Filed under: News and developments, Research by Digado

Is the future of virtual worlds inside the browser, or will the rich, client-based become the dominant model for virtual worlds? Not even a week after a lengthy discussion on my previous post on this topic, some major clues arrived to the scene as to how this ‘war over the metaverse’ is about to unfold in the near future.

1. Limitations of Plug-ins

Ugotrade has an interesting and detailed write up of an interview with Avi Bar-Zeev, one of the co developers of the application which spawned Google Earth, and now Virtual World thinker at Microsoft. Avi Bar-Zeev adresses the same issues Paviig Lok noted in our debate on the concessions being made by both clients and plug-ins: ‘most plug-ins are still not build to handle the required features for virtual world applications’.

“Being “hosted in the browser” implies a few things that ActiveX can’t handle. First, the 3D viewer should run in a sandbox, with prohibitions against accessing or writing to other parts of your computer. That’s a benefit of the XBAP method Adam picked. But “hosted” also typically implies more cross-platform portability, much like Javascript, which his chosen method doesn’t provide. XBAP does work equally well in IE and Firefox on the PC with .Net installed, so that’s a plus. But a Mac version, for example, will be more difficult to come by. To be fair, even Javascript, incl. AJAX apps, often require a few platform-unique code paths, but hopefully only for low-level logic, not the whole app.”

Furthermore, engines inside the client produce better graphics quality than JAVA and Flash could offer now, which is especially visible in the case of blue Mars. Blue Mars is a virtual world that will most likely need a large download and therefor create a large barier of casual users. Its tools for modeling are very advanced and it runs on a n engine that wont be comparable to anything that can be placed inside the browser for a long time to come. Its model is based on creating absolute stunning imagery, combined with futuristic experiences and game like entertainment. The developer of Blue Mars Avatar Inc has said its virtual world has deliberately made concessions on accessibility to customize the message they want to send out to their nich: Being the absolute best in virtual experiences.

In essence this means we haven’t seen the last of client-based worlds for a while, but on the other hand there is a serious hunger for more accessibility as provided by a number of possible options:

2. A standardized ‘Virtual World Plug-in’

“we’ve christened it “Xenki” - it’s a mix of “X” (for XBAP) and “Enki”, an ancient god of crafts.” - Adam Frisby

Xenki (Snowcrash reference?) is a browser add-on able to show the OpenSim environments inside the browser. The original post is amazingly fuzzy at explaining what it does exactly (just technobabble to anyone not deep into coding) but its the very basics of getting 3D inside a browser in a similar manner OpenSim renders the same content inside its client.

Though this plug in is still its its early stages, it reminds me a lot of the development of the Flash Plug-in. Flash, at some point in its development, ran into its ‘killer app’ in web-embedded video which instantly took off. A match made in heaven as it launched Flash into ubiquity and web video into a mainstream platform. However, this type of ‘circle of succes’ requires a mainstream audience to begin with. People where using video long before Flash, the process was just a lot more tedious with stand alone applications in media players, requiring downloads before viewing and different formats.

3. A new type of browser

From the same interview by UgoTrade, Avi Bar-Zeev notes:

“The best hope for true “hosted” 3D viewers though is for 3D to become a native element of existing browsers — OR — for someone to write a new class of browser that’s built to handle 3D and 2D equally well. It’s the best hope, simply because 3D is a superset of 2D — anything you can do in 2D can be done in 3D with some degrees of freedom left blank. 3D elements should be able to be mixed effortlessly with traditional 2D markup and vice versa, selecting, cut, paste, flow, and so on. And that’s never going to happen in a simple plug-in.” - Avi Bar-Zeev

And as I said in my closing statement of the ‘Is Second Life being replaced?’ post - this is not entirely unlikely. Visualization and virtualization are becoming a major trends, not just in terms of virtual worlds but in overall information indexing. Some ‘3D browsers‘ have already popped up, and the developers of clients stand a lot to gain from making a more capable program, potentially dramatically increasing usage of these clients (and the portals they create to search, or other browser-business models).

4. ‘Light clients’ and modular viewers

There seems to be some fuss about Second Life registering ‘SLim‘ - supposedly ‘Second Life Instant Messaging’. On the exact details and status of the project is little known at this time, but speculations are it is supposed to be a new communication system for Second Life, moving the chat (and the Second Life friends/contacts network) outside the client. A modular system for virtual worlds where functionality such as chat or quick instant messages don’t really benefit from the visualization inside the client.

Another speculation is the long awaited ‘light version’ of Second Life (SLim as in ‘thin’) - A more accessible client as part of a broader virtual experience, with less features, focusing on the basics of virtual words (content exploration and social functions). Such an approach would be another step to lower the barriers for people to step into a virtual world.

The idea of modular viewers like Dusan Writer and Pavig Lok propose are indeed an interesting concepts:

“This kind of approach, where there’s a solid complex multifunction world, with gateways into lower rez spaces would allow for much greater integration. The lightweight world client can act as a gateway into a more featured environment, and of course the complex world also gets an easy public access crossover space. Like a foyer.”- Pavig Lok

CyWorld and Gaia Online are using the modular model for web based virtual world - introducing various levels of accessibility (Flash World, 3D world, 2D forum, chat/shoutboxes, and a facebook’ish profile based environment). One way for client based-worlds is to move their content out of their client for the more ‘fleeting applications’ such as chat, browsing profiles or sharing music (things you want to do instantly, and then close again) while using the client for more sovereign applications (things you do with your full attention such as modeling, exploring, following narratives).

Conclusion

Overall, things are never as black and white as ‘client or no client’. The modular option for virtual worlds offers the ability to maintain the interest as generated by clientbased virtual worlds for example (or vise versa, guide people into the full experience and application through accesible worlds). This increases the potential of integrating a complete, virtual setting into existing workflows and every day life through task oriented design, or in other words: “What is it the user wants to do with virtual worlds, and how can we best facilitate this?”. The diversity of modular worlds allows for a much better, much more accurate answer rather than to push every possible answer into a specific setting (such as powerpoint presentations on a Crytek2 Engine, or customizable immersive narrative in Habbo Hotel).

However, even though modular and hybrid models are a great foresight, they too will produce their own issues, most likely security, consistency and ‘noise’. Ugotrade does a great job in addressing some of these issues in the remainder of the interview with Avi Bar-Zeev, and is really must read material if you want some insights in the ‘roadmap’ towards these type of worlds.

Posted on: August 9, 2008 | Share on: