Andromeda Media Group: Virtual Reality

Showing posts with label Virtual Reality. Show all posts

Mar 1, 2018

A Tale of Two Labs

Insight from my trip to Linden Lab and Beyond

Clarity From Chaos

The sun shone down that day, caressing the silver Passat on I-5 as my assistant and I rolled through the unending fields of almonds which so graciously seem to blanket much of the California hills. Aside from the occasional confused cow (which I named Carl), there was little else to keep my mind occupied.

The radio in these parts seemed to assault my senses with either Spanish, Country Music, or Evangelism. It was clear I needed to turn that noise-box off for a bit and clear my head.

Sipping Carolina Honey Argo Tea (my favorite pretentious tea), I contemplated what was ahead and the shear insanity of it all.

After all, I somehow decided one day out of the blue to cart my balls around in a wheelbarrel and invite Ebbe Altberg, Samy Montechristo and Orion Simprini to hang out. It’s at this point, I usually get the obligatory “How did you get a meeting with them?” question.

A: I simply asked.

Now, whether that speaks to me being important or not is up in the air. Maybe if you asked, they’d schedule you in as well?

Ok, Michelle will schedule you in… she’s Ebbe’s assistant. Maybe the guy wanted a court jester for an hour? Maybe Ebbe stared out the window as I left and said “What the hell just happened?” Who knows…

At least Orion and I have talked back and forth for years and have always wanted to hang out with each other… so weirdly, asking a freakin pop-star to hang out is less crazy than asking the CEO of Linden Lab if he wanted to hang out, but I figured “Why the hell not?”

We had been on a road trip down to San Diego (from Portland, Oregon) and decided a few pit stops along the way were essential if we were going to make the best of this coastal crusade.

Of course, a few days in San Diego with friends were mandatory, as were a few days in Carlsbad at the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort. Walking into the place, a staff member asked if I would like some champaign as my assistant was checking us in. Pretty fancy stuff, that. I’d highly recommend booking there if you’re in the area, especially if you get the concierge service.

Further on our way back up, I had arranged to meet up with Orion Simprini (lead singer for the Orion Experience) around Los Angeles. He and I had been bantering back and forth with each other since around 2011, and with both of us from the Tri-State originally (NY, NJ, PA), we always figured hanging out would be easy…

And yet, all these years our schedules and locations never managed to coincide. Until today, where I sat at the corner of Manhattan Avenue and Pier Avenue at Java Man Coffee House by Hermosa Beach sipping my mocha latte, and listening to Children of the Stars when the man himself strolled up.

We hung out around Hermosa Beach on the pier, kicking our feet up and blowing each other’s minds. Orion was really interested in the idea of doing 360 music videos and VR experiences, so I walked him through the different approaches and what they all meant in terms of production and control.

My boy just sat there with his mind blown at the world of possibilities. At the end of it all, we both hit on a film project that seemed crazy enough to work and I agreed to be a technical advisor and collaborator.

“In the virtual world, you’re God. Nothing exists in your space unless you put it there, and how good it is depends entirely on your attention to detail.”

Of course, you’re not here for that story…

The San Francisco Treat…

As awesome as hanging out with Orion was, I still had other business to attend and a tight schedule (as my assistant loves to keep reminding me). So we bid farewell and continued our drive back up to Redding where we would spend another night.

On the 21st, I was scheduled to roll into San Fransisco and stroll into Linden Lab…

People have asked me a plethora of questions about this visit, and I’d like to preface with the disclaimer that the moment you walk into Linden Lab and sign in, you also sign an NDA. For the sake of not disclosing confidential information, this post will focus on just things that I’ve said, the obvious general information (that already is discernable or public) but not specific answers from Ebbe.

Just to make clear: I absolutely do not speak on behalf of Linden Lab, and anything disclosed here is either:

A) My opinion

B) Common sense (and/or public)

What I knew going in, was a bit scarce. So I simply took anything I saw there in the offices as “NDA” and that Ebbe has been trained by ninjas to seek and destroy.

I hadn’t really spent a ton of time in SANSAR prior to this day, but I did think it was kinda impressive for what it was. When answering the Facebook question about Ready Player One and Linden Lab, I was answering generally that they hadn’t dropped the ball there – but wasn’t going into details.

When Ebbe strapped me into the Oculus headset and toured me around SANSAR, I just took everything as “under NDA” as a precaution. Of course, Ache’s Garage was impressive and answers the “Did they forget about a Ready Player One Tie-In?”

Well, no… but I’m guessing if you keep up with the news in the world of Linden Lab (and our wonderful bloggers around the grid) then Ache’s Garage is old news by now. I haven’t been keeping up on those news bites, so Ache’s Garage is new to me (and impressive).

I did get some interesting insights though during that discussion that maybe weren’t openly reported… more general thought experiments from Ebbe. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is top secret, but more like – we really hadn’t thought of things like that yet but it would be common sense if we thought about it.

Of course, Linden Lab worked with Warner Brothers and Intel and HTC for Ache’s Garage. It’s a great CES demo for sure – at least for the stage that SANSAR is at. Steven Spielberg has seen it first hand with Ebbe – but that is par for the course since I know Spielberg is really anal about how his creative works are represented elsewhere – so Ache’s Garage (like anything else) would need his blessing. Hearing it out of Ebbe that way made me chuckle internally because it’s not the first time I’ve heard similar in the industry about Spielberg.

Would Spielberg or Ernest Cline pop into Second Life or SANSAR for the movie release? I’d prolly say no, but then we already know that Ernest Cline has an account in Second Life, so how do we know the dude isn’t hanging out right now?

Spielberg… ok, that’s likely a “Hell no”. He doesn’t have time for that beyond a cursory one time stop-in. He’s Steven effing Spielberg.

There’s a good reason why SANSAR would be the go-to for companies like Warner Brothers for virtual world experiences. It’s generally because they want absolute authoritarian control over their intellectual properties, and Second Life (being you) scares the ever loving hell out of them.

To them, Second Life is like the inmates running the asylum. Of course, I always have contended that the chaos is manageable with the right approach.

And while SANSAR looks gorgeous, it still feels quite sterile. It’s more a static museum of spaces, versus Second Life which is entirely organic in nature. Each has a purpose, and I’m absolutely enthralled by the future.

But it still stands that the general public wants more than “pretty” when it comes to VR. They want (need) it to be of substance.

[HTC] Ready Player One – Aech’s Garage

Picture: Inara Pey

Of course, I could be wrong about Linden Lab throwing the doors open for Ready Player One… but I’m actually hoping I’m not wrong. Because opening the floodgates to SANSAR right now, with Spielberg in Aech’s Garage would be very, very, bad for SANSAR.

