Virtual Worlds Forum

Joe Miller, VP of platform and technology development at Second Life, has been busy. In the second interview we have covered this week, he talks to the MIT Technology Review about the challenge of pulling in 2D content and data from the web into the 3D environment of Second Life.

The status quo isn’t particularly elegant- links to the outside web from Second Life open in an external browser, which therefore forces the user to leave the world, and their conversations in it, temporarily in order to look at outside content. It also precludes what could be called the ‘casual consumption’ of external content- in order to see content from elsewhere on the web, you actually have to select it, rather than being able to take a quick glance at its display somewhere within Second Life –a far more efficient option.

Miller talks about a few things Second Life’s doing to improve the situation. They’re trying to ‘create a capability to create a rich way to experience a variety of media types that typically have to be seen or read or processed on the Web in 2-D’. The article gives an example of a business card in Second Life which automatically updates with the content of an external website, a virtual MP3 player which connects to a web radio service, or a whiteboard which displays an MS Word document being collaborated on by a couple of users.

The most obvious advantage of such progress is the usability – it will give a much more pleasant and efficient experience in-world. However, the enterprise benefits are also clear. If you want to be able to hold meetings in virtual worlds, the need to be able to collaborate on a document within that environment is arguably essential. The dream possibility for virtual world vendors is that their worlds become the way the whole web is accessed; a starting point through which the rest of the web, 2D and 3D can be experienced and relationships managed. The ability to pull 2D content and data into a 3D world is an absolute necessity if that goal is to be reached.