Virtual Worlds: Live Beyond the Real

The word 'Virtual,' has had a great impact on the IT industry. Virtualization

has opened up new vistas for the IT industry and solved many a problem. Now is

the time to go beyond platform or resource virtualization and look toward

something totally different, a Virtual World. A world where everything is as

real as you can get, just that it exists on virtual space. Virtual worlds are

computer—based simulated environments where people can interact via 3D avatars.

These avatars could be textual or two dimensional, but the most common and

interesting ones are 3D Avatars. Virtual worlds are modeled in such a manner

that they replicate real life in virtual space. While creating them, people take

the liberty of adding elements as per their fantasies. In one of the most

popular examples of virtual world, called 'Second Life,' people can fly from one

place to the other; which by any stretch of imagination is not possible in real

life. So even though this experience is very close to the world we live in,

still at the end of the day it's only virtual and can be defined and modified by

people as per their will and fancies.

Another platform for social networking?



Social Networking has been in news for some time now. Orkut and Facebook

have revolutionized the way we use Internet, and redefined interaction via web.

Social Networking has become so popular that even enterprises have realized the

importance of some of the features on offer in these sites and many of them have

integrated these features on their portals. But the time has come to look a

little further and take social networking to a new horizon. Virtual worlds have

opened up that new horizon for people, where static pictures have been replaced

by animated avatars. Even though virtual reality has been in existence since a

long time, it recently hogged the limelight with sites such as Second Life

getting popular. So like Orkut and Facebook, are sites such as Second Life also

about social networking? Even though it is a strong factor resulting in the

popularity of these sites, there are other better opportunities to be explored

in this field. For eg, the opportunity to have your own house designed the way

you want it, to earn money by playing games and using the money to buy property

in a virtual world. You could also explore the opportunity to open your own

office and showcase your solutions to the rest of the world. Similarly,

opportunity to make a presentation to the outside world or even get a job in one

of the MNCs by entering their office and being interviewed in virtual space.

How does a virtual world work?



Whenever a user tries to explore a simulated world, the virtual world

software instigates him to manipulate the different elements of the modeled

world and thus experience telepresence. The simulated world may have rules based

on the real world or some hybrid fantasy. These rules could be anything ranging

from gravity, topography, locomotion, real time action, communication etc.

Communication amongst users could be via texts, visual gestures, voice or

through touch. To use a virtual world environment, one needs to install client

software on his system that already has a high-end graphics processor. Some

virtual world software don't require any kind of installation and can be

accessed via web, however, such kind of applications consume a lot of bandwidth.

In Second Life, avatars can be customized to reflect the personality of the users

Cyberpunk and Snow Crash



These two names form the backbone of virtual world. Both are a work of

fiction and helped build the base for Virtual World. Cyberpunk is a science

fiction that focuses on high-end technology and features advanced applications

of cybernetics coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in social

order. Snow Crash falls in a similar category and is part of the same fiction

from where Metaverse came into existence. It describes the vision behind the

current work on fully immersive 3D virtual space. Metaverse portrays an

environment where humans interact as avatars with each other and with software

agents, both socially and economically. So, in cyber space it replicates the

real world without its physical limitation. Snow Crash is a unique usage

scenario for Metaverse and shows how it can be implemented, used or how it acts

as an interface with or compliments the real world.

Second Life: The secret behind its success



Second Life is a name that has become the face of virtual world and has

revolutionized the way people interact using Internet. Like other virtual worlds

it has been inspired by the Cyberpunk literary movement and Snow Crush. Linden

Research Inc, commonly referred as Linden Labs, is the developer of the notion

called Second life and hence the currency used in Second life is called Linden

Dollar.

Using a downloadable client program, called 'Second Life Viewer,' users

within second life, commonly referred to as 'residents' can interact with each

other through motion avatars, hence providing an advance level of social

networking combined with general experience of a Metaverse. Residents can

explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in group activities,

create and trade items.

Enterprises can use virtual worlds for holding meetings and conferences apart from just using it for social networking

Why Second Life has become more famous than any other virtual world is

difficult to answer. It could very well be a much hyped promotion of the site or

due to the Metaverse they have created. It could also be due to the fact that

they haven't kept it limited to social networking and have allowed enterprises

to leverage maximum benefits out of the virtual environment. They've opened up a

new horizon for enterprises to explore and help them to grow their business and

decide strategies based on the feedback of residents. Add to it the simplicity

and user friendliness of the site, and you have a hot property in the virtual

world. Second Life does have a strong competitor in IMVU, There, Active Worlds,

Kaneva, etc which are making their presence felt in the international market

slow and steadily. But what most of these sites lack is the variety of features

that Second Life has to offer, and the lack of an exciting environment such as

Metaverse. They only cater to either 3D chatting or socializing, whereas Second

Life provides much more avenues within virtual world, those which can be

implemented in real life too. Second Life has a touch of real life in it, which

others lack. It would be interesting to see if any of these sites can provide

the same facilities as provided by Second Life, but as of now Second Life

remains the de-facto standard of virtual worlds.

Opportunities for enterprises



The virtual world contains 3-D representations of people and landscapes from

the real world. It's a world where users are life-like representation of

themselves and they interact with each other through messaging, voice or even

video. Second Life, which is considered as the next phase of Internet revolution

became widely popular for social networking and is now becoming a host to

various activities happening from enterprises. Due to high membership and the

option to manage and customize avatars and virtual properties easily, it has

become the choice of platform for enterprises aiming new business opportunities

to venture into the virtual world. Enterprises are foraying into Second Life for

exploring more business opportunities that they can harness from the virtual

world of Second Life. They are buying lands and building stores on Second Life

for hosting their products and services on the virtual world. Some of the key

areas where enterprises have explored business opportunities include:

Marketing: Virtual world provided organizations with an innovative way

of promoting their business. With virtual world sites sites such as Second Life,

organizations have got the opportunity to open their stores in the virtual

world, where the users can go and check out the products of their choice.

Dell uses Second LIfe as a platform for users to configure their PCs or notebooks

Dell, one of the largest PC and notebook manufacturers went a step further

and rather than just showcasing their products on Second Life, they gave users

an opportunity to configure their own PC/notebooks; the user can then have the

same configuration PC/notebook shipped to his place after confirming the

transaction details over the Dell's website, which is connected to Second Life.

In fact, companies like BMW, Adidas and Toyota also have their storefronts in

Second Life for brand awareness and marketing. An avatar (user) can visit

Toyota's store, learn about the car and not only that, he can even go for a test

drive (though in the virtual world) and use all its features. Interesting way of

luring customers. Isn't it?

Communication and Collaboration: Second Life allowed users from

various geographical locations to connect to a virtual meeting place as an

alternative to conference calls and video conferencing. Such kind of a setup is

appealing, readily-available and interestingly it won't cost a bomb for the

enterprises as they needn't to invest on the hardware and installation costs of

the conferencing hardware tools. A simple webcam and an audio device will enable

an employee to connect to a virtual meeting and participate, while for an actual

web conference or meeting the organizations might have to spend an exorbitant

amount. A viable option for the enterprises having multi-country presence; such

a meeting place for conferences and meetings will be far less cheap and more

collaborative.

Companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems explored the social networking and

collaboration aspect of the virtual world. The IBM employees developed avatars,

which could interact and conduct meetings in a virtual environment. Sun

Microsystems used Second Life as an alternative for conferences, seminars and

even announcements. Their 'Project Darkstar' was announced on Second Life; they

even shared their Q3 fiscal reports via Second Life with their worldwide

employees.

Sun's MPK20 allows employees to work in collaboration and interact with each other in a 3D virtual work environment

Education and Training: Virtual world has created new avenues for distance

learning. There are many educational institutes having a presence in the Second

Life-like Harvard University is already there. The enterprises can conduct

training sessions for their customers in a virtual environment wherein they can

get the knowledge and usage-training right from their homes. Sun, IBM, Cisco etc

are effectively harnessing the potential of second life for training their

employees at minimal costs.

One of the best uses of Second life toll date is done by an Egyptian company,

IslamOnline, which has hosted a close replica of the Hajj pilgrimage. Not only

do the users get familiarized with the Hajj rituals, but they also get a chance

to exercise these rituals in a 3D virtual environment.

Experimenting:Companies are using Second Life as a platform to test and

develop products, before they actually start building them. They are also using

it for getting feedbacks on the product before they've actually launched it in

the markets to predict user acceptance. For instance, Starwood Hotels built a

concept hotel called Aloft Hotel and used the Second Life residents' feedback

for refining their plans before starting the construction of the hotel. Nike and

Adidas too used this platform to gain consumer's feedback for their new shoes

before its actual launch.

Technologies behind Virtual Worlds



The Web 2.0 technologies combined with advanced graphic rendering

technologies have made it possible to create Virtual Worlds. Along with the

availability of high-broadband coupled with progresses in PC's computational and

graphic capacities, it has become possible to make these virtual worlds

available to users over the Internet onto their browsers or a client program

installed on their desktop. The success and popularization of virtual world has

to be attributed to the recent advancements in graphics technologies both in

terms of software and hardware where rendering real-life images onto a computer

screen at a high frame rate has become possible.

The above reasons have attributed towards the easier reach of virtual world

environments to the users across the Internet. But which technologies are used

in creating such virtual worlds is something to wonder about. Virtual Worlds

like Second Life and Sun's MPK20. Virtual Workplace is built on open standard

technologies combined with Web 2.0 standards for user interactivity. Though the

client-side program of the Second Life is open source, the main software of

Second Life is based on C, C++ and other proprietary technologies. For

simulating such a vast world space a powerful backbone of server capable of

calculating and rendering millions of users simultaneously. At Linden Labs, they

use around 2000 servers to run Second Life.

Mainly the open source 3D virtual toolkits like Project Wonderland or Croquet

are used for creating virtual environments. The Croquet SDK is powerful enough

that provides developers with an infrastructure for creating and deploying

deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and across

multiple operating systems as well as devices. Its architecture makes it easy to

develop virtual world applications without having to put in a lot of efforts and

expertise in understanding how replicated applications work. On the other hand,

the Project Wonderland toolkit is built upon Sun's Project Darkstar server

infrastructure which provides scalability and security needed for multi-user

enterprise grade applications for the virtual world. This toolkit provides means

to the developers for creating virtual world, avatars and the animations within

it. Virtual worlds created using Wonderland can have shared applications, live

and immersive audio/ video where an exploring user can see and hear much in the

same way as happens in the real world.

The scripting language used to control and manipulate objects in the Second

Life is Linden Scripting Language (LSL), which is similar to C. LSL determines

how the objects will behave, controlling the waving of virtual hairs, driving a

virtual boat or automobile, or behavior of a virtual gun etc. Everything in

Second Life is a combination of prism, textures, and LSL scripts. Also the

building tools which are used for creating landscape objects are based on

geometric primitives. The technology used for streaming voice and video uses

VoIP with video compression and graphics rendering.

Most of the enterprises who buy land or islands in Second Life's virtual

world are not building the virtual properties by themselves. There is a

scripting language called Linden Scripting Language, which is used to design and

build the virtual properties in the Second Life's landscape. But making

appealing and impressive Second Life property is not an easy task. There are

technology companies specialized in developing a real-life enterprise's virtual

presence. Crayon is one such company which built the virtual properties for

Second Life. In India companies like Anantara Solutions and IndusGeeks are

helping enterprises to build their virtual presence felt by leveraging Second

Life as a platform for business.

Second Life is not the only place where lots of activities are happening in

the virtual world; companies like Sun, Google and Microsoft are now venturing

into this arena to create their own virtual spaces. Sun's MPK20 Virtual

Workplace is a virtual 3D-environment concept where employees within an

enterprise can accomplish their work, share documents and interact with

colleagues. Employees working in their virtual MPK20 team room can turn and talk

to any other colleague in the room regardless of a person's physical location.

This capability provides single place for distributed teams to work, collaborate

and communicate.

The road ahead



The virtual worlds have no longer remained a disruptive world to the

real-world for loners and geeks. It has evolved through the constraints of

technology and is rapidly being accepted as a world that will co-exist with the

real-world to form social as well as business associations. It is a must for an

enterprise to keep itself informed about the happenings in the virtual world so

that they can also evaluate the business prospects for them through this next-gen

of business models where the user experiences the close to real-life 3D

simulation of the product or services.

Second Life and other virtual worlds have demonstrated that the next-gen

Internet revolution will be in the field of virtual world where the interface

for content and communications will transform from 2D to a 360 degree 3D

experience.

We imagine that in future an employee can log in to his office in virtual

world and commence his official work right from his home. Well, just an

imagination, but possible too. So, all those who have still not explored the

opportunities in the virtual world or have maintained a distance from it-get

ready, the action is on and you've to keep it rolling.

Rahul Sah and Saurangshu Kanunjna