SANSAR is a work in progress, and noticably so. That doesn’t mean it can’t be better over time. But if you were to try and throw it into the spotlight partially finished, the public would shred it and hold it up as an example of why Virtual Reality is failing and not succeeding. The public would compare it harshly to other more polished systems… and that’s unfair at this stage of development. In short, it would be the same mistake Philip Rosedale made with Second Life, so I’ll give Ebbe the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows not to repeat history.

I believe SANSAR is a good beginning, but it’s late to the party. There’s places like VRChat and Sinewave.Space that are much farther ahead as a platform to develop VR content with.

I’m sure there are other platforms as well, but I can’t be bothered to write out a laundry list.

Not that it matters. When it comes to VR Headsets, we’re still in a phase where engagement is measured often in minutes (20-30 minutes), whereas non-headset VR worlds like Second Life see an engagement rate measured in many hours.

SANSAR is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Why Linden Lab is so hellbent on pushing SANSAR while effectively ignoring SecondLife, or treating it like the wicked red-headed step-child internally, is anybody’s guess. But I’ll touch on this more later in the post as I feel it deserves its own section to qualify.

That being said, the insight gained here was along the lines of all the assets these companies have already sitting around in 3D Models. IKEA for instance has their entire catalog in 3D models, Warner Brothers obviously has a massive asset library at their disposal, and so on.

So there is this opportunity to connect these Intellectual Properties into the virtual world – and that’s something Ebbe and I discussed while I was there. Not just “officially” converting existing assets from these companies into say, Second Life and SANSAR, but (and since I brought it up, I’ll assume it’s not covered in NDA – just the answer that Ebbe gave me) by converting the pre-existing user-generated content in those systems from IP Infringing content to Sanctioned under a “Brand Ambassador” program.

If you read this blog, then you know I’ve talked before about the premise of VIPER Licensing – and the question would be:

We all know if you cut off one head of the Hydra, ten more grow back. Why fight this when you can effectively leverage it so everyone wins?

The idea is to let Linden Lab be the “Steven Spielberg” figure and pre-negotiate those licenses on behalf of the userbase, create a best practices guidelines for the usage of those IPs, and then stamp the pre-existing content that we all know exists on Marketplace but “shouldn’t" as brand ambassadors.

Of course, Linden Lab would up your transaction fee to 25% on real world branded merchandise you were making virtually. 10% for Linden Lab and 15% for the IP holder (Coca-Cola, etc). But that still leaves you with 75% of the revenue, and a massive amount of creative freedom without the DMCA fears so long as you follow guidelines for representing IP in a way that doesn’t tarnish the brand.

Now, I can’t tell you what Ebbe said in that office concerning this. Whether Linden Lab explores this is anybody’s guess, but I put it on their whiteboard and tried my best to explain it to him.

The IP problem still persists in SANSAR as well, since an arcade full of Nintendo IP likely isn’t sanctioned by Nintendo for SANSAR. And while I absolutely think this stuff should still exist (and will, regardless of what we do), I think there is a better way to address how we deal with this prosumer culture in the 21st century and especially with user-generated content platforms.

DMCA just isn’t getting the job done, and likely is throwing gasoline on the fire via Streisand Effect. Being authoritarian about it all and trying to tightly control the creation process by requiring approval for uploaded assets would likely stifle and kill SANSAR, unless Linden Lab negotiated all those pre-existing assets from IP holders into SANSAR and SL themselves… which kinda defeats the purpose of user-generated content, and companies never seem to know what use cases people need in a virtual world, so people will still end up filling in the gaps with their own content.

So maybe the best approach is to leverage and manage the chaos instead of trying to eliminate it?

Land Prices

Another conversation I had with Ebbe was about those land prices. It was a question posed in the Facebook post so I made sure to ask. It was kind of a side-note to another conversation about the structure of Second Life being based on land sales, and a way to balance the equation through other means.

I won’t say what those other options were that were presented in the conference room. I will say that Linden Lab is fully aware of the land price “issue” and looking into ways to lower the costs.

Now, after I had stated this for Wagner James Au on his blog (New World Notes), I was contacted in-world by a few Land Barons who (you could say) were slightly paranoid about this situation. If land prices went down, they would reason, then everyone would just buy land and get into business for themselves, putting them out of business and killing their investments…

I don’t see it that way, honestly.

I think competition is healthy, and spurs innovation. So I guess you just can’t get away with an auto-mat system and a couple of volunteers working for tips and commission anymore. May have to invest in treating those companies more like companies, I guess?

Like I said, if land prices came down – it’s not without a sacrifice somewhere. Linden Lab is a company, not a charity. So you better believe they’re making the money up somewhere else if they do.

As per the responses given to Wagner for NWN, I’d like to point out that I was using a cell phone and in the middle of a 4 hour drive up the coast. Not exactly the best situation to collect thoughts, which is why you can consider the NWN post a “rough draft” so to speak where this post is collecting my thoughts better.

F!@#ING LAG!

The other obvious question while meeting with the man himself came as a side question from Facebook that I saw concerning addressing lag in Second Life. I had already planned on presenting something that would drastically reduce lag (and bring a plethora of other benefits) in the right hands, so “reducing lag” in Second Life is a side-effect of this particular topic at hand.

The thing about Second Life is that lag is often inevitable. The way that game engines work is that you’re either in edit mode or the simulation is published. When you play video games, it’s all published and locked down. This gives the engine a chance to pre-bake textures, add in lighting calculations and optimize the scene. Before that, in all game engines, there is the live editing system which lets you place and design the scene with assets in a lower quality mode prior to optimizations and lighting calculations (and so on).

Unreal Engine: In-Editor Testing

Now, we can say that the “low quality” edit mode has come a long way over the years whereby it is on par with amazing graphics nonetheless. I remember editing levels in DOOM in the 90’s where it was just a top down map in wireframe before calculating the nodes and publishing the map, where I would then walk around to explore.

Second Life (as with any live edit system like ActiveWorlds) is just the game engine in permanent edit/preview mode. Those extra optimizations to the scene cannot happen and so things are slower.

That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.

We can begin by optimizing our assets for a game scene, and choosing a balance between complexity and looks. There is, of course the idea that Second Life could introduce the idea of User Generated Zones.

For this, I’m borrowing from my years in the ActiveWorlds universe (before Second Life existed).

Zones

The idea of Zones is simply that you use Prims with extended properties to better control spaces in a scene. Whether that is to say – Particles originating outside this zone do not enter it (or vice versa), or to say Assets within this zone do not load until a user enters the zone.

