Moving to the 3D web and telepresence  |  February 6, 2009  

Intel is inviting the public to come to ScienceSim (a virtual world) and discover its possibilities for building collaborative visualization tools... "Within ScienceSim's world you'll find some starting buildings, templates for forums and conference centers and the like." But then it is up to the user to take it from there.

"ScienceSim provides the basic building blocks (client viewers, installation utilities, management tools, etc.), and new technologies that enable broader interoperability through content sharing. Interested people can quickly bring up their own worlds on their own systems and experiment with creating 3D worlds of their own." What's interesting about this project is the amount of open source used and yet the compatibility with Second Life.

There are a number of us in EDS who've been experimenting with virtual worlds for a long time. In fact, EDS started a virtual reality center in Detroit back in the mid 1990s.

With all the travel restrictions, green issues..., telepresence and virtual meeting techniques are definitely being looked at more seriously. I've often wondered though if a 3D meeting environment would have any real advantages over the NetMeeting and more capable 2D meeting tools that have been around for over a decade. I've thought of a few meeting types where physical movement was a requirement to effectively moderate the meeting, and a 3D environment would be significantly more effective. If you've ever been to a Microsoft Open Meeting format where they've used the "fishbowl" meeting style you probably know what I mean.

We've also talked about some multi-person 3D mind mapping applications... but have never found a meeting style that could only be done in a 3D world. Do you have any?

Charlie Bess
EDS's Next Big Thing Blog