Vivaty the Clear Winner

After testing Lively last night, I setup and tested the Vivaty system in Facebook. The difference is stunning. Vivaty wins this by a mile.

The setup took a little longer because I don't have a Facebook account. I'm a hermit and Facebook, in fact most social networks, just aren't my cup of grog. On the other hand, I really wanted to see how well an X3D/VRML based application for social networks matched against the Google juggernaut.

I was not disappointed. The quality of the Vivaty application shined through. The navigation was much easier and smoother on my old RAM starved Dell 966. The install script scared me a little when it told me I might not have enough resources (512RAM) and asked if I wanted to continue. Continue I did. The install ran smoothly. Active-X controls don't scare me. I'm really not that dumb and I trust the former Media Machines guys.

When I opened Facebook and clicked on the Vivaty gadget, I was very surprised.

1. The 3D matches the quality I am used to when building VRML applications. The Lively had been strangely disappointing given the names associated as builders were many of the people who cut their teeth in Second Life. That 3D simply looked ancient or vertex-starved color-wise and geometry wise. Maybe prim carving is not the best way to learn to design. The Vivaty world was rich, the avatars were classy and overall, it didn't have that cartoony look of Lively.

2. Navigation matched what I am accustomed to in VRML. It was smooth and the mouse reacted nicely. The behaviors on the number keys are not that extensive but a good start. The chat windows are a little awkward in placement. There may be a trick to putting these in the right place but I don't like chat blocking action.

3. The sound was good although the tastes of the person who picked the music and mine are separated by two generations. I assume I can pick something I like better.

4. The built in controls for selecting objects and setting properties just work. I like that.

5. One of the best innovations was the use of the tooltips in the 2D layers. Nice look and they logically walk the user through the first segment of the learning curve. Very good.

I'm not a Facebook user so I can't comment on the utility or cohesiveness with the social network aspects. However, the 3D aspects were far superior and that may be critical. These are entertainment apps and a designer can't treat them like something designed for an ad. Immersion is a fragile illusion and quality counts.

The X3D/VRML pedigree continues to confound the A-listers and other pundits who have predicted it's death or dismissed it as irrelevant. The case may be quite the opposite. The years of hard work put into the X3D standard may have just paid off. This Vivaty application may be the sharp edge of the tipping point, the part that cleaves the buzz-making and long tailing from the actual hard work of building the right technology.

Sometimes money and buzz are to markets what Wyle E Coyote and Acme are to the RoadRunner: side shows that get a lot of screen time but ultimately wind up as road kill or squashed dog meat at the bottom of the technology canyon.

BEEP!! BEEP!!

Lively In Name; Lanky By Birth

I'm curious to see if Lively will integrate with Blogger.

Probably not but hey, it's all XML right?



Son of a bitch. It works. COOOOLLLL!!

I downloaded and visited some of the worlds. Ummm... clunky. The navigation is subpar for any world I've been in since '97. (Ahm jus an old schooler.) The basics are there but they are very basic. On the plus side, I could look at the technology without joining Facebook. I'm not a social network kind of guy but I'll do it to test Vivaty.

Still, Lively has the effect of saying the bigCo software and services companies have to take 3D on as an indexed medium and that is good for the market by any measures except interoperability.

Good to see it. Scoble asks if "3D will stick this time". It will but I think it has to get better than this before we know which 3D will stick. I can build worlds in X3D that make the stuff in Lively pale. Waybetter.

But ... not and put it on a Google server or embed it in my blog. And that's the rub. Where server farms lock out quality content to protect brands they own, they disable over enabling.
And the web prospers by enablers. It's an inclusive hypermedia by design even if social networks are self-limiting.

My Blog: My World. I Build Worlds. My Blog: My World. Ok?

But very cool, Googlers. This 3D old timer says "Thanks!"

Nunc dimittis. ;-)

Good Bye Mellow Slick Toad

Google took the path long predicted as the fastest for dominating 3D On The Web. Screw the open aspects of interoperability and user-contributed content and just field a content library with a small footprint add-in.

So much for the IBM alliance. It will be fun to see who decides to ally with whom now that there is an unbeatable monopolist at the door: The Googler. Second Life becomes soooo last year. Oooh... Vivaty? One hopes but it's tough to push back competitively against a competitor with that much money, that much reach, and that much third-party illegal but litigated content in the library. Let's see what the terms for YouTube content evolve into as well as other in-world displayable content from the Google servers.

And once again, the trailblazers will be pushed aside into the anonymity of PageRank long tail hell and left to die there while a new history is written with preselected winners as The Innovators. Too bad. History loses to cash on hand.

Now it comes down to finding out if people really do want a 3D web in which there isn't that much to do but stand around and chat about each other's avatars. Well, that and watch YouTube together which isn't all that bad because not only can Viacom see what you are watching, they can find out who you watched it with and what you did *virtually* while watching. It gets more interesting as the behavior repetoire gets bigger and more refined.

Sad. The web keeps repeating its birth cycle step for narcissistic step.