These are all options that were and remain available in ActiveWorlds to this day (20 years later). The idea of user generated zones would instantly make things like Screen Space Particles (Weather) possible without it raining in your house. Doing this, you could also (in theory) run a script that changes the weather on the sim based on a location API call to a weather service.

The zones can also be used for user-generated culling spaces, which (if used properly) can drastically reduce lag in a virtual world – expecially in a highly dense and populated sim.

Of course, there are other benefits to Zones. One of which is assigning smaller spaces in 3D for builders or rights. An example here would be:

Think of an apartment building. There are maybe 20 apartments in the building. Now let’s say you could offer each apartment privacy, localized building, etc like parcelling without the all or nothing blunt instrument but instead using a more surgical approach.

For a more in-depth idea of what zones can do, just click the link above for the ActiveWorlds Wiki description.

Weather

Suddenly, weather built into Second Life doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. When last I checked, Windward Mark was wholly owned by Linden Lab (its parent company). So if Linden Lab got Windlight out of the acquisition, I would imagine they also got the weather system that came with it by default.

Yes, I personally backed up the Windlight demonstration video from Windward Mark Interactive about 7 years ago on my YouTube Channel precisely for this purpose.

Even if they somehow didn’t get the weather system, it’s not like a screen space particle system isn’t a turn-key solution these days from other 3rd parties or even in-house.

It’s there… sitting on a shelf unimplemented. The point made above concerning implementing Zones solves the original problem for not implementing Weather in Second Life 7 years ago. Of course, Zones solve a ton of other things while it’s at it.

Particles

About the only thing I have to say about particles is that it should be integrated into the toolbox (create) menu floater with the rest of the tools.

Yes, you should still be able to script particle emitters if you wish by hand, but there’s really no reason to have left the WYSIWYG editor for it out of the toolbox.

Again, ActiveWorlds made this happen years ago, so it boggles me why this is still a point of contention in Second Life development.

One of the things you’ll notice on the Wiki link is that there is a Particle Type drop-down. Sprite is selected in the picture by default and it’s the “Screen Space Particle” used (most often) for Weather effects.

“What about the user made HUDs sold on Marketplace to handle Particles?” you may ask.

It is my contention that when your user base creates elaborate work-arounds to fill in functionality gaps for your product, it’s time to make it a priority for native integration.

See Also: Somehow nobody thought a web based marketplace system would be needed officially for Second Life until XStreet sprang up via the end-users and eventually was bought out by Linden Lab.

This should have been native in the toolbox from the beginning, and it’s mind boggling that this many years into Second Life, it still isn’t.

Of course, I say that about weather and zones as well…

Making Mirrors

Of the other subjects that I brought up was how to implement mirrors in Second Life without causing a ton of lag.

I’ll just let the link above explain it.

The Tale of Two Labs

And now we get to the bigger question.

As noted by Bixyl Shuftan, and his apparently keen eye, Linden Lab has laid off about 12 people recently, and their VP of Product apparently has resigned to go work elsewhere.

In relation to my view of Linden Lab during my visit, and what Bixyl has found from Glassdoor reviews by former employees as of recent (which I’ll share here):

The other review from an anonymous employee, "Make LL Great Again" was less critical. But he still had a negative outlook, "Company is too focused on its new product; those who work on the mainstay feel set aside and taken for granted. HR is nearly non-existent; most team members are remote or barely in the office. Too many org changes lately have left folks feeling insecure, morale is low and sinking. I hope they can turn it around." His advice to the Lab's leaders, "You have some really awesome people there; get out of their way."

While I was at Linden Lab, I definitely got the feeling that SANSAR was the main focus with a near total avoidance of discussing Second Life or its future. It’s technology evangelism at its peak.

As far as Ebbe is concerned, he’s all-in for SANSAR while Second Life is … somewhere in the basement level with the engineers.

On one side of the equation I can see why Ebbe would be all-in for SANSAR. I’d assume Linden Lab spent a stupid amount of money developing it and couldn’t afford to pull the plug, and so he was likely told to produce an ROI come hell or high water.

Welcome to the board of directors world.

In a way, I’d assess that Rodvick made a mess and Ebbe is still trying to clean up and/or salvage things.

That being said, I have to agree with said anonymous former employee.

As a CEO, Ebbe has a choice to make – He is the captain of the Linden Lab ship, but he also decides what sort of captain he wants to be:

Captain Picard or Captain Ahab.

Right at this moment, he’s showing qualities of Captain Ahab, in the blind pursuit of SANSAR (Moby Dick). But I believe he’s intelligent and an overall great guy. Smart enough not to sabotage his own efforts and company.

After all, Second Life is still the goose that laid the golden egg. It didn’t die, it’s just being actively starved and strangled by the aforementioned organizational changes and CEOs.

Which is really unfortunate, because I also believe Linden Lab also has some brilliant and creative people there with their hands tied, and who absolutely love Second Life and want to make it better.

While I don’t have a Linden nametag myself, I pushed my devotion for virtual worlds as far as I could take it by crossing the country (New Jersey to California) and making sure I was physically parked in front of Ebbe at Linden Lab, with a whiteboard, to discuss some of these things (and more).

That’s some devotion right there, and… sadly, is as far as I can/could take things short of working at Linden Lab officially.

What Linden Lab does with the information is up to them. I’ve done all that I can in the process, and will turn my attention back to other projects.

I don’t suppose I’ll be coming back to San Francisco unless somebody gives me a damned good reason.

Nov 13, 2017

Arcade Exchange Update

Revision 2.95

Marketplace: http://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/22206

What’s New

AES (Audio Engine System)

When we first built the arcade series, we weren’t entirely knowledgeable about scripting in the high-end. Of course, there was the llPlaySound command to handle short clips, but when you’re dealing with arcade machines that have audio loops measured in minutes, even for the attract modes, you can see how this falls short as a solution. Stringing together the audio commands with llSleep in between only goes so far, and when you begin extending the amount of files needed in that loop, the rest of the menu system begins to stall while it waits for the audio and sleep commands to complete.

This has been an ongoing issue for the life of the Series III Arcade Exchange, but we’re proud to announce that as of Revision 2.95, it is no longer a problem.

We’ve re-written the audio engine system (AES) to be more dynamic, pre-load items in advance, and handle hundreds of audio clips in a loop without interfering with the main script.

What his means for you: The menu system is now responsive, even when playing the audio loop, as the AES has been separated into its own script and handler to multi-task.

As a result of the AES upgrade, your arcade machines are now able to loop many minutes of audio when toggled – in many cases, an entire run through the game itself.

