The Metaverse Blogger

The most recent buzz to hit the metaverse lines is the advancements in Papervision Augmented Reality - a technology that allows virtual objects and avatars to be placed almost directly into our own spaces. The keyword in that sentence being “almost”. Augment Reality is the principle of adding virtual objects or entire scenes to a real world scene, through the use of cameras. That’s to say that virtual objects can be added to the image a camera displays to the viewer. Confused? I was at first, too. If you’ve ever seen a movie where a character throws on a pair of glasses that suddenly begins to display “virtual” elements combined with the real world (say information about what the character is looking at), it’s the same concept of Augmented Reality. The image to the left, from HowStuffWorks.com, illustrates what things might look like using this overlay system.

Essentially, Augmented Reality is an overlay of information on top of real, physical images. Augmented Reality doesn’t actually add virtual objects to the real world (although that would but cutting edge and insanely cool), what it does however is almost as cool. Users place “tags” in the real world (if you look at the picture to the left, the little green man is standing on a piece of paper that has a symbol on it), and aim a camera at the object, look at the feed from the camera, and virtual objects that match up with the symbol being displayed, pop into the frame of the footage. That’s the simplified version of what happens. And while Augmented Reality isn’t the most cutting edge feature in technology right now, or the newest, it has made some great strides in bringing the metaverse crashing into the real world - which is what we really care about, isn’t it?

More often than not it seems many of the topics I bring up relate directly to the metaverse, and keeping the metaverse itself a walled garden. Even if the various makers of virtual world technology all managed to come together to create some utopian virtual environment (which I’d probably be against anyway), the real world is still left out of the equation, and shunned almost. Until now, that is.

Papervision Augmented Reality has done some very cool things, things that place the power of the technology in the hands of anyone who may be interested in investigating it. The results have been fairly astonishing so far, even if they are baby steps. Users of Second Life, specifically, have already begun tweaking open source versions of the virtual environment to work with Papervision, bringing their Second Life avatars into stunningly cool video scenes. Because I am by no means an expert on Papervision Augmented Reality or even Augmented Reality in general, I’ll provide you with some great links that you can investigate and get to know a bit better on your own, as well as some videos of the technology in action. What I can do is maybe suggest a few ideas to get us all thinking about the implications of this technology, if you haven’t already begun to.

The biggest hurdle for any virtual environment system has been the struggle to make the environments not only feel immersive, but to make them feel real enough that we can’t tear ourselves away. What makes a virtual environment a beneficial and superior alternative to real world meetings for companies, other than it’s potential cost efficient qualities? What makes the environment feel comfortable for people, so that they interact naturally as they would in the real world? And further, in a world where our senses are pelted for attention and providers of entertainment vie for our obsession, how will upcoming gaming environments/virtual environments stand out from the crowd? The image at the left is from ICT Centre, and an article that talks about using Augmented Reality for educational purposes. The picture shows analyzing a brain using the overlay system. Could we some day see Augmented Reality used in classrooms, or for that matter replace classrooms and strengthen distance education programs? Imagine attending a lecture, and feeling as though you were physically there, but were in reality a few hundred miles away.

In many ways Augmented Reality solves, or at least comes close to solving these issues. For example, using Augmented Reality users could wear a pair of glasses in a conference room and suddenly see/hear other members of their company within that same space and vice versa. That’s a far cry from both jumping on a plane, dealing with the hasstle of travel, and even having to type out long meetings across virtual space. It’s true that VoIP has made some tremendous strides in making virtual reality feel natural, but something is still missing. Part of what makes doing virtual business across space, when you can’t physically interact with someone so difficult is that humans by nature tend to feel more comfortable when circumstances are familiar. While looking through a pair of glasses and suddenly seeing your business partners in what was previously an empty room might feel strange at first, the immersive quality is far greater than the limited interaction those same people would have communicating through their computers. Many feel that this technology will quickly become the standard for even passive life, the real world becoming littered with information. The image to the left was created and comes from Tim Boucher’s article on how he feels the technology will really be implemented. Although somewhat humorous in nature, the image is a great display of what the technology may look like in every day application (virtual worlds aside).

The following video actually provides a great explanation of how Augmented Reality currently works in the form that is widely available, open source.

This next video provides some interesting examples of how Augmented Reality places objects onto a table of symbols, although the explanations it provides are fairly quick.

This next video really begins to hit home for the metaverse and what the implications of Augmented Reality are for us.  This video comes from someone who modified the open source version of Second Life to make Augmented Reality work with a real Second Life scene. The user made the SL scene appear on his coffee table, and actually demonstrated moving the car in the scene around a bit.

Finally, I’ll provide you with a link to a site that makes it easy for you to experiment with Augmented Reality on your own. The demo consists of printing out the symbol (make sure you have a good printer with rich blacks), turning on your webcam, and aiming it at the symbol. What then pops up on the camera feed is the little green monster that is pictured above. The website can be found here: http://www.boffswana.com/news/ - let us know if you do anything cool with it!

So, what do you think this means for the metaverse? Is this a new link that will develop into amazing strides for the virtual worlds we love so much, or is it just some new fad? Tell us what you think.