing Boing stripped this important link from their use of this same quote] to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others

I hope I speak for the rest of the VTOR authors regardless of their political party affiliation when I say this Michael Goldfarb needs to be thrown into a week long Dungeons and Dragons gameplay marathon battling D&D’s most stupidest and heinous creatures. Seriously, doesn’t Goldfarb realize that D&D players vote too? I guess it’s lost on people like Goldfarb to realize that one can enjoy playing D&D and not be “pro-Obama.” Although this author will admit that he’s much more pro-Obama than pro-another-four-years-of-Bush-McCain.

November can’t get here soon enough so we can see this type of campaign mud slinging end.

Wait, to be far to Senator McCain, it is important to follow the link to the Goldfarb apology that Boing Boing neglected to leave in the quote on McCain’s site. I’m assuming because they linked that it’s a legitimate Goldfarb apology. In that link, which I left in the quote above Goldfarb writes:

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.
–Michael Goldfarb

The comments in this post are beyond funny, especially the ones wondering about Goldfarb’s alignment? Never piss off hard working D&D geeks!

First, let’s define markets. The United States is predominantly a FPS/sports realm. Before people go off and talk about how they’re also big on RPGs and such, I’m purely focusing on what makes it a unique market. Japan on the other hand is very storyline driven. Incredibly in fact. They’re much more into an interactive story with narratives and the works.

The Big Three

Nintendo - This company did the unthinkable. Yes, it made cute and fun a part of all age genres. Let’s be honest, the Wii isn’t your average storyline driver, nor is it a sports game player. In all honesty, it’s in a league of its own because of the unique interaction, not because of the games. Can you imagine if you this type of interactiveness was done on the 360 or PS3? Whoa, there. But unfortunately, we only get cell shaded Mario and Twilight Princess. That’s okay. We’ll live.

Microsoft - It started in this realm, and it seems to end with it too. Mr. Xbox 360 himself (Peter Moore) even went to head off one of the biggest publishers in the sports genre, Electronic Arts. If that’s not a telltale sign that Microsoft has most of its eggs in this bag, and why they do so very well in North America but not so fabulously in Japan… well, there you go. Apparently they finally are getting it though. Took long enough.

Sony - Having been an admitted Sony fanboy, I have to say that this corporation has long since needed someone to pull the one-two punch on them. They do get the gaming industry across the pond, but there is so much that be done to make them better here. This was obvious when MGS4 bundles went absolutely nuts with the new 80G core. With huge potential, but always playing catchup in the back 9, this is one of the few places where the hardware design is magnifique but the decisions behind gaming choices seem to lack in the whole fighting arena where the age over gamers here grew up on Street Fighter II.

Overall, it seems that everyone has their own issues with how to manage their customer base, instead of listening to the customers themselves. Out of it all, Nintendo seems to be the one that takes on customers the best in both markets while the other two just can’t seem to get their arms around the problem they have. From a big picture scenario? You have to listen to the gamers. No matter where you are.