That being said, please keep in mind that the pre-loader is not an indication of actual time to pre-load but merely an estimation. The actual time to pre-load and play those clips is entirely dependent on your connection speed and other various factors such as sim lag and Second Life itself. You may not hear the entire loop the first time through because of this, but we’re pretty certain the second time through you will.

Support Call Decal

On the back of every arcade machine, there is now an Andromeda Games Support Decal (Upper Right Corner). Because your arcade machines are under “Second Lifetime” Warranty, you can always trade-up to the latest revisions or have broken machines fixed for free. However, it hasn’t always been clear who to contact or get in touch with to handle this. Sure, we put that warranty information into your Instructions card that is included, but we also know that customers aren’t always interested in reading.

As a result, we’ve put the support call decal on the back of every machine, and made it an active call sticker. Which is to say, if you click on them, it’ll give you the warranty information, and contact for support. It’ll also page me (Aeonix Aeon) in-world and let me know who is requesting support and what machine you’ve invoked it on.

We don’t think it gets any easier than this, really.

Various Updates

There have been some amount of various issues (minor) which have gone unfixed in the past on our arcade machines. While not all game-breaking, they did warrant another look during this update and a correction. TRON, for example, had a minor alignment issue with the side panels which left a small gap. The Glow was set way too high, and so on. It is also currently one of two arcade machines that do not have an animated screen (Space Invaders being the other). With this machine there are some technical limitations in-world which we haven’t quite sorted out yet – the screen is not uniform and due to the complexity involved with the build (geometry and faces) it isn’t feasible to animate the screen as of yet. We’re still looking into it.

Fix-It Felix Jr has had the animation set for the screen re-done with better quality, and the audio is now much better without the lag. However, this game is only available in the Arcade Exchange Mega-Pack as a bonus.

Joust had the same panel alignment issue as TRON, and so it was also corrected in this update.

Tetris as of 2.91 and earlier is now broken – the game itself no longer works. The 2.95 update corrects this.

Instruction Card

The instruction cards on all of our Arcade Exchange have been entirely redone for legibility and to include new information. This includes a better explanation of your warranty so you know what is and is not covered. I’ve made the card more unified with ASCII headers and such, so now it should be quite easy to discern all the main topics as you scroll through. The same has been done to the card for “How to fix Flash for Second Life”.

Marketplace Availability

During the long tenure of the Series III Arcade Exchange, our customers will have noticed that the original premise of the name meant that you could purchase only the Polybius arcade machine on Marketplace and then trade it in-world for the one you really wanted. While available in-world via our vendor boards at certain locations, we didn’t make them available on Marketplace directly.

That is until recently.

There are many pros and cons to doing this, and most importantly is that being a near perfect replica of the original arcade machines in real life poses a bit of a problem. Many hours of debate and discussion have happened over the years about this very issue – IP Infringement.

While we absolutely will not contest that our arcade machines are IP Infringing, there is a deeper explanation about why they should be left on Marketplace. If you read below, we’ll get into those details.

Marketing

One of the other things you may have noticed as of recently is that the ad-copy and marketing for our products has been updated to be more uniform and professional.

Having a real life marketing background helps in this case, in that I used to work for Pulse Point Media as a VP of Operations.

Now, just as a reminder, when I use “we” and “I” in these posts, it’s a matter of who in AMG I’m talking about. I refers to me (Will Burns, the founder) and We refers to the rest of the team involved with the products (such as RobsterRawb Jaxxon, Jon Dragoone, et al) inclusive.

When writing these blogs, I’m writing them on my own and so it’s always coming from “me” as a representation of the group interchangeably. Just wanted to clear that up in case you were wondering.

In any event, as I have had years of marketing experience, I decided to go ahead and apply that to our forward facing image by creating proper ad-copy for our arcade machines. A unified look and feel so to speak. It is purposefully reminiscent of an Atari logo in a subtle fashion.

I think it’s something you don’t normally see with a lot of items on Marketplace or in-world. Of course, the bigger brands do this properly, but that’s the difference between the big kids and inexperienced. Doubly so for the listings involving Arcade Machines on Marketplace – but we’ll get to that below.

The ad-copy is mirrored on our boxes now, and the look/feel is also in our magazine advertisements (as you see above at the beginning of the post). We regularly advertise in both Attention! Magazine and Playdolls as a two page spread. It is clean, gets attention, and gets to the point with a visual and short, witty slogan.

We’ll be using this format going forward.

Backstory

In the course of the Series III Arcade Exchange, we’ve undergone quite a lot of updates and revisions. Originally conceived in 2010 before Second Life had mesh ability, it was a major overhaul when we started updating them all in higher quality mesh.

Back then, and even today, we spent quite a lot of time sourcing our materials and pouring over reference photos for the arcade machines in real life. There was and still remains a lot of points to why we would go to such painstaking trouble with these builds for what amounts to a virtual product with a limited audience.

VIPER Licensing

One of the biggest issues with doing something like this is the obvious elephant in the room: IP Infringement. In the modern age, it is considered the scourge of IP Holders, and takes up quite a lot of time attempting in vain to police their Intellectual Property online.

The standard tools for this give those IP Holders the legal precedent to DMCA or issue a Cease and Desist order. On Youtube, we see this as “Copyright Strike” where a claim is filed against a video.

But does this really solve the problem? It’s a never-ending battle that is both costly and time consuming, with little result. You win battles but arguably are losing the war.

In the example of the fan created game AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake), it was a brilliant game made by fans out of the love of the game. In my opinion, it absolutely did justice to the franchise and IP. However, it still remains that they did not have permission from Nintendo to use that IP and so Nintendo issued a DMCA to take it down.

But here is where it gets tricky.

The tools of DMCA and C&D are not effective in the bigger picture. If anything, it is akin to cutting the head off of a Hydra and being surprised when it grows back a thousand heads. What DMCA and C&D invoke in the modern age is known as the Streisand Effect – which is to say the thing you want to get rid of instead draws more attention and becomes more available as a result.

In the case of AM2R, this was true. Yes, the fans who made it took it down and complied with the DMCA, but those who had already downloaded it simply mirrored the files all over the world and on BitTorrent.

If anything, AM2R ended up with far more visibility in the media and higher accessibility as a result of the DMCA from Nintendo. In short, it had the opposite effect they wanted. Their strategy backfired spectacularly.

Back in 2013, I wrote a chapter in a college textbook whereby I outlined the solution to this miserable state of affairs: VIPER.

In the beginning, I outlined that IP Holders rarely (if ever) have a clear avenue to pursue in the instance of user generated media. For instance, most companies have a clear protocol to handle either a Producer of content or a Consumer of content, whereby a producer is seen as a large media firm that can pay a large licensing fee up front and a consumer is just the person who is expected to buy such items or be exposed to what the producer has created.

