Mixed-Reality Party In DC and Second Life

Jerry23 writes "This Saturday The Happening will bring Second Life to first life. The Electric Sheep Company, a new metaverse developer, has virtually recreated R&B Coffee in Washington DC for use in a mixed-reality party and benefit for the DC art scene and several local nonprofits. Real people will mingle with avatars via realtime video projections in the real and virtual R&B spaces, and MAKE Magazine's Phillip Torrone will be on-hand showing off his homemade Virtual Reality headsets and gloves. The whole world is invited to attend in DC or Second Life, whichever's closer for you." This is just conceptually a weird idea to me.

Fantastic!

[ScentCone (795499)]

Since I live near DC, I can actively ignore, with extreme prejudice, both the online and the real-world pieces of this simultaneously! We live in amazing times.

Snowcrash

[Artie_Effim (700781)]

we are getting closer and closer to meat/meta-space duality. assuming you have read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowcrash [wikipedia.org].

Re:Snowcrash

[Robmonster (158873)]

Its a shame you post at -1 by default as that was actually pretty informative. I might have to get hold of a copy of that book.

maybe so

[revery (456516)]

This is just conceptually a wierd idea to me.

Maybe so, but your kids will love it.

Re:maybe so

[e2d2 (115622)]

Maybe so, but your kids will love it.

And I will beat them for it.

Re:maybe so

[saltydogdesign (811417)]

I'd rather that they have a life, not a make-believe one.

What could be more real than what your senses tell you is real? To paraphrase Videodrome, the computer screen is the retina of the mind's eye.

OMG, so it begins!

[Arwing (951573)]

This reminds me of an article i read somewhere and it talked about the next generation of MMORPG where people would go online to watch a movie (stream) shopping (Amazon/eBay) using their avatars, and meet and social like they would in real life instead of yelling "LFG Emperor run1!!11". Walking down the virtual isle of amazon, hitting on another hot avatar and going to watch a movie at iTune theatre, is it really that hard to imagine?
Okay, it is, but who knows, when we turn 60, that maybe the social norm.

Re:OMG, so it begins!

[IamTheRealMike (537420)]

That's pretty much what Second Life is.

I don't personally dig the shopping, though the girlfriend of a friend of mine loves that part, but for geeks the platform is pretty cool. I spent a few days playing with it in early January, and while it has a lot of problems it has even more potential. The name is a bit weird, a real turnoff for some, but if you can get over your pre-conceptions about the people in the world you'll find not only a truly impressive piece of technology but lots of perfectly sane, normal and yes even quite attractive people who get a kick out of building things.

Think of it as the equivalent of freenode IRC but for arty types and you're about 50% of the way there.

Re:OMG, so it begins!

[Shag (3737)]

No, no, the people are still ugly... just their avatars aren't. ;)

The New Reality

[airship (242862)]

This may be weird now, but get used to it. The future is the virtual overlaid on the real, and vice-versa. The lines are blurring. In twenty years, maybe even ten, it will be considered quaint and old-fashioned to make a distinction between the two.

Snow Crash

[Captain_Chaos (103843)]

I'm telling you, the world of Snow Crash [amazon.com] is becoming a reality faster and faster. I always forget how old that book is (1992!), it's turning out to be pretty visionary! I'm off to buy my Metaverse deck...

wow just wow

[SydBarrett (65592)]

Thank you internet for making it possible for me to go to a coffee shop and talk to a projected image. I might as well stay home, get drunk and yell at the tv during a Cheers re-run.

Ouchie

[MattGWU (86623)]

donations in Linden Dollars will be accepted, converted to US$, and transferred to The Happening's funds.

Not a bad idea, but I hope they realize the outgoing and incomming exchange rates are different between US$ and L$. If you're thinking "Ok, I'll give them $5 worth of L$ as a donation" they're only going to get about $2.50 back out of the game. If you really want to donate, better to just send them a check. It's why I can't believe anybody makes any actual money off this game. Between the disadvantageous outgoing rate and the US$50, $100, $200+ tier fee (rent for the land) per month it's amazing anybody breaks even on real-world expenses, let alone turn a profit. Maybe they don't, and just have a bunch of really nice in-game cars! Which are a total PITA to drive, bty.

Argh.

[Ketnar (415489)]

Well looks like they got slashdotted again.

I'm one of the guys doing the streaming video. (praying that the bandwidth at this shop is enough to do the job, which we check today in fact.) Thats about the reach of my involvment, show up, hook things up, point the camera so the people in VR can see/hear whats going on, provide the streamer and the bandwidth, etc. They just call us up when they need it done.

We also did the new york SLCC event (which was made problematic due to L3 and cogent crapping on each other at the same time),but it was more or less the same idea at the NY law school. Was actualy quite cool!

It sounds weird from the outside, but it's a neat trick to pull off. It's a very sureal connection when you have a copy of a real place with real people being shown in an exact copy of the same place in VR and vice versa. You have instances where people look back and forth at each other and wave or talk across a digital void. It's just not something you commonly see every day.

Think of it as a RL/VR two way mirror.

It also has its entertaining moments. For example, the VR streaker running by the VR camera wearing black censor bars in the middle of some linden's speech, projected in giant bold clarity beind them.

But aside from that, I just hope this shop isnt running some lame ISDN modem or something like that.

