Now Sitting at CES looking at the Debut of "There" a cool looking 3D on-line Environment for networked community that gives you customizable 3D avatars to chat with. Lots of "natural" animated facial expressions and body language instead of emoticons that are pretty cool.
The 2 avatars (one in LV and one in menlo park ) are moving naturally. Animated avatars express emotions
They've called up a car and are driving around.
The environment is an on-line planet. Its flat shaded 3D so it can be done low bandwidth. If you go broadband you can talk to each other audibly and the sound is 3D, fades at a distance etc. You can drop in your own sound tracks by streaming mp3's over the web. Both people in the environment sharing the space hear the same music. Video coming soon, so that you can all hang out in the same virtual space and watch the same videos. You can also make "home movies" of your shared experiences in the virtual space. Watching movies of "friends" playing with their pets in the park, playing splatball, etc. Also "falling in love" It's VIRTUAL CLUB MED!!! :-)
It has "countries"
Tiki: A fictional south seas island
Egyp: t and more.
Because Microsot's .net stuff is all thin client, some of their beta users have dropped the windows desktop entirely and run their app at work thru . net while using the live "There" environment as their wallpaper/desktop/screen saver.
Now the horror :-) Branded Levi's jeans for your avatar!!!! Clothes and accessories are purchased with "There" bucks and can be built by employees of there, member or Levi's Nike and other partners.
They expect the company to move from on-line socializing to entertainment to virtual meetings, etc. They also expect it to move to High-end 3D and eventually full-rendered photorealistic graphics/cinematic graphics as the market penetration of broadband and faster PCs with high end graphics grows.They've been working on it for four years. Rollout is today.
Another partner is ATI (Dave Rolston, speaking for ATI used to be CEO of Paradigm Multigen for you VR historians). He just said the "killer app" phrase. believes that this will help high-end game graphics boards move out of the niche market.
They are providing end-user and developer tools so that you can wrap photographs,etc into the env and wrap them around avatars. WIll also be working with 3D studio to allow max creations to be dropped into their environments. The public beta begins now at http://www.there.com. Testers will be added in groups to manage demand and will roll out commercially in 3rd Quarter.
Note: All Q and A is summarized, not direct quotes. I'm not that good a typist.
Question from the audience: What will happen when people get rude and obnoxious like they do in chat rooms?
Answer: So far we've seen, even with 15 year old boys, that the psychology of appearing as a 3D avatar with a name tends to lessen people's inclanation to be rude. There are private clubs and "ignore" options.
Q: WIll it cost?
A: Initially no. Eventually will be monthly charge that gives you avatar and a "there" bank account. More money gets you a car and a house. You can earn money by contributing content and/or "holding house parties, contests, etc". Its said that the average american consumer spends $1200/year in Starbucks, they just do it at $3 a pop
Q: How will you be different than Baxxun and other failed communities?
A: Now Aesthetically more pleasing, home PCs are now more powerful. Behaviour has now changed. Before Blaxxun and others were selling new tech and new behavior. Now that IM has taken off its an easier sell. Make it so you connect by doing.
Q: how are you making money and how will you acquire customers?
A: No one's said how advertisers and I will benefit each other's revenue stream because we're still figuring them out. Are we media and they're advertising with us? Are we rertailers of virtual goods that they wholesale? We don't know yet.
Q: why are you at CES?
A: We stand out amongst the gadgets here and we're courting CE companies to help sell broadband. in 2004 we can demonstratge a need for broadband. Stores can demo benefits of broadband cuz There will be more fun on broadband. We'll be bundled with ATI Radeon Cards in Q3. HP and Intel are excited about us. and we have to skedaddle out of the room.
THat's all for now. More on CES stuff later tonight or tomorrow.
They've called up a car and ar
The 2 avatars (one in LV and one in menlo park ) are moving naturally. Animated avatars express emotions
They've called up a car and are driving around.
The environment is an on-line planet. Its flat shaded 3D so it can be done low bandwidth. If you go broadband you can talk to each other audibly and the sound is 3D, fades at a distance etc. You can drop in your own sound tracks by streaming mp3's over the web. Both people in the environment sharing the space hear the same music. Video coming soon, so that you can all hang out in the same virtual space and watch the same videos. You can also make "home movies" of your shared experiences in the virtual space. Watching movies of "friends" playing with their pets in the park, playing splatball, etc. Also "falling in love" It's VIRTUAL CLUB MED!!! :-)
It has "countries"
Tiki: A fictional south seas island
Egyp: t and more.
Because Microsot's .net stuff is all thin client, some of their beta users have dropped the windows desktop entirely and run their app at work thru . net while using the live "There" environment as their wallpaper/desktop/screen saver.
Now the horror :-) Branded Levi's jeans for your avatar!!!! Clothes and accessories are purchased with "There" bucks and can be built by employees of there, member or Levi's Nike and other partners.
They expect the company to move from on-line socializing to entertainment to virtual meetings, etc. They also expect it to move to High-end 3D and eventually full-rendered photorealistic graphics/cinematic graphics as the market penetration of broadband and faster PCs with high end graphics grows.They've been working on it for four years. Rollout is today.
Another partner is ATI (Dave Rolston, speaking for ATI used to be CEO of Paradigm Multigen for you VR historians). He just said the "killer app" phrase. believes that this will help high-end game graphics boards move out of the niche market.
They are providing end-user and developer tools so that you can wrap photographs,etc into the env and wrap them around avatars. WIll also be working with 3D studio to allow max creations to be dropped into their environments. The public beta begins now at http://www.there.com. Testers will be added in groups to manage demand and will roll out commercially in 3rd Quarter.
Note: All Q and A is summarized, not direct quotes. I'm not that good a typist.
Question from the audience: What will happen when people get rude and obnoxious like they do in chat rooms?
Answer: So far we've seen, even with 15 year old boys, that the psychology of appearing as a 3D avatar with a name tends to lessen people's inclanation to be rude. There are private clubs and "ignore" options.
Q: WIll it cost?
A: Initially no. Eventually will be monthly charge that gives you avatar and a "there" bank account. More money gets you a car and a house. You can earn money by contributing content and/or "holding house parties, contests, etc". Its said that the average american consumer spends $1200/year in Starbucks, they just do it at $3 a pop
Q: How will you be different than Baxxun and other failed communities?
A: Now Aesthetically more pleasing, home PCs are now more powerful. Behaviour has now changed. Before Blaxxun and others were selling new tech and new behavior. Now that IM has taken off its an easier sell. Make it so you connect by doing.
Q: how are you making money and how will you acquire customers?
A: No one's said how advertisers and I will benefit each other's revenue stream because we're still figuring them out. Are we media and they're advertising with us? Are we rertailers of virtual goods that they wholesale? We don't know yet.
Q: why are you at CES?
A: We stand out amongst the gadgets here and we're courting CE companies to help sell broadband. in 2004 we can demonstratge a need for broadband. Stores can demo benefits of broadband cuz There will be more fun on broadband. We'll be bundled with ATI Radeon Cards in Q3. HP and Intel are excited about us. and we have to skedaddle out of the room.
THat's all for now. More on CES stuff later tonight or tomorrow.
They've called up a car and ar
posted by stephen at
1:15 PM