But what about the prosumer culture? The user-generated media made by the consumers as non-professional producers?

This is where we get into the grey area of legality and approach as we look at spaces like Second Life. Yes, those companies have every right to issue DMCA notices to take content down – but is it effective? In this case, the answer is absolutely not. If anything, it only exacerbates the problem as we see with AM2R.

You take one down and twenty more pop up to take its place.

So the premise of VIPER is to be an effective tool for IP Management in a user-generated content environment. Something that Second Life is sorely lacking, and companies in the real world do not currently subscribe to, which is exactly why we see this Streisand Effect continually playing out despite their best efforts.

VIPER is an acronym for: Virtual Intellectual Property Engagement and Recourse. The premise is simple: to manage IP on the prosumer level effectively and without the content explosion back-fire otherwise seen with typical DMCA approaches.

In the case of the Arcade Exchange, the premise is quite clear – to make available the best options for those media examples as a poison pill approach to IP Infringement. If high quality versions exist, it makes the countless low quality knock-offs irrelevant and so they will slowly cull themselves. By leaving the best options to fill a need in a space whereby a company would otherwise not be engaged, it has far more positive impact in regard to IP Management and Protection than had the same companies sent an army of lawyers to issue a paper storm of DMCA notices.

In short: Absolutely, these arcade machines are IP Infringing. By no means should DMCA take-down be implemented as a recourse. They are there to actually cull the plethora of existing knock-offs that are low quality, and in effect have the actual intended outcome that the constant DMCA take-downs and account bans have tried to accomplish all these years.

VIPER is a mindset that follows one of the biggest rules in user generated worlds; Whether that is the hobbyist at home making a fan game, somebody making creative content on YouTube (Adult Wednesday Addams for example), or virtual worlds like Second Life: Work within the system.

In this case, “the system” means not the legal recourse you’ve been given (DMCA etc) but the mentality of the community by which the IP is existing.

In order to understand VIPER licensing mentality, you as a company must ask a few questions to qualify the action:

1. Will a DMCA result in the desired outcome, or will it backfire and cause a Streisand Effect?

2. If our end-goal is to reduce or eliminate the IP Infringement, protecting our intellectual property, then would engagement in the system to fill the supply where there is clearly a demand actually achieve this end?

3. What is the least involved manner by which we can accomplish #2 on this list?

4. Does it make sense to engage and ask for a marginal licensing fee on each sale of said item in a virtual world (percentage) or is it enough to sanction the item as a preventative measure to cull the majority?

The answer in this case is obviously to identify the best version of the IP Infringing material and sanction it. However, one must also be willing to leave the other low quality versions alone to their fate as a result. This is how to eliminate the Streisand Effect in virtual worlds and elsewhere while actually accomplishing your end goal.

That doesn’t mean as a company that you should be saying “This is an official product” of our company. What you’re really saying here is: This is a licensed product in a virtual sense, we acknowledge it, and it represents the IP and brand in a positive light. It is the responsibility of the content creator to handle the sales, the marketing, the updates, and customer interaction.

In the event that said virtual item no longer represents the IP in a positive light, then you have a dialog with the end-user about how this can be corrected (reasonably). Again, we’re not going into things DMCA-Akimbo. After all, you’re running the risk of punching a hole in the dam of IP infringement and letting the torrent of knock-offs take its place.

We clearly don’t want this to happen.

This is also entails that companies (internally) set up some sort of “Best Practices” guidelines exactly for this purpose, and to convey to the end-users (consumers) that should they wish to use the IP in this manner, these are the rules they must follow.

Of course, in this document, the point is to be fair about it. So don’t go into it with massively unbalanced disincentive. In example – saying “Sure, you can make and sell this in a virtual world, but we expect a 90% cut on money earned.” or “Sure you can make this but you cannot sell it in the virtual space or make any money on it.”

Let’s be real here. If your goal is to cull the IP Infringement and protect your IP, it does you no justice to create a hostile environment whereby it makes more sense to just ignore you and do as they please, albeit in a less visible manner.

Dec 7, 2016

The Evolution of Virtual Worlds

A brief overview @ OSCC this Saturday

This Saturday @ 10am PST in Keynote 1
Open Simulator Community Conference

It can be said that I have a very excellent ability to see the writing on the wall and predict the trends before they happen when it comes to various things.

After all, I predicted that the Cubs would win the World Series this year (and how it would happen), I’ve predicted that real world locations would become sponsored locations for mobile gaming to entice players to visit (Pokemon GO), and even in a comprehensive report for Sears Holding Company that the future of retail is Zero Barrier (everything is tagged and automatically scanned just by walking out with it) which Amazon is now testing in live physical stores.

So you can imagine that I get asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question about the future of the Metaverse quite a lot…

While I can't get into a comprehensive presentation or cover all the talking points in 20 minutes (because, let's face it... we've been at this for many years and still haven't hit all the bases yet), I've chosen to highlight a handful of trends that I think are important and will change the entire paradigm of interaction for the Metaverse.

I will, however, be on a later panel that same day (3pm PST) where I'm sure more will come up, and I'll be available via my booth at Expo 3 for a sit down discussion if you'd like.

I look forward to seeing you there!

http://conference.opensimulator.org/2016/

#OpenSimulator #VirtualReality #SecondLife

Aug 10, 2016

Ready Player One

A Glimpse Of The Metaverse

As the room around me loaded into view, the rickety wooden stairs moaned under the weight of my descent. With each careful step, the musty air of the basement greeted me among the phosphorescent glow of retro nostalgia against the far wall. Unfinished structure enclosed the space, revealing the studs at a regular interval as if I had wandered into the skeleton of years gone by.

Aside from a few worn couches to my right, there was the obligatory shelf containing a plethora of Atari games accompanied by an old CRT television by which was connected to the artificial wood grain and black plastic containment of pixelated wizardry which defined my childhood.

This was no ordinary basement in Second Life, but rather it was the Basement from the book Ready Player One, lovingly recreated by the VSTE staff for their book club discussions.

Over the summer, they and a handful of students have been reading the novel which is currently in production for a feature length film by none other than Stephen Spielberg.

Pulling out my virtual reality copy of the book, I held it in my hand.

It was a personal creation of mine, a Universal Book Prop that I thought was relevant for the occasion – borne of my attention to detail in the existence of both the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Complete Sherlock Holmes I had conjured through digital spellcasting, otherwise known as the toolbox.

But it was the arcade replicas against the back wall which I felt most proud of for this Basement – Joust, Tempest, and a Pac-Man machine specifically created to have that iconic 1981 US Quarter on the marquee. In this moment, I felt like Halliday, the creator of OASIS and the very same mindset permeated throughout me as I surveyed the room.