And now, for shameless plugging. Servercave.com, thats us. Yup. We do it for the advertizing, because we can. (Because last time, they didn't get our link up till nearly /after/ the event in NY.... ;)

Re:Here it is at last!

[Darthmalt (775250)]

Second life [secondlife.com] is a free MMO in which the players create and trade content for in game currentcy which is called Linden dollars. Yoou can also buy and sell the in world currency for U.S. dollars.

I got on and played around with it for about 2 hours last night. While it's an interesting concept and neat to explore and talk to people. I havent really found anything yet that would want to make me place a huge time investment into it. I'll probably try it out a bit more and see if I find anything look me up if you get on my name is Darthmalt Demar.

Re:DC

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

I hope its better then the virtualboy from nintendo.

Um, yeeeeaah. Homebrew VR equipment was available in far better quality than the Virtual Boy at the time of its release. As the Virtual Reality Contruction Kit [amazon.com] by Joe Gradecki explained, a simple, hi-res Head Mounted Display could be built by canabalizing parts from a portable television or laptop display. Given that homebrewers tended to lack sophisticated tools, it was generally recommended that homebrewers build a single screen device rather than trying to work out the optics for a dual-display device. (One display for each eye.) However, he did include instructions for building such a device, though the optics weren't cheap.

The data glove was easily supplied by purchasing a Nintendo Power Glove and building a NES -> Parallel port adaptor. Such an adaptor was nothing more than a matter of soldering a few wires together. (I still have mine stitched together with electrical tape. I was too lazy to solder it after testing. :P) The communications protocol used by the Power Glove had long been decoded, so programming for it was quite easy.

His book also contained instructions on how to build a HMD boom for position tracking, and how to code for these devices. All released before the market had even heard of the Virtual Boy.

Re:Uhhh, What??

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

1) What's "The Happening"?

Click on the link.

2) What's "Second Life"?

Click on the link.

3) What's "The Electric Sheep Company"?

Click on the link. (I suppose they should get brownie points for the Blade Runner/"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" reference.)

4) How are they developing Stephenson's "Metaverse"?

See the link to Second Life for more info.

5) What's "R&B Coffee"?

Damn good question.

6) What's a "Mixed Reality Party"

RTFSummary.

Re:Uhhh, What??

[jandrese (485)]

Google is your friend: R&B Coffee [rnbcoffee.com].

Seriously, it's like people expect Slashdot articles to only cover what they already know. Heaven forbid the click on a link and be horribly exposed to new information.

Replies

[Digital_Quartz (75366)]

Well, most of those are answered in the article links, but;

Second Life is sort of a MMORPG, except without the RPG part. It's a big virtual world, where anyone can create just about anything out of primitive building blocks and scripts (provided you can figure out how to do whatever it is you want to do in the somewhat convoluted Linden Scripting Language). I'd say Second Life is a very close match to Stephenson's metaverse, without any of the rest of what this article is talking about. It's very similar

Re:Location location location...

[C10H14N2 (640033)]

...not that Adams Morgan is much better, but seriously, if they want this to be taken seriously in a town like Washington, certainly if they want to attach themselves to the "burgeoning art community," they'd best locate themselves somewhere remotely near it, say the U-Street corridor or 13th street or something. Hell, Landover has more going on than H street.

Bottom line is that not even people who live in NE (like, me for instance) want to hang on H Street, certainly not those who can shell-out $25 for a "happening." Since there are SOOOOO many locations in Washington that this would work in, this choice of venue makes me think "easy money, no cred."

Re:Location location location...

[Politburo (640618)]

While the overall message is correct, the post is most definitely flamebait.. unless you believe that everyone walking around in NE gets held up. Sadly, there are people who live both in the District and the metro area who believe this. When I told people at my workplace that I, a white male, was living in Southwest, their eyes widened with fright. On my first day, one woman joked, "Well, hopefully you'll make it back alive tomorrow." When we were looking for apartments, one couple told us they would not ev

Re:Snowcrash

[Red Flayer (890720)]

"Soon we'll be living in U-stor-its."

I live in California on $80,000 a year[1], where do you think I live, you insensitive clod?

Seriously, though, people do live in storage facilities. It's not legal, but it's the only option other than homelessness for some people.

[1] Not really. No one can afford to live in CA on $80k a year, even in a U-Stor-It.

Oblig. Futurama Quote

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Fry: "Do refrigerators still come in boxes in the future?"
Bender: "Yeah, but the rent is atrocious."

You're rich.

[2short (466733)]

"Not really. No one can afford to live in CA on $80k a year, even in a U-Stor-It."

I know you're just trying to be funny, but REALLY, 70% of California households live on less than $80K a year. Half of them live on less than $50K a year.

Re:I wish VR gear was better and cheaper.

[bigpat (158134)]

I have eMagin's Z800 3dVisor [amazon.com] (It is from the company that came out with the borglike EyeBud [slashdot.org] prototype at CES)

The Z800 is the real deal for $900, with dual 800x600 OLED displays which are much better higher quality than LCDs at that small size. If you have followed HMDs, it is a big leap in quality for under $1000. Stereoscopic 3d with headtracking in First Person shooters and flight sims is really cool. I haven't tried any MMORPGs with it. You can find out more about at their website [emagin.com].