pix: realistic facial animation by Gaspard Magic
Sometimes I am a bit desperate about virtual worlds. Things are going so slowly. People talk and talk about improving user interfaces and experiences. I guess I am unreasonable, but it is true of course, one has to be a bit geeky to struggle with the interface and to learn how to move around and to live in a virtual world.
Being geeky is pretty cool, but unfortunately it excludes the vast majority of mankind from appreciating virtual environments and stuff those environments make possible like creativity, cosmopolitan serendipity, experiencing the collapsing of geography in an immersive environment.
But of course it is also my own imagination which is lacking. Virtual worlds now in 2008 are only that. Bright people have great ideas they work on. They are not satisfied with the present and have the skills and imagination to make things change.
While I am writing this, my avatar attends a conference on Orange Island about interfaces that will eventually replace our mouse & keyboard, and free our expressivity in virtual worlds.
Speakers are Philippe Bossut (Handsfree3D), Alexander Casassovici (VR-Wear) and Gaspar Breton (Orange Labs).
I am not a tech guy, far from it, so I did hesitate to attend this conference. However, I am very glad I came after all. I saw beautiful stuff from Gaspard Breton (Gaspard Magic), from Orange, where he leads research around Embodied Conversational Agents and 3D animation. He is a specialist in facial animation (see picture).
Moderator Dusan Writer asked each of the panelists to talk about the future: “what do you see a year from now, 5 years – what excites you, what are you working on next.” Ksso Yamauba’s answer: “Well in one year from now we’ll experience immersive worlds.” Alexander Casassovici (Ksso Yamauba), is the founder of VR-WEAR and he is a specialist of bringing real-life emotions to avatars.
So… I thought that Second Life was a very immersive world? Not so, says Ksso:
I don’t think SL as an immersive experience : when I look at it today i see my OSX dock, my table my home around – and a tiny windows with a 3d world. That’s not immersive. I want to be able to turn the head and have my point of vue move along with me.
Philippe Bossut (aka Roger Fullstop), currently working as an “Entrepreneur in Residence” at Kapor Enterprises Inc (KEI), gave us this link to think about augmented reality – blending second life and physical life experiences.
So where did all this leave me dreaming? I imagine now a virtual world where one actually is immersed, where you turn your head and you are still in that world, where you see avatars’ detailed faces grinning as their real life typists grin (do they still type?), moving effortlessly in function of body movements, eventually integrating in this “real immersiveness” detailed renderings of the physical world – only that world can physically be on the other side of the planet.
Maybe all this will become reality much sooner as we think. I am sure we did hardly start thinking about the consequences and endless possibilities of it all.
More, much more information (transcripts etc) at this website of Orange Island.
Roland Legrand