Please chip in ideas for Sirikata features

[CPlatz]

Hi folks,

I wanted to start a thread on the most important features Sirikata
will need to make it great early on, and easy to use so artists can
quickly build in it for a myriad of projects. Our first few
environments are museums, and live music/interactive performance
spaces.

Beyond our early projects at the Stanford Humanities Lab, we have an
exciting integration happening with Sirikata by having the web browser
in the world with the awesomium technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT1UR6qEgdg&fmt=18
It will blow your mind to think about how powerful this is, and how
many "wish list" features just got checked off by in-world browser
functionality already happening.

So how about we focus on the no-brainers for spaces to create building
blocks for:

1. A meeting space
2. Teaching/Lecture Hall space
3. A game or games

What features need to be built, and in what order to achieve maximum
user adoption of our technology creating the above spaces?

Here's what we already know is happening in terms of functionality:
http://www.vimeo.com/user1252165/videos/sort:date
Select, move, rotate, scale, make a light, etc, all awesome

Additionally:
1. Simple export from 3ds Max, and import into Sirikata, with shaders/
materials, and textures already working
2. Custom Terrain creation and texturing
3. Loading rigged and animated avatars

Here are a few big ones to start the list (no particular order):
1. Multi-Selecting and/or grouping of multiple objects
2. An undo command
3. Distance Fog for atmospheric perspective
4. UI for a day/night timing cycle
5. Permissions for editing, moving, etc in an area or on objects
6. Creating new worlds/spaces, Duplicating existing ones, and being
able to easily teleport between them.

Longer Term Features Wishlist:
1. Collision & physics
2. Cast Shadows
3. In world vertex editing and pixel painting
4. Rigging/bone links for pick up items, adding avatar costume parts,
vehicles, etc

I hope that's enough to get us started? Looking forward to hearing
from the list.

L8,
Platz

[Steven Tilson]

In a nutshell everything that is possible in Second Life today so the Second Life refugees (from the impending dumbing down of Second Life and forcing out most content developers) will have somewhere to go and build a superior more compelling world for international commerce, art, and international relations.

And then more like better physics and secure inbound outbound http communications.

[Jeremy Turner]

Hello Sirikata Arts Community,

 

I think Steven has a point about prioritizing everything that SL takes for granted in terms of in-world content creation.

If Sirikata wants to surpass SL as a next-gen platform, right at the very beginning it must at least reproduce the occasional ease of SL's content creation interface.

 

I think stuff like adding fog and making a game out Sirikata is more of a latter-phase luxury than an infrastructural necessity.

 

What I suggest to begin with as a list (and some of this is a re-iteration of the previous messages posted here) is:

 

1) There needs to be in-world content creation tools that are at least as intuitive and user-friendly as SL...Already, SL's content creation tools are quite good for most users whether they have an artistic bent or not.  In Sirikata, it should also be relatively easy to rez basic geometrical prim shapes and simply add a photo texture to it. This direct form of content creation will allow more citizens to become creative - only a small percentage of "artists" are fluent with 3D modeling software such as Maya and 3D Studio Max.

 

2)  Maybe there could be an in-world "baking" tool that allows the user to permanently "save" their designed object (and/or avatar) into a stored database. This would mean that when the user logs on the next time, the creation would be pre-loaded rather than being rezzed in real-time as if it was brand new all over again.  The problem with SL is lag due to everything being treated as if it is brand new and custom.  Adding to a library of "pre-loaded" textures and shapes would make the navigation more smooth as if it were a video game like WoW who manages to minimize lag due to the reliance on pre-loaded textures and materials. Maybe this will not be possible because of the decentralized nature of Sirikata's open source model but it is worth thinking about.

 

3) The modular building block idea for spaces sounds quite good although it gives me flashbacks to Active World's block-assembly factories which were nowhere near as intuitive as they could have been.  I guess it would depend on what kind of block-templates would be made and how they would be presented to the user to encourage and foster quick content (spatial) creation.

 

I really like the idea of the spatial teleportation concept and the undo command - those should be prioritized :-)

 

Collision mechanics are good but shadows I think are a luxury that could be added in future iterations of Sirikata.

 

The key to all of this is intuitive iterative design.  This intuition should be for "non-artists" and "non-technicians" as well right from the beginning phase if Sirikata wants to attract a sizable and sustainable community into its open source virtual world.

All the idea are great so far.  It is a case of priority versus luxury.

 

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Hello,
My wish list:

In world photo editing tools, may be make it possible to select a
surface and make it a window in photo shop or other graphic program,
or any program.

The ability to link any surface to a url, and display web pages.

UI for day/night time cycle need to include yearly day cycles, I need
this at work to check for shadowing when designing solar panel
systems.

The ability to interact with Google earth.

The ability to link objects made from different tools.

Integrated spell check, and language translator.

A built in timer so I don’t burn my dinner when working in world.

The ability to stream live screen shots to the web.

[Parrish Ashbourne]

I don’t think the goal of Sirikara should be to surpass SL, but to
surpass the current way we use the inter net, even that I believe is a
very limited point of view of it’s full potential, with collapsing
economies and environment VR worlds could be seen as a way to end the
dominance of a material industrial revelation economy. My problem
with SL is that LL to me has never seen their full potential. Making
the creation tools easily accessible to SL users makes since to me
because they area a large group of people that all ready have VR life
styles and or social lives. All though I like the idea of SL
compatibility, I all so like the idea of thinking out side the prim.
How about adding tools for midi 2 inter face, you could use it to
assign colors to notes or other parameters and then be able to paint
or trigger VR effect or animations while playing live in Sirikata.
How about touch screen interface as much as I like computer tools
finger painting is starting to sound nice. What about being able to
fax or scan directly to a 3D objects surface, lets just make that
stream or link any visual content to a surface.

[Jeremy Turner]

Hi there Parrish,

Your ideas for post-SL tools are great...I wasn't saying we need to mimic SL but we should at the very least make the content-creation interface as intuitive for everyone including non-artists.

SL has been able to do most of this fairly successfully despite the lag and the redundancy of menu options.

If we want to re-think the internet, I think Sirikata needs to be even more intuitive which is why I think any reliance on proprietary modeling software such as Maya or 3D Studio Max would be a mistake. However, Sirikata should be pumped up to allow for that option in addition to more intuitive and direct content creation controls. To surpass at least SL and perhaps the internet too, Sirikata would at least need to match SL in terms of intuitive iterative design.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Hi Jeremy,
Totally agree. I’m a self taught 3D builder started in SL and now use
sketchup for RL work. Intuitive iterative design is key to making it
work. The price of programs like 3D studio max is all so out of many
people price range. SL was a great start for me both intuitive and
free, until you get in to land, I’d love to have a off line tool for
building in SL, Sirikata, and other VR worlds.

I keep thinking about Midi 2 and it’s uses for VR worlds, if Sirikata
implemented Midi 2, it would all most over night bridge the entire
live music world between RL and VR in an interactive way, with all
most a 0 learning curve for current Midi users. This would have a
huge impact on live music and performances, not just in turms of music
but all so controlling stage lighting and effects, it all so could
easily be adapted to control and trigger animations. This opens up a
whole new world for 1000s of existing hard ware musical interments,
lighting and sound controllers, and soft ware tools and instruments,
and their users.

Other uses for Midi controllers that could be easily adapted for VR
use. How about using a guitar foot controller with 2 effect peddles
as a movement controller. Some thing like programmable version of
the Alesis AirFx could be made in to a mouse that detects hand
movement with out having to touch it, it could even be used by some
one with a disabled or even missing hand.

[Jeremy Turner]

hi parrish, . am typing this on my mobile phone...midi2 sounds like a
very good protocol to implement for sound... i used midi1 in the
early-mid 90s but need to read more about midi2 to know how it
differs ...cheers, jer

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Hi Jeremy, All my expericence with midi come from the 80s and 90s too
lol, so I’m all so not up to date with the changes, but one big change
I know of, that’s makes all this very easy is midi can now use USB
cables.

[Jeremy Turner]

Hi Parrish,

 

I did  some quick research into Midi 2.0.  It is also known as "HD-Midi" but does not seem to be available yet...

Here are some links about it:

http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2005/10/finally-midi-20.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Instrument_Digital_Interface#Beyond_MIDI_1.0

 

I have to remind myself that Midi is just a communication and event triggering protocol..when I think of Midi, I usually have the stereotype of it that emerged from hearing tons of tacky computer sound cards from the 1980s and 1990s ;-)

 

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Jeremy Turner]

..using in-world HUD's for MIDI triggering of hi-rez wavefile samples combined with fluit voice chat and avatar lip syncing would make authentic virtual bands in Sirikate far more compelling that many of the air-bands currently making headlines in SL ;-)

[Jeremy Turner]

*fluid

[Jeremy Turner]

*Sirikata

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Hello Cplatz,

I was watching the awesomium technology video, first reaction is
Cool ! I could use dream weaver to make textures, but then I noticed
that I’m not the only person reading the Sirikata arts list, because I
can see an other weblin avatar at the bottom of my screen. So I got
thinking that it would be interesting if you could interact with
weblins from a web page displayed in a VR world. Even if 2 way
communication is not possible if you could stream a live screen shot
to the web then people could watch from the web and those with weblins
could chat to each other as they watch, this could expand the size of
an audience for a concert or meeting. This all so could be a good way
for people with older computers, or even cell phones to have a window
and maybe chat into Sirikata.

[Chris Platz]

Hello folks,

Great to see some action on the ideas here, thanks to you all. We just had a new group of artists join our Sirikata design team, so I'm hoping the dialog gets even more hoppin.

My absence to our recent discussions is due to spending all of last week at the Game Developer's Conference. Specifically the Worlds in Motion Summit (on Virtual Worlds), and I must say that we are on to something with Sirikata.

I'll save some energy and post about the conference later on.

Of the conversations so far I would certainly agree that we are not using SL as a model for most features. I think they do some cool things, but I come from the camp that uses 3ds Max, Maya, Unreal Engine, Source, & ZBrush. That said the overlap of ideas is great between high-end 3D apps and a virtual world like Second Life is great. So please keep chipping in ideas that you like from SL or any other app/virtual world.

A few responses to previous posts:

1. In world editing tools may be a ways off. We want to make it right the first time, and it's my #1 goal for this project (outside having a funcitonal networked VW that is beautiful). I should play with SL prim editor and get a sense of what people have had to deal with thus far

2. Tagging and storing data about specific objects may be sooner on the menu. I know it would be an awesome feature to integrate early. This would allow for history on replicated and modified objetcs as well.

On that note, we plan on launching Sirikata with a nice library of modular models and textures so people and build nice environments right away. They probably won't be preloaded though, and we'll leave that to the individual users.

3. We'll so our best to make all UI as fliud and easy to use as possible. I want this tool to be useable by school children everywhere. And even more challenging, make it accessible to their grandparents and non-techies alike. Easier said than done, but it's going to have serious design put into it.

4. I think Parrish described a wish list that is mostly Awesomium...hehe exciting isn't it!? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT1UR6qEgdg

5. For audio we're working on a very exciting project with CCRAM at Stanford. http://ccrma.stanford.edu/
So far the specs are coming along. Looks like OSC and Chuck for sound and music. http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
I'm way out of my depth talking about code, but I can say the sound and audio will be technologies that get early TLC on the development cycle of Sirikata. I don't think that Rob Hamilton isn't on this list, but maybe he can talk about the music integration later on.

We are certainly excited about Adam joining us and integrating the Awesomium technology. It should change the way people use virtual worlds, and hopefully the Web as a whole.

L8,
Platz

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Hello Chris,
when you check out second life stop by the Ivory tower of prims, it's
a 3d tutorial for the tool set. Some thing similar to it might be a
good idea for an early Sirikata project

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/208/171/26

[robc...@gmail.com]

Hi All,

Following up on the current MIDI discussion and meat-space discussions
with Chris, I would strongly suggest and encourage the use of OSC
(Open Sound Control) as the protocol from which communication between
virtual world gesture and action and real-world audio software and
hardware can be best achieved. Open Sound Control was developed at
CNMAT at Berkeley and is, unlike MIDI, a completely open and flexible
messaging parameter space, meaning that in-engine, we can define our
own messages and export them using UDP. For more on OSC visit
http://opensoundcontrol.org/introduction-osc

Moving forwards, an open protocol like OSC will give Sirikata a great
deal more flexibility in communicating with software audio programming
languages (Max/MSP, PD, Supercollider, ChucK, Ableton) and through
them (and other software bridges), any standard MIDI controller or
system.

As an example of a similar use of OSC and virtual environments, here's
a link to q3osc - http://www.q3osc.org - the ioquake3 based musical
system I've been working on.

best,

Rob

On Mar 21, 11:06 pm, Jeremy Turner <ideat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ..using in-world HUD's for MIDI triggering of hi-rez wavefile samples
> combined with fluit voice chat and avatar lip syncing would make authentic
> virtual bands in Sirikate far more compelling that many of the air-bands
> currently making headlines in SL ;-)
>

> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Jeremy Turner <ideat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Parrish,
>
> > I did  some quick research into Midi 2.0.  It is also known as "HD-Midi"
> > but does not seem to be available yet...
> > Here are some links about it:
> >http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2005/10/finally-midi-20.html
>

> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Instrument_Digital_Interface#Bey...

[Parrish Ashbourne]

Looking at Awesomium again, could some thing like that be done with
live screen shots, that would be a great tool for teaching and
collaborating where you need to show some one settings on you UI. An
other tool that would be very use full would be a laser pointer from
avatar to a selected object. Building in world in a 3D environment it
would be nice to be able to turn the current view into a window so you
could then move your view and still access the other view from a
different angle.

[MetaverseOne]

As a content creator I want to know if I can import the 3D web
standards formats X3D (.x3d) and VRML (.wrl) into Sirikata. These and
the COLLADA (.dae) format are supported export formats for a number of
modeling tools. Is this something we can expect to see?

On Mar 19, 4:13 am, CPlatz <leonpl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I wanted to start a thread on the most important features Sirikata
> will need to make it great early on, and easy to use so artists can
> quickly build in it for a myriad of projects. Our first few
> environments are museums, and live music/interactive performance
> spaces.
>
> Beyond our early projects at the Stanford Humanities Lab, we have an
> exciting integration happening with Sirikata by having the web browser

> in the world with the awesomium technology.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT1UR6qEgdg&fmt=18

[Ben Nadler]

I think that a language translator, which someone mentioned earlier,
is a must.

If we plan on having this be an expansive virtual world, we need to
make it not only open to other cultures and languages, but allow for
communication. Apart from multiple languages for the UI, we need a
translator that is built into the chat system, similar to how Google
Translate works. We don't need to be translating perfectly, but
enough so that two people could chat and understand each other,
various mistakes aside.

I imagine the chat window as having a little icon on the bottom, which
would maybe expand the window slightly down, and two drop down menus
would appear - one to choose language to translate from, the other the
language to translate into. The user would pick his settings, than
start writing. To turn off the translate function he would just have
to click the icon again, the drop down menus would disappear, and they
would write in their default language.

This could mean a huge step forward not just for virtual worlds, but
MMOs. In my time playing various online games, such as Final Fantasy
11 and Lineage 2, I've come across players and seen Korean and
Japanese symbols dot the chatroom at the bottom of the screen, and I
wished I could understand them and talk to them. With virtual worlds
so far, you can have people from different countries play in the same
server, but they might as well be playing two different games.
Communication, and hence teamwork and socializing, are limited to only
people who are the same as you, and that gets tiring.

So, to sum it up, a language translator would be beneficial to this
project. I know a little French, so I could work on that, but I doubt
you'd want me to! I'd probably make more problems than I'd fix.

[Vladimir Camilo Mejia Vasquez]

I Agre with Ben, i suggest use this http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/ajaxlanguage/, remember the internet 3D its just a GUI for web 2.0 with extended capabilities. In the chat window a little button could be set to enable lenguage recognition and translate to a determinate language, eventually the google translator will be improved.

and who knows, eventually speech...

[Chris Platz]

Hello Art list,

Currently we have an amazing exporter that works with 3ds Max 9. The code is open, so we're hoping other developers will step in and make exporters for other popular 3D packages.

Our current pipeline is for artists to use Maya, or whatever, export as an obj or fbx, and import into 3ds Max for exporting to Sirikata. It's a bit of file transferring, but not to bad. Especially considering the pipeline I've had to deal with in other game engines. Hopefully we get something as smooth as Unity at some point, but probably not too soon. Importing a dae, etc directly isn't on the horizon.

We will release all of the documentation of using the 3ds Max material editor to make amazingly complex materials that import right into Sirikata. Today we started the updating process, and hope to release the docs, test files, and training videos during June.

On translators, I can see something like that happening through our web browser inside Sirikata. Voice will be awesome. It's just a matter of time before great communication techs like this become the norm.

Regards,
Platz