Hi all,
Well, I've been holding off announcing this, but the time is here...
We have been organising a special event to try and publicise VR so that the
general public can see that it is here now and not something sinister,
contrary to the impression Hollywood would give us. The coommon perceptioon
is that VR is only for geeks who put on weird helmets and gloves, wire
themselves to supercomputers, and immerse themselves in fast-moving
photorealistic worlds. Few realise that there are hundreds of worlds out
there right now with hundreds of thousands of citizens who go there largely
to socialise.
Every year the Science Fiction community organises a Worldcon. This year
the 57th World Science Fiction Convention is in Melbourne, Australia over
the 5 days 2nd-6th September, so I decided to try and organise a VR side to
it. The Worldcon organisers agreed to let me do it, and I now have a great
team of people building a terrific event. Our core group consists of people
in Australia, USA, Argentina, Italy, Austria, Norway, Germany.
All our work is volunteer and we have no budget at all, but it is starting
to look just brilliant. But we need still more people to build worlds and
parts of existing worlds. We need avatars for the people coming to those
worlds. We also need people to build worlds that are not multi-user. Any
form of 3D is welcome: VRML, RWX, Flatland-style, ... anything. We just
want to knock people's socks off -- the more the merrier.
Activities will center around OuterWorlds who are donating an Expo world
for this project. They also have a Virtual Reality Radio that services
their virtual worlds and we intend to make novel use of that. There are a
lot of ActiveWorlds people working on the project, two of whom (Victoria
D'Onofrio and Rodolfo Galeano) are devoting their world to the event. Deep
Matrix will be a part of this too -- their worlds, like VNet worlds,
require no special downloads. At least one VNet world will be made over for
the occasion. The amazing Holodesk by VRTelecom will be there. Blaxxun have
expressed excitement. And we have asked Sony to be a part of it too.
We will be doing some really cool things at the convention:
* There will be a video and audio feed from the real convention into the
worlds so that people around the planet can see what goes on at a Worldcon.
* A projection screen will show the virtual worlds to people at the
convention (as well as being accessible from the computers in the
convention's internet lounge).
* A large number of science fiction celebrities (authors, film directors,
actors, artists, special effects people, scientists and technologists, and
musicians) will be guests in the virtual worlds and will interact with the
people at the convention through talks and question and answer sessions. (I
expect many of these will be held inside Holodesk.)
* A world building competition should ensure that there is plenty of
science fiction oriented stuff for exploring. (As far as I know this is a
first... has there ever been a world-building contest before?) There may
even be a science fiction theme, avatar building competition. (An avatar is
the body you wear in a virtual world.)
* We hope to broadcast from the convention over OuterWorld's VRRadio to its
virtual worlds.
* We also hope to be able to play Outerworlds' VRRadio station's programs
to the folk at the convention.
* Roving reporters will transmit interviews from the convention into the
worlds as video and sound.
* Other roving reporters will transmit interviews from inside the virtual
worlds.
* We are building some special worlds for the convention, one of which,
Expo world, will be preserved by OuterWorlds for posterity. In Expo world
and a number of other worlds you will be able to build pavillions to
display your talents.
* There will be an art gallery, which will include sculpture (remember that
in VR the real world's laws of physics need not be obeyed, things may float
in the air, may pass through each other, change color and shape
spontaneously, and be seen as if from the same angle from many positions
simultaneously).
* Tutorials, discussions, and demonstrations on various aspects of making
and using VR will held inside various worlds. They will be free and open to
all.
* There are also a number of other suggestions in the pipeline.
A number of organisations are taking part in this effort.
VR universes that are involved:
OuterWorlds (http://www.outerworlds.com)
ActiveWorlds (http://www.activeworlds.com)
DeepMatrix (http://www.geometrek.com/products/)
VNet (http://ariadne.iz.net/~jeffs/vnet/)
Holodesk (http://www.holodesk.com)
Blaxxun (http://www.blaxxun.com) -- I think they will almost certainly be
involved, we are currently involved in discussions
Sony -- I have chatted with some people there who are very interested but
we are still waiting on a formal response
Other groups and companies:
VRAvatars (http://millenium.simplenet.com)
BMB Multimedia (http://members.aon.at/bmb-multimedia/)
SeeRay Studios (http://www.seeray.com)
Virtual Reality Radio (http://www.wvrr.com)
LaKatz Designs (ttp://home.earthlink.net/~lakatz/)
Virtualy (http://www.virtualia.net)
Geometrek (http://www.geometrek.com)
VRTelecom (http://www.vrtelecom.com)
ExitReality (http://www.exitreality.com)
Contact Consortium (http://www.ccon.org)
The Virtual Reality Association (temporarily offline)
This event is shaping up to be bigger than the Worldcon itself, so come on
and be a part of it.
Best wishes,
- Miriam
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"Time's fun when you're having flies."
-- Kermit the Frog
