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Google Launches Lively, an Avatar Based 3D World
no.good.at.coding writes "Google has launched a Windows-only, in-browser (you need to install a client first, though) 3D avatar world — Lively — that you can embed in websites and use to interact with other people. It's not as expansive as Second Life yet, but expect things to get better."
A competitor to second life, finally. Maybe this will expand awareness of SL and drive demand in virtual world development. I hope Google pushes this hard.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"According to their track record, Google scaled reasonably well."
You mean google search. Orkut, for example, ran on 5 NT servers when it first came out and didn't exactly have the same subsecond response time that search did.
Need Mercedes parts ?
we can easily say "apparently there are enough people who are sensitive enough to be able to empathize even through a virtual avatar in an online world".
the way i see it, many of the people who label the online world as 'virtual' are rather emotionally challenged people. there is nothing 'virtual' in the online world. there is a person behind that avatar, just like you. s/he can make you laugh, make you angry, sad, engage in heated up philosophical conversation, or do stuff together. stuff done with other people in an online environment is no less valuable than stuff done in an offline environment. you can go get drunk in a local pub while talking or you can get drunk in front of the computer talking with same people the same stuff. there is no difference other than physical proximity.
if you NEED physical proximity to be able to feel connected with people, then i'd say that thats a sign of 'emotionally challengedness' in the form of weak empathy capability.
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I agree with the social site disappointment.
I use a 3D site (expo3d.com) to hold conferences with customers on product updates and use the 3D feature to really demonstrate what I'm saying, holding up objects, pointing at on the object with my avatar and can use my voice to offer more commentary than texting could accomplish. Texting is sooo 1990's. Use your voice. It really helps.
In my business, some customer updates are mandatory. We used to fly people in and out for the update meetings but now we can, for the smaller updates, use this software and in 15 minutes be done. We still all meet face to face a couple of times a year but it's not a monthly obligation.
We've had 100-200 customers routinely join us for our updates. We place our own teams in the audience to answer questions one-on-one via text or voice. We circulate documents. We post advertisements. And the customers love it.
So I've found a way to save money using this type of application with no perverts or gambling.
It has a company with billions in cash and an army of nerds with 10% of their free time to do whatever they want.
1, it's 80/20, as in 20% of their time is supposed to be used for free exploration.
2, I've talked to some Googlers who say it's more like 100/20, as in you have a huge workload so if you want to stay after hours and do your 20% you can go right ahead, but only about 1% of engineers can be bothered to do so. Especially since Google owns your bright idea once you come up with it.
You're not really the target audience. If you poke around in it or check out some screenshots, the design is really geared towards teenagers, much like IMVU.
There are benefits, but in my opinion they do not justify the relatively high overhead on the computer relative to a simple chatroom.
There isn't much persistence in Lively, it's just a 3D chat room. It offers context-conversations from the positioning. In a simple chatscroll all conversation is given the same weight and carried out in a linear fashion. However, for greater numbers of people there can be more than one topic within the room which interrupts all topics at hand. In the 3D chatroom, avatar-positioning provides context for who is included in the convesation and the chatballoons appear closer and in colors matching those in the immediate group. Of course a log is critical and a standard chatscroll is available on its own tab.
It's like carrying out a conversation everyone in a restaurant vs. carrying out a conversation with others at the same table.
Also, they are supplied with a few animations and inter-avatar animations. The visual aspect is pleasing, but not really useful. /me in IRC allows for much more variety. I also noted that :) and :O resulted in a corresponding animation from your avatar.
Aside from that, it has personalization of the chatroom space. While this is stupid to me, the others in my IRC chat have already "personalized" the text chatroom, pretending we're in a virtual terrarium/spa replete with cabana boys and fruity drinks. Some people might actually enjoy the room-building aspect.
I know that it's cool now to hate google and all, but I have NEVER seen anything from them that I didn't admire at least somewhat, and for most things I find them unbeatable.
If they came out with gClippy I'd have to give it a try, and I'll give you 3:1 odds that it would be surprisingly useful.
In Niniane's defense, I have to say that for those of us who have strong emotions, something as simple as an animated smiley really does hold more significance than *hug* or similar; it really *is* more meaningful. Just because it means nothing to you doesn't imply the same for everyone.