Among many libertarians and a few progressivists, the concept of marriage privatization – where the state does not involve itself in the definition of marriage – has gained increasing worth as the debate over LGBT rights continues to intensify in the United States. Of course, a main fear over the concept is the possibility that religious groups could run amok with their own definitions and performances of family relationships which would clash with other religious groups’ definitions and performances, particularly as those who advocate for marriage privatization have not as forcefully argued for a secularization of the institution (in which religious groups’ performances are not recognized by the state, which only recognizes privately-composed contracts).
Tag Archives: second life
AR+BCI = Telepresence
I’ve finally thought up a possible first application for the combination of augmented reality and brain computer interfaces:
Basically, one can both use a non-invasive BCI setup and a virtual reality headset in combination, login to Second Life using a plugin (or viewer) that allows for augmented reality access, and use the avatar "mouselook" view to peer through the avatar’s eyes into the other region of the real world.
This, of course, would need a number of strategically-placed volumetric cameras placed around the area of augmented view to allow the avatar to "see" the real world and its objects in as many complete dimensions as possible (alot like Street View, in a way).
Technically, this should allow the user to both neurally and freely navigate whole regions of the real world and graphically self-project to another region of the real world using a remotely-controlled virtual avatar.
I can also visualize a number of applications for this:
- Providing Croquet-like virtual 3D hyperlinks/hyperframes between the real world regions would allow for quick avatar-based hypertravelling between regions. In addition, tabbed navigation could allow for easy switching back-and-forth between real world regions.
- Incorporation of KML markup coordinates could signal the positions of remote-controlled avatars in the real world and could necessitate SL/OpenSim hyperlinks to these coordinates in the real world.
- Extraterrestrial tourism, in which users would never have to leave Earth to visit the Moon and Mars since cameras and coordinate markers could be shipped on lunar robot missions to allow avatars to navigate regions of the two bodies, is a possibility.
- Remote meetings or get-togethers would be simplified, with a mix of both real individuals and virtual avatars.
I’m sure there’s more to this, but I’ll wait until another post.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
3D windows
I like how Open Cobalt, another virtual world project, allows for the linking of two in-world spaces using 3D window frames, which can swivel from side-to-side, provide live views of whatever’s going on in the opposite end of the window and allow for one to walk an avatar through the window into the other in-world space. It reminds me of what I once told someone when I was logged into SL (I think it had more to do with streaming video than with being able to walk between virtual world areas, though). Example of this method begins below at 0:38.
I wonder, however, if this method of hyperlinking can be embedded into the virtual world’s persistent objects, such as buildings? In fact, just like how originally non-electronic text was eventually imported to the Web and enhanced with context-specific links, the same could be done with 3D copies of real world (and virtual) objects into the virtual world, namely appending links into the objects which link them to the views of other virtual objects; a wiki approach could be used in this process, whereby "redlinks" (or in this case, null spaces) can be linked within these virtual objects in order to allow users to create the new objects in the null spaces.
The problem of appending links to 3D objects is the way that these links should look embedded within the objects without any visually disturbances. If frames are going to be one of the main presentational means of linking one object to another, then it would have to maintain a color or design scheme that is distinguishable from the rest of the object but not too distinguishable. It would also need a means of navigation that makes frames easily responsive to the mouse pointer, no matter how visually skewed the linked portion looks from the rest of the object.
"Hyperframes" could also be a major boost to the usage of "tabbed traveling" or "tabbed teleportation" in virtual worlds, since they would be middle-clickable to allow for a new tab of a new space to be visited non-linearly.
A better explanation of “tabbed browsing in Second Life”
OK, so SL has three key features that I want to utilize in this proposal: SLURLs, landmarks and teleportation.
My idea is that an SL user can embed a SLURL in a specific location in-world, perhaps as a script, and the next user can left-click on the script to select one of two pertinent actions: "teleport" or "add as landmark":
- If "add as landmark" is selected, then it will open either as a separate HUD window menu which displays the landmark inventory and various means of landmark management, or, if the option is middle-clicked, as a whole new tab containing the same.
- If "teleport" is middle-clicked (or the script itself can be middleclicked), then the teleportation load can take place in another new tab while the user is still in the previously-open location.
- The kicker: once the new tab is finished loading the view of its own location, the user can then select the new tab and immediately move the avatar’s presence to the new tab’s location, and then move freely back to the older tab with the avatar’s presence following the user to the older tab’s location. You move in, the avatar moves in; you move out, the avatar moves out, and so on.
- The avatar’s behavior across tabs can be optionally switched off if the user simply wants to view another location’s goings-on without the user’s avatar getting involved or, worse, stuck in the middle of such events.
I think this navigation method can work for the following reasons:
- Instead of saying "I’ll be going now, gotta head to Luskwood", it can instead be "gimme a sec, I’m looking in Luskwood as we speak….oh, nevermind, I’m back here at Badwolf’s…nah, its dead there, now I’m up in this space station filled with alien avatars".
- Flying from one place to another can be quicker, farther, multitasked and much more balanced.
- Going from one grid to another and back (or maybe three grids or more in separate tabs) can also be a matter of seconds.
- You wouldn’t have to be automatically logged out of Second Life if one grid is closing for repairs.
- Avoiding griefer attacks while watching (peeking?) the disasters unfold in another tab will either be hilarious or sobering from a distance.
So yes, it is a proposal to make virtual world clients more like modern web browsers without necessarily entailing the embedding of the web inside the virtual world (although current web-browsing capabilities of the SL client may benefit from the above-described virtual world tabbed browsing); it captures the non-linearity of the tabbed navigational experience and fits it upon the virtual world that is much too linear (think "IE6") to navigate fully and smoothly within a multitasking framework.
Tabbed browsing in Second Life
I think that tabbed browsing, which has worked wonders for web browsing (and may work similar wonders in file navigation), can be a feasible, necessary addition to the desktop clients of virtual worlds like Second Life. Rather than the single-tasking that forces a user to view only one persistent virtual world location at a time within the client, tabbed navigation of the virtual world can allow the user, through the user’s avatar, to glide effortlessly between the tabs which contain open locations; the indication of presence can also follow the user between the tabs, allowing other users to know when the user’s avatar is in the tab or not.
This sort of browsing, which can also be applied to virtual earth clients such as Google Earth, can also allow the user to open other locations with a simple middle-click of a teleport link, which will then open in a separate, adjacent tab. This can also be deemed as opening separate instances within the client.
Tabbed browsing of virtual worlds may result in greater capabilities for user multitasking, and can allow for users to WYSIWYGially drag copies of virtual objects from one location in a tab to another location in a separate tab, alot like text links in Firefox.
Stereopsis is an effect that allows for the eyes + brain to perceive depth, and is utilized in an optical illusion that, when equipped with the right method of visual perception, allows for the viewer to perceive a sense of depth in an otherwise flat surface area.
Many methods have been devised since the 19th century to give off an illusion of depth in a media-dedicated flat surface area (a technique known as stereoscopy), ranging from "wiggle stereoscopy" to the manual side-by-side-so-cross-your-eyes stereoscopy to the iconic anaglyph image + polarized "red and blue" glasses.
Most recently, a few folks on YouTube took to demonstrating the combination of anaglyph imagery and polarized 3D glasses with MIT graduate Johnny Chung Lee’s WiiMote headtracking method (resulting in hundreds of demo videos on YouTube from inspired users) to demostrate how such a combination of anaglyph imagery with headtracking might work.
Sadly, I’m not convinced by the look of the videos. Plus, after thinking it through, I ‘ve started to think that it seems redundant to combine digital CGI anaglyphs with headtracking polarized glasses.
I mean, if you demonstrate Compiz Fusion with its Wiimote-recognition plugin for headtracking separately from Compiz Fusion with its anaglyph filter plugin for polarized glasses, you get a fairly stereoscopic view from either perception; in fact, the Wiimote plugin for headtracking seems to possess much further potential range depending upon the range of motion that the viewer has around the screen, while the Wiimote anaglyph plugin for polarized glasses gives the classic feel of being able to almost reach inside the imagery on the screen.
The drawbacks, therefore, may dedicate either method of perception to particular media and particular audiences:
- the Wiimote headtracking method may be best for visual environments – preferably 2.5D – which concurrently allow for manipulation of the environment’s contents through interactive controls (like games)
- the anaglyph method may be best for visual environments – namely 2D – which don’t allow for manipulation of the environment’s contents through interactive controls (like movies).
I’ll expand upon this a bit later, but here are the two demos posted to YouTube:
Idea: Tabbed surfing in SL
Of course it would bog down the entire current user experience (like it can be bogged down any further…), but what if future navigation of Second Life and other virtual world networks was in the form of multiple tabs, one for each place in which the user wants to be at once?
This would allow for in-world multitasking, moving/transporting objects from one place/Sim to another, and granting the user a freer range of movement from within the desktop client application.
Live-streaming video in virtual worlds
I think that the much-feared ubiquitous camera surveillance – particularly webcams – will have a role to play in the future of multitouch and augmented reality. It will allow for devices to “peek” into other, far-removed areas in real time via streaming video.
Also, I think that this sort of “peeking” can be currently implemented in such virtual world applications as Second Life and Kaneva. Avatars can open up “holes” that can stream a “virtual camera”‘s view of another sim to the avatar’s view.
This could be useful to determine if the user may want to know about the current setting and appeal of another sim before teleporting to it. In fact, it could also serve as a tool of teleportation between sims.
Of course, such “streaming,” if taken to extremes, could further wear down on the Grid that runs the sims.
Places and islands: the third social networking tier
First you had profiles, then you had groups. Most social networks on the WWW are centered around these two components of the user experience. Multimedia posted through the user’s account are seen and reviewed by other users via their accounts, and the better, more pertinent ones are featured within multimedia “pools” maintained by groups, which are user-created, user-sustained mini-communities which are devoted to a particular subject or demographic.
However, the most bleeding-edge concept in social networking is the “place” or “island”, which are user- or group-created pseudogeographical positions which are fixed to a specific “area” of the world within the network.
As stated, these may be created by either single users or by whole groups, and could even serve more than one group during the lifetime of the “place”.
At current, the social network which has best incorporated the concept of “places”, and has probably marketed it to the furthest extents in recent years, is Second Life. The closest WWW-based equivalent to the social networking “place” is Wikipedia’s articles, which are designed to appeal to a specific subject within the online encyclopedia, but can be maintained and sustained by more than one group (or “WikiProject”) which all have vested interests in the contents thereof.
Thus, can the “places” idea be successfully brought to the WWW-based social networks of present? What kind of political arrangements could evolve out of the addition of a new tier to the social networking mores of MySpace, Tribe.net, Facebook or LiveJournal?
Finally, what technological advancements could accompany the development of “places” within these social networks? Could newer applications of the ubiquitous RSS feed (which is already used extensively for both personal and group productions) find a niche to fill in the “places” idea?
EDIT.
A few ideas for RSS updates+Places:
- Events
- Additions, edits and cleanups (for those who are interested in the construction and maintenance of the place)
- New rooms
- New exhibitions
- Scheduled reboots? (Hopefully not; SL tends to have alot of those, and you can be logged out at any time without prior notice)
Second Life, first impressions
I’ve been walking through Second Life for the last three weeks (my name is “Rayne Leominster”, if anyone cares to know).
At best, I’m rather dissatisfied with it. At worst, I find it pointless and annoyingly slow.
I’m dissatisfied with SL because I know that there’s much more that could possibly be done in it besides:
- Dance in a club with no music
- Change your avatar’s appearance every 5 minutes
- Build structures that will likely serve no purpose
I don’t feel the vibe of P2P on here (there isn’t any), and I teleport to a number of places (often either threadbare or filled to the brim with avatars and user-created objects) for no reason except to move from where I’m currently situated, only to be disappointed when I arrive.
I’m especially annoyed by the prominence of money (also known as L$) in SL.
The graphics and network lag makes usage of the client horrendously choppy. The UI is crowded, constricting and half-responsive, even when you’re in a lag-free area (which is extremely rare to find).
So that’s my first impression of Second Life.
