The ability to move your avatar through real space, embed Second Life environments in the real world, and cross-interact was put to stunning effect by students at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
If you haven’t seen this video, watch it:
While the ‘immersive virtuality’ of Second Life has been a defining feature, I’ve argued that the future will have arrived when we start to see seamless crossing between immersive and augmented reality – bringing the four quadrants of the Metaverse to fruition. Talk about an exodus to virtual worlds neglects the fact that virtual worlds won’t just be destination spaces that you “go to” but they’ll increasingly be embedded in the world around us.
This is a stunning look at how adaptable the technology already is.
January 27, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I research synthetic environments on a nearly daily basis, and I just had to say that this is one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen – to say there are huge possbilities here would be an understatement. Thanks to Dusan for bringing it to our attention.
Nice work.
January 29, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Holy Moly!
January 30, 2008 at 12:46 am
/me nods.
June 15, 2008 at 6:06 pm
[...] few examples of integrating virtual worlds and objects with the real, picking up on the work out of Georgia but also showing an example of integrating virtual ‘feeds’ into video [...]
March 2, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Yes! This is exactly what is being worked on at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (www.illinois.edu) as well!!
Apparently, it is also being worked on in certain offices at HIT Lab in New Zealand as well. Absolutely fascinating, and a great hope for spicing up things in textbooks, along with many other opportunities.