Recently in Other Virtual Worlds Category

Daden are hiring again: Junior Programmer required

By Lucy on December 20, 2011 10:01 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
We are looking to recruit a junior programmer to join our team of software and 3D design developers. We use C#/ASP.NET/Javascript as our main development environment, but often working within existing virtual world and gaming platforms. This is very much a starter role, and whilst we do not expect you to have a lot of experience or exposure to the specific technologies we use, we do expect you to have a good aptitude for programming and a knowledge of the basics of software engineering, and the ability to learn quickly. We will provide you with in-house training in our technologies and involve you in a range of projects, many using leading edge concepts such as virtual worlds and artificial intelligence in order to grow your skills and experience.

For more information & full job spec see our Employment Page
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Virtual Worlds - A Future History

By David on November 3, 2011 7:11 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Virtual Worlds - A Future History
View more presentations from David Burden

A short presentation I gave today at the Immersion 2011 event and building on the Delphi exercise at the Open University's ReLive 2011 to look at the future challenges of virtual worlds. Please read the notes to each slide for the detail.

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Learning Skills and Skills @Olympia

By Andrew on February 7, 2011 5:50 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two weeks and two trips to London Olympia, leaving the office behind to unleash my wrath of learning and technology experience upon the world! :)


Last week I attended the Learning and Skills / Learning technologies show in Olympia, jam packed with over 40 international speakers and over 4,000 attendees. A really exciting and interesting event with a lot less glitz and gimmicks as previously experienced at BETT the week before. Apart from an original shiny PAC-MAN table-top arcade on one of the exhibition stands, and in my book providing a very sophisticated element of geekdom class.


Many exciting international exhibitors including Intellego, Pearson, Skillsoft and Assima, all showing off the latest in e-learning and training products. Most of which looked really intuitive and well designed incorporating the last in Web 2.0 technology. I found this a refreshing look into the world of corporate e-learning and certainly more valuable than some of the products available to schools at BETT the previous week.


However virtual worlds hardly got a look in. The only company sporting the "virtual flag" for training was skills2learn and yes I must say their products looked good and well executed, The only pitfall I could see was it seemed to be a solo experience, with no community / social element with other users. Which I feel is a massive benefit for the use of this type of technology - Imagine a learner struggling on a question and being able to seek support from peers from within the platform.


http://www.skills2learn.com/virtual-reality-simulation.html


IMG_1266.JPG

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Farewell Blue Mars

By David on January 18, 2011 4:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
blue_mars.jpg

So it looks like its farewell to Blue Mars then. Even though it is "refocussing on mobile" and still making its servers available to existing PC users and clients I doubt that we'll see much else happening on the platform, and it looks like the days of Blue Mars Inc are numbered. The best summary of the situation appears to be that on the Andromeda3D web site.

I got onto Blue Mars early in the beta days - and immediately found that despite being a virtual world "professional" it wouldn't run on any PC I had (I'm not also a "gamer"), and that was after the 1GB download. Whilst, once I got in, the graphics were wonderful it suffered from the classic "what do I do" as the whole experience was controlled - no SL type self-build and scripting. It was a Twinity or There.com on steriods - and certainly not as easy to use as There.com - still the benchmark for me for a recreational virtual world. Graphics wise its seems to be the closest a PC virtual world has come to Sony Home, but without things to do, a big community, and acceptable PC/bandwidth spec and a good business model it struck me it was doomed more or less from the start. In fact we advised on a project last year that had chosen BLue Mars as its platform and raised over reservations then about both the performance/accessibility aspects and the long term future of the platform.

The recent adoption of server-side rendering and video streaming by Blue Mars also seems to me a short-term solution. This is also discussed at length in the Andromeda3D post, and its the same technology that Linden Lab has tried out with Skylight. The first question I thought of with Skylight is what is the business model. This sort of server costs - so would it be the user or the sim owner, or LL who pays? Looks like in the Blue Mars case they were paying the lot - not a good idea unless it really ramps up revenues in other areas. The long term solution to browser access has got to be browser native technologies.

However buried away in Blue Mars there is one thing I'm sorry to see go - and in fact hope it find a new home - and that is its AI/NPC system. In fact Bruce WIlcox, the Blue Mars AI developer won the Loebner Prize in 2010 with Suzette, a bot derived from the Blue Mars system.  Let's hope that Bruce and Suzette find a new home.


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This page is a archive of recent entries in the Other Virtual Worlds category.

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All posts and comments represent the views and opinions of the contributer and should not be taken as representing the view or position of Daden Limited.