OpenSim developers will be explaining OpenSim to Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo,LA, 2008, attendees from a “very-spacious booth being sponsored by DeepThink, Genkii, RealXtend, SineWave and ISID.” The booth will be an important place to meet some of the key innovators in virtual worlds.
While OpenSim is still alpha there are already some pretty advanced projects on the OpenSim platform including some truly game changing innovation from realXtend, and Tribal Media (more on RealXtend here and Tribal here), IBM’s 60 sim behind their firewall OpenSim Grid, the Microsoft Developer community’s OpenSim grid, Project Manhattan, and the awesome immersive education Greenbush Grid, the collaboration between IBM and the Fashion Research Institute to develop new technologies for the $1.7 trillion apparel industry, Genkii’s work with astrophysicists Piet Hut and Junichiro Makino on N-body simulation in OpenSim, and an extensive list of virtual world providers, and much more!
Thanks Lynn Cullens (Bjorlyn Loon in SL), Director of Communications for Metanomics for the picture of Adam above.
DeepThink has sponsored a screenshot competition so many OpenSim projects will be on display in the booth. Also, Adam a will be unveiling a new OpenSim demo from DeepThink (the screenshot above is a sneak peak). OSGrid (the OpenSim test grid) guru and organizer Charles Krinke (avatar Charles Krinkeb) will be in LA also, so this is a great opportunity to find out how to get involved with OpenSim development.
Three from RealXtend will be in LA!
RealXtend will have three team members in LA – you can look for them at the OpenSim booth. In the picture from the left – Hannu Hollström (ADMINO technologies), Tomi Kujanpää (LudoCraft/realXtend Art Director & Avatar Specialist), Antti Ilomäki (realXtend Communications/ADMINO technologies Project Manager).
ADMINO technologies and LudoCraft, the two main contributors of the realXtend project, are pioneers in virtual world development and interactive experience design. LudoCraft Ltd. is a game studio specializing in the design and development of collaborative multiplayer 3D games and simulations. ADMINO technologies develop unique, scalable virtual world server solutions.
Novamente’s virtual pets coming to RealXtend soon!
Recently, Ben Goertzel, Novamente, visited realXtend in Oulu, Finland and his visit made the local newspaper. Novamente will have their own booth so stop by to learn more. Ben Goertzel explained:
This summer a collaboration between RealXTend, Novamente LLC, and the open-source AI project OpenCog was established. The initial focus of the collaboration is on creating open-source virtual dogs using the OpenCog software, similar to the Novamente LLC virtual pets which are currently being developed mainly in the Multiverse platform (see screenshot below), and have also previously been prototyped in Second Life, and to launch these pets in the RealXTend platform.
At first the dogs will be used for research and experimentation purposes; then afterwards there is the potential of offering them freely to RealXTend users to use in their own RealXTend worlds or publicly-provided worlds. The Novamente/OpenCog virtual pets differ from other existing virtual pets in that they possess powerful, open-ended learning ability: they can learn an endless variety of behaviors, not just a handful of behaviors provided in advance by the programmers. And the pets are just the start: the plan is to roll out a series of progressively more and more intelligent, learning-capable virtual agents in RealXTend, Multiverse and other virtual worlds, including talking parrots and humanoids that can carry out various practical tasks as well as providing entertainment.
Genkii Goes to Hollywood
Virtual Worlds 2008, LA will be a unique opportunity to meet the Genkii team and see their work with Piet Hut and Jun Makino on N-body simulation in OpenSim.
In the picture above, Jeff Ames, CTO, Genkii, is coding up the N-body algorithms in a meeting/dinner with astrophysicist Piet Hut in Tokyo. The pictures below are the CCO of Genkii, Yuki Saeki’s portraits of Ken Brady (CEO), herself, and Adam Johnson (COO).
CEO Ken Brady will be leading a panel in the Enterprise Track called “Using Virtual Worlds to Streamline and Augment the Film-Making Process.”
ISID -Â business value in open source virtual worlds
On the left is Yuhei Shinada, and on the right, Takashi Shima of ISID.
ISID is one of the sponsors of the OpenSim booth at VW2008.
What ISID wants to do with OpenSim:
- Analyze the platform to search for possible business applications
- Develop intraverse environments in order to find new ways for companies to communicate internally
- Develop a closed environment to provide a place for information exchange and experimentation within the companies with the same interestISID’S outlook:
In the future, several open source virtual worlds will emerge. However, given OpenSim’s prevalence and level of sophistication, it will be the most successful.
Fashion Research Institute creating enterprise solutions in OpenSim
The image above is the Shenlei Winkler’s, avatar (Shenlei is CEO of Fashion Research Institute, Inc.), photographed in the OpenSim Shengri La region in the Shengri La Bliss sim, part of FRI’s 9 sim grid. Shenlei Winkler (Shenlei Flasheart in Second Life) is leading the way with IBM in making OpenSim fit for business and in using OpenSim to develop new technologies for the $1.7 trillion apparel industry, (see my upcoming interview with Shenlei to learn more about her work and vision).
We’re working with IBM to harden Opensim as an enterprise-ready solution for a number of different reasons not the least of which is the fact that IBM can handle issues of scalability, interoperability, and data security. Right now, we’re testing the IBM OpenSim installation ShengriLa Spirit so that we can really stress the platform in a controlled environment. This offers feedback to our development team in a codified way. The fatc that I insist that it be beautiful just aligns with the Fashion Research Institute’s overall vision.
FRI is a business partner and customer of IBM, plus, we have a research agreement with them to develop new technologies for the apparel industry, a $1.7 trillion industry.
Justin Clark-Casey formerly of IBM is now working full time with the Fashion Research Institute on OpenSim development. Justin will be in LA, so look out for him at the OpenSim booth or catch him speaking on the last day of the conference with Adam Frisby, DeepThink, Mic Bowman, Intel, and myself, Thursday, September, 4th, 4pm to 5pm on our panel, “Open-Source, Interoperable Virtual Worlds,†which will be part of the Future of Virtual Worlds track.
Eolus – “The Path to Sustainable Real Estate”
Oliver Goh, Implenia, will be at VW2008 demoing the latest work from Eolus on “The Path to Sustainable Real Estate,” (see my earlier posts here, and here on Oliver’s work with with IBM on prototyping Virtual Operation Centers and building automation in OpenSim).
The Eolus 3D Virtual Operations Centers represents the next level of innovation and green technology offered by the Eolus solution. Â Â The 3D environment is customized according to unique requirements, and can be delivered as classic command centers, control rooms, datacenters, or hybrids or custom solutions. Â The versatile virtual world environment ensures a platform for innovation for scalability, performance, and growth as the business value it brings is expanded to other areas.
Michael Osias, IBM, Chief 3D Architect, Grid Operator, IT Optimization
You will be able to find Michael at the IBM booth. And don’t worry, he is not always as serious as in this photo! So my advice is to grab this chance to meet the developer of some of the most advanced OpenSim enterprise applications.
I have blogged a lot about Michael’s work with Oliver Goh on Eolus in the past year. They recently got a lot of main stream press attention including being written up in the Guardian (also see my posts: The Archeology and Future of Software Design: Interview with Grady Booch, Interoperability for Virtual Worlds in 2008, Eolus Goes OpenSim, Next Generation of Software Design: 3D Command/Service Centers in Second Life, Eolus Makes Leap to 3D Internet in Second Life).
Michael’s pioneering integrations of “virtual†and “real†worlds give us, perhaps, our first glimpse of how virtual worlds will play a vital role in management, optimization and control of energy, data, business processes and more, changing the way we relate to the software infrastructure of our technology driven world.
As the architect and grid operator of IBM’s fast growing ‘behind the firewall’ OpenSim grid – it now has sixty regions and 123 users – Michael has been doing some interesting work. Most recently he has been integrating xen an open source virtualization product by Citrix with OpenSim to do dynamic provisioning of new region servers, move the region servers among nodes, resize virtual CPU and memory allocation, and more.
Doug Thompson – CEO, Remedy Communciations
Tom Hoff – OpenSim Core Developer
“Tom Hoff is an independent software developer and digital artist. He is contributing to the OpenSimulator project as a core developer, currently specializing in geometry issues. His prior experiences include a 23 year career as a technical staff member at Hewlett-Packard Company, where he spent much of his time developing digital halftoning and printing algorithms for ink jet printers and robotic machine vision systems for automated print quality evaluation. His interests include digital image processing, 3D geometry, and computational behavioral models. He is also an avid fitness enthusiast despite his higher than normal consumption of diet cola.”
August 31st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Tish you have made a large post with plenty of good information as usual. I do like the part of Novamente’s virtual pet project as this is a practical example of how things are evolving in a more advanced direction and usage of the RealXtend platform is made to accomplish that a mesh based intelligent “object” which resides in world can interact with avatars. Something like this is a step in the direction of using Opensim/RealXtend not just as a place to stack cubes on each other but take it to the next level instead.