On August 8th, 2016, I had been invited to attend the final discussion for VSTE for the book club, of which Ready Player One had been chosen, and it was here in this recreation of The Basement that we gathered together. Some wearing outfits inspired by the characters, while others appeared in casual clothes.

I was wearing my favorite long coat jacket, a type of Civil War era style (I would imagine) and a simple pair of blue jeans with white sneakers. Of course, I had on my obligatory glasses, which in a virtual world seems like a hipster accessory at best, but I’ve always strived to represent myself in avatar form as closely as possible to my real self.

As I greeted everyone in the room, I quietly took a seat at the end of the garishly colored sofa, admiring the decorations in the room and attention to minute details – just as Halliday would have wanted it.

And so it began, my foray into the realm of educational inspiration in a virtual world, partaking in an immersive experience straight out of a book that all in the room were familiar with. Participants from around the world, all gathered in this virtual world experience.

For a moment, my mind drifted to the OASIS system as I found parallels to Second Life as a sort of pre-cursor. Would something like the OASIS be the revolution we’re waiting for when it comes to a full scale Metaverse?

In a way, I believe that to be true. However it comes with a few caveats.

Into the OASIS

While not the highest fidelity attainable, the open sandbox type virtual world model in and of itself happens to be the best choice for underlying mechanic when it comes to the Metaverse. However, that is where things get more muddled in comparison.

See, in a construct such as OASIS in Ready Player One, it is explained that making a character is free, but any sort of substantial fast-travel is going to cost you. In effect, a tax on teleportation. There is (of course) the marketplace type system whereby the user generated content, plus system level artifacts (created by Gregarious Systems) and resources could be bought, sold and traded.

Sure you can teleport at will, but because it was tied to a scarce resource model (credits or energy) you would notice that other means of hierarchy arose. A long while back, I had proposed a similar type of system as a checklist of what a Metaverse would likely encompass, and while the OASIS in the fictional sense of Ready Player One comes very close, it isn’t spot on.

For instance, you would likely have to have a resource mining system in order to facilitate the raw materials needed to create items. This in and of itself helps regulate the prices and availability of items which we can sell, trade, etc. Especially if those items will degrade in some manner during usage or over time.

As it stands in Second Life, items simply do not degrade or effectively break. So when you buy something off of marketplace, that item is pretty much infinite and lasts forever (or until you trash it).

There is also the underlying idea that virtual worlds should be on spherical planets, with a full “outer space” to explore. Somewhere in the digital universe are other planets, or if you’ve made one (instead of exploring) it would be nestled at a coordinate somewhere in space.

This follows the OASIS line of thought. If you build a space faring vehicle, you should be able to launch into outer space and explore other planets.

In the same manner, you should be able to mine for resources to facilitate the creation of items using an in-world toolbox (user generated content and environment). There should also be a centralized Marketplace for the purchase and sale of those creations.

By way of comparison, Second Life isn’t really a Metaverse system. In my original definition, it would look a lot more like OASIS from the book Ready Player One, with the caveat that the planets themselves wouldn’t be a central company (OASIS) importing pre-existing virtual worlds under a single umbrella (World of Warcraft, etc) but instead, a company like OASIS would create the underlying toolkit, SDK and APIs to hook into OASIS and allow those third party systems to participate in a decentralized manner.

So maybe Blizzard Entertainment would merely add the APIs and such to the existing World of Warcraft, allowing it to exist in OASIS as a planet, but still housed primarily on Blizzard’s servers for their world.

As a result, we would see something like a combination of OSGrid, HighFidelity, and OASIS put together. Recently, I came across a video which highlighted these basic premises together under a single engine – While it is still in early technical alpha phase, I found it quite intriguing.

Dual Universe

The real life version of OASIS

If I were to build a Metaverse system from the ground up, my first inclination would be to begin with Dual Universe as the underlying engine. In turn, Dual Universe uses CSSC (Continuous Single-Shard Cluster) technology that they have developed themselves, but is along the same lines as how Improbable works in order to facilitate the massive multi-user scalability which enables them to do a full universe like this on a single shard.

CONTINUOUS SINGLE-SHARD CLUSTER

To handle potentially millions of players simultaneously in the same universe at the same time, NovaQuark have developed their own technology, that they call a Continuous Single-shard Cluster. The challenge is to handle situations when thousands of players will gather in tight spaces, like in a city, or a space battle and to do this without interrupting the gameplay. This involves what they call "Dynamic Space Splitting", server nodes are assigned to regions that are more densely populated, and these change the frequency of updates of remote entities to maintain a fluid experience for nearby entities.

Upon reading their definition of CSSC, I’m quite excited because they are essentially putting into practice the very idea that I said would be able to break the concurrency limit for a single shard full universe. When I originally suggested it in the research paper, and later to Linden Lab (who effectively patted me on the head and ignored it), the idea was simply this:

If you have many servers running and each server handles a region – why not take the compute power of the entire datacenter and intelligently increase or decrease the processing where it is needed?

In effect, all the areas that see low traffic would have tons of compute cycles going to waste, while the high traffic areas are crumbling under the weight of crowds. Why not just assign the extra workload to the unused computer power in the entirety of the datacenter throwing effectively a distributed supercomputer at the areas that required it, taking from the areas that didn’t?

As Dr. Gilbert, Dr. Dionisio and I had written in 3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities in 2013:

“From the surveyed work, an overall architectural strategy based on DSG (with a high-performance “world state” system like Red Dwarf at its core), peer-to-peer openness as seen in Open Cobalt and Solipsis for broad distribution of load (not an exclusively technological challenge), and reduction/optimization techniques like action-based protocols appears to hold the most promise for massive scaling of an integrated virtual world system.”

ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 45, No. 3, Article 34, Page 31

In the same train of thought, I also suggested that everyone’s cache be part of a redundant, distributed peer-to-peer file storage cluster (much like how Ownerless File Format works). Then you add in the peer-to-peer architecture of something like Solipsis in how your avatar updates in relation to others (cascading information) and you have a very powerful system capable of millions of concurrent users in real time for a persistent contiguous virtual universe. While there is still the underlying centralized computer clusters from the main company (like Linden Lab) a lot of the power ends up being offloaded in high-concurrency areas through the Solipsis methodologies.

In contrast, Second Life technology, whether it is represented by Linden Lab or a derivative of OSGrid (OpenSim) uses many shards with a fraction of the concurrency per region. It’s not very efficient as a baseline architecture, but it’s good for what it is considering how long ago it was created.

