Jason T. Clark

developerworks, ibm, rational, secondlife developerworks, ibm, rational, secondlife

So, if you’re an IBMer, and you’re in the know about IBM’s Hackday events, you’d know that the results were recently posted.  And the winner in the Virtual Worlds/Augmented reality category was none other than my Project WiiSpark application.  Thanks to Peter Yim, my colleague, for all of his work contributing to the project.  And, thanks to all those who voted.  Since this is an internal IBM event, there’s not much I can show about the other winners.   However, we here at IBM developerWorks are planning to to a full-on YouTube video explaining the app, and the technologies used to pull it off.

Again, thanks to everyone for participating!

3d, Flash, developerworks, ibm, wii 3d, developerworks, Flash, ibm, wii

The above video is a small screencast of my IBM WiiSpark application. This is the application that I created, using ActionScript3, Papervision3d, and the WiiFlash API. As you can see, it starts out as a rotating cube, but after entering in a keyword search, it goes out and retrieves thumbnail pages of the search results from IBM developerWorks. I figured since I work for them, I’d try to make this sample application relevant (*smile*).

You can’t see this on the video itself, but the movement of the cube is being controlled by a Wiimote that is connected to my PC via Bluetooth, which gives us a pretty good inidication that the Wiimote can certainly be used as an alternative input device. I’m sure you may have seen many other Wiimote device applications, and this was just my entry into the “sweepstakes”.

Maybe this is useful from a broader perspective though- should I open source this code? Leave me a comment, and let me know what you think.

Oh one last note, I ended up entering this application in as my entry for IBM’s Hackday event last month.  Haven’t heard about any results from that event, but I’ll keep you posted!

Flash, developerworks, wii