Something that bothers me, though, is how the instances of published spaces are still the normality in new projects (like SANSAR). I wouldn’t expect SANSAR or even hifidelity.io to have a full universe contiguous and single shard like Dual Universe does.

So I would be borrowing the mentality of decentralized planets, each maybe owned by a different person or entity and running independently, but all hooked into an OASIS style universe represented accordingly.

Of course, the planets are spherical and able to have user-generated content on them, as well as editing the terrain and so forth. This takes care of the age old question: Where will I sail my boat? With this underlying setup, there is no such thing as “region crossing” because it is all entirely contiguous and fluid transition – whether you are moving around a planet or leaving the atmosphere into space.

If anything, by structuring a Metaverse like this, we not only allow but create a need for these standard methods of travel. By introducing the resource scarcity and need into the simulation, we organically watch civilizations grow out of necessity. The towns, cities, highways, space ports, airports, and so on. Trade routes arise organically as a result.

The thing here is – Dual Universe likely isn’t going to take these latter routes for a Metaverse, but stay a walled garden only.

Nonetheless, the potential is already there if it ever wanted to be something bigger like the OASIS system.

Up close with Dual Universe

The Paradox of Movement

Another unanswered question concerning the recreation of the OASIS would simply be “How do we allow people to move freely in this virtual universe?”

This is a major question to ask, because as of yet we haven’t really answered it. With Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE and other head mounted displays for virtual reality, the best practices manuals all directly state that allowing free movement of the avatar/character should be avoided or else you’ll cause motion sickness (cybersickness).

The solution, as of this moment, isn’t really a solution so much as nerfing the virtual world altogether.

Teleport Movement mechanic is the chosen strategy… and I’d like to say that while it does work, I think we can do much better than that. For most of these games and experiences, we’ve taken a highly complex simulation of a 3D world in lush detail and nuance, and then turned it into a point and click adventure.

There is only A + B point to point, but nothing in between. With systems like Dual Universe (and Second Life) you need to be able to move around freely and not via point to point teleport. You need to be able to simply walk from one location to another without getting sick.

Sadly, the HMD alone can never solve this (no matter what Oculus or HTC tell you). Because at the end of the day, the visual systems might be fixed to reduce or eliminate sickness, but movement hasn’t been fixed. The problem is now down to the visuals telling your brain that you are running or moving, while your inner ear tells your brain that’s a lie.

Scenes in Ready Player One where Wade is sitting in the van with the headset on wouldn’t likely be possible for using OASIS because he’d get very sick from doing so.

More plausible is when he is later attached to the full haptics rig for OASIS, in which case I’d absolutely agree it was possible. At the very least you need a good omnidirectional treadmill to let your physical body know when you are actually moving around.

But I digress (as usual). The point is: The Metaverse is arising out of unrelated parts and projects, and it is now possible to actually build it properly.

Until then, I guess we’ll just have to use out imagination, read a book, and watch the movie next year when it’s released.

Let the hunt begin!

Jul 17, 2016

Pokémon Go or;

How I learned the difference between AR & MR

It was a fairly calm evening last weekend while my friends and I sat in the pickup truck filling up for gas. The night air in the rural backwoods of Pennsylvania was calm, and the air humid from the July heat. Out of the corner of our eye we saw another car pull up, but instead of looking to fill up their tank, two older gentlemen jumped out while one of them loudly proclaimed:

“I’ve only got three Pokeballs!”

Did we slip into the Twilight Zone? What drugs were these guys on?

But then the obvious sunk in and the lightbulb went off.

These guys were driving around town playing the latest Augmented Reality game from Nintendo and Niantic Labs, aptly named Pokémon Go.

In what seems like a total invasion of augmented reality gaming, Nintendo and Niantic have unleashed what can very well be considered a “killer app”. Within 24 hours of its release, the market share for Nintendo skyrocketed by 9 billion dollars, and has in the last week alone been deemed the most traded stock in Japanese history.

Thanks to the fad-tastic launch of Pokemon GO - more popular than porn - Nintendo stock has exploded over 93% in the last 7 days (the most ever) to 6 year highs. But the Pokemania was really in the trading volume where 476 billion yen changed hands for the highest daily turnover on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this century... – zerohedge.com

Holy crap, that’s amazing…

But of course, there is now the apparent discussion/debate about whether or not Pokémon Go is actually Augmented Reality.

Whether the discussion is from VentureBeat or Scientific American, both will tell you that Pokémon go is not Augmented Reality because it breaks some rule about immersion, and so it’s not true Augmented Reality.

Well, you already know where this is going if you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, so let’s get right to the point: Pokémon Go is Augmented Reality.

VentureBeat doesn’t seem to understand the difference when it comes to this topic, and so their entire write up about it is describing what is known as Mixed Reality and not Augmented Reality. So if you know anything about the terminology, you’ll immediately understand that while they have their heart in the right place, they just aren’t competent enough to be calling that shot. You’d immediately realize the author of that write-up is describing Mixed Reality and not Augmented Reality.

This Pokemon Go commercial is showing Mixed Reality

The promotional videos for Pokémon Go essentially are confusing the terms as well – in that the above video shows a Mixed Reality view and not the bare bones Augmented Reality of the actual game. The video above is showing a digital Pikachu that is immersed in the real world and is real world aware and can interact with the real world. Which is actually doable, but you’d need better hardware and software to pull it off. SLAM mapping of the real world environment, a Depth Sensing Camera, better GPS, and so on. In this notion, yes… immersion is a criteria for sure.

This is a far cry from the reality of the situation in which a 3D render of the Pokémon is simply superimposed onto your video feed.

Ok, so let’s be straight up for a minute.

Augmented Reality isn’t really one defined thing aside from “Superimposing digital information onto the real world”. It is mostly an umbrella terminology, and often used interchangeably with Mixed Reality. Augmented Reality is a spectrum and not a singular point on the map.

From Heads Up Displays (Google Glass, Air Force Pilot Helmets) to something in the realm of HoloLens and Magic Leap (and beyond). You can pretty much just have an arrow on screen pointing directions like your GPS Map, and if it’s overlaid on the real world (via your video camera) it can be AR too… albeit very rudimentary.

So today, I’m just going to take the Mixed Reality aspect and use that to define advanced augmented reality while saying AR itself can (and often is) just rudimentary and low awareness overlay. When we use the term Augmented Reality, what most of us forget is to ask “What degree in the spectrum of AR is this experience?”

So Pokémon Go is Augmented Reality… but

Oh, you should have known this one was coming.

Pokémon Go is Augmented Reality but it is probably the lowest common denominator to barely qualify. As in, it’s nothing special and a highly stripped down experience in the AR realm.

Essentially, it is AR by technicality alone, the bare minimum requirement to qualify.

It uses the real world location and your camera to “augment” your view with an overlay of information.

I think that qualifies as augmenting your reality. Even if it’s half assed, it’s still doing it in the most basic fashion. It’s no worse than calling Google Glass augmented reality even if the information isn’t spatially aware or embedded in the real world.

There’s no requirement for Augmented Reality to be “immersive”. That is far too nebulous of a notion to take seriously for an umbrella term. Saying it’s not immersive is missing the point entirely. If you wanted immersive AR, then we’re talking about Mixed Reality (AR that is real world aware and can interact with it).

Let’s not assign the “immersion” test to AR as a whole, but only if we’re talking about Mixed Reality (other end of the AR spectrum closer to Reality). In which case, then it would be a requirement to qualify not as AR, but to qualify as Mixed Reality.

Pokémon Go is mainly designed around maps, letting players find and catch in the real world characters from Nintendo's Pokémon franchise. When they find a Pokémon, players can enter an “augmented reality” mode that lets them see their target on their phone screens, superimposed over the real world.

There’s the key term: “superimposed”.

Early AR systems do exactly this. They simply superimpose the digital content over a video feed (or the real world via see through displays), but the digital objects have absolutely no flipping clue about the real world around them other than the GPS location and access to the Compass to figure out where the player is facing. There are a ton of games on Google Play that already use this form of AR – it’s been around for a very long time. The only reason you’re paying attention now is because Nintendo made a Pokémon game using it.

Technically Speaking

The problem with this debate overall is that in the bigger picture few people actually understand the terminology involved or that Augmented Reality is also used interchangeably with Mixed Reality as the umbrella term constituting the entire spectrum of augmented virtuality.

It is a nebulous sort of terminology and nobody has really sat down and figured out what they really mean, or I should say that few people have bothered to pay attention to those who have.

So let’s do a quick rundown to clarify:

Virtual Reality: an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially or wholly determine what happens in the environment.

In simple terms: The entire environment is virtual.

Augmented Virtuality: an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially or wholly determine what happens in the environment, whereby media or information from the real world is included. The real world information is virtual world aware and can interact with it accordingly as if it were the native environment.

In simple terms: The environment is mostly virtual with a dash of real world thrown into it. For instance, maybe a video feed or something.

Augmented Reality: a real world environment whereby digital information, in two dimensions or three, is superimposed onto the real world through a display. Also used as an umbrella term describing the entire spectrum from Heads Up Display to Complete Mixed Reality.

Mixed Reality: a real world environment whereby digital information, both two and three dimensional are immersed into the real world through a display and robust access to computer vision and sensory data. It is real world aware and can interact with it accordingly as if it were part of it. Also known as “Hyper Reality”. It is the juxtaposition to Augmented Virtuality.

This is what Mixed Reality Looks Like

Reality: You pretty much know what that is, unless you’re an existentialist. In which case this blog is just another illusion.

Let’s Continue…

So, I get into this breakdown simply because we really need to think about it before we have this discussion. There is an Augmented Virtuality on the scale which says that the real world is a minor component in the virtual world. Essentially it means a sort of percentage mixture in combination with the degree in which the augmented elements are immersed in that baseline space.

With Augmented Virtuality, we’re saying that the Real World is the artificial component in the Virtual World predominance. Likewise, we have the similar opposite in Mixed Reality whereby the virtual world is the artificial inclusion to the real world baseline.

But then that leaves Augmented Reality down the center, which is to say that Mixed Reality is a more in-depth version of the underlying concept of Augmented Reality. Notice when I said earlier that in AR, digital items are superimposed on the real world?

The underlying meaning of that statement was that by being “superimposed” on the camera view, basic augmented reality simply has limited or no concept of the real world it is inhabiting. That Pikachu isn’t going to be hiding in the bushes and jump out because that digital object has absolutely no idea there is even a bush there to begin with.

Basic Terminology Map

| AR Spectrum |

<— VR --- Augmented Virtuality --- AR--- Mixed Reality --- Reality –>

Augmented Reality as a spectrum goes from:

1. Heads Up Display

all the way to

2. Pikachu just ran under my couch and Team Rocket just blew a hole in my living room wall to battle me (Mixed Reality)

And before you say that last one doesn’t even seem possible, it’s been done already as a demonstration by (of course) Microsoft and their HoloLens:

The other end of the AR Spectrum: Mixed Reality

Deliberate Ambiguities?

Maybe Nintendo just forgot to add the small print saying “Not actual in-game footage” to their promotional videos? Who knows… It’s a hype word that covers a large spectrum, much like using Virtual Reality is at the moment.

What the basic augmented world knows is simply the GPS location and your Compass reading, maybe some other MEMS data (Altimeter, Barometer, etc) which are more or less built into every smart-phone today. That’s pretty much it. Pikachu in “AR” is the bare minimum required to be augmented reality. Again, no worse than calling Google Glass augmented reality.

It works within the limited confines of your smart phone which isn’t using things like a Project Tango enabled phone (SLAM Mapping, RGB-D Depth Camera, etc) so Pikachu isn’t going to run under the couch or jump on the table anytime soon.

Now, Mixed Reality on the other hand, is the type of Augmented Reality that has full out immersion and likely has the sensors and equipment to actually have a full three dimensional understanding of the real world the digital world is inhabiting. Mixed Reality is when the Virtual World and Real World co-exist as one entity and the digital world can interact and act upon the real world (and vice versa).

By this understanding, then, an Air Force pilot using a Heads Up Display (again, similar to Google Glass) is also using a rudimentary form of Augmented Reality.

The underlying notion at the bare minimum level is “Does this technology superimpose information onto the real world?”

There’s no criteria in there about “is it immersive?”

For that criteria, we’re talking about Mixed Reality and not just Augmented Reality as the overarching catch-all. And since it’s a spectrum we’re not talking definitive but to what degree of immersion?

Pretty much none –> all the way to “I can’t tell the difference”

At the end of the day, it’s not about whether it is “Augmented Reality” but instead we should be asking “What is the quality of the experience within the spectrum?”

You can call both a Bugatti Veyron and a Power Wheels toy a “car”, and I think that’s what we really need to better understand.

Pokémon Go is closer to the Power Wheels toy end of the AR Spectrum while the commercials promoting the game are at the Bugatti Veyron (Mixed Reality) end of the spectrum.

Alright kids… Class Dismissed!

Every time I had to type Pokémon in this post, I had to go find that damned accent for the e. Feel free to tip me L$ in Second Life (Aeonix Aeon) to help pay for the therapy from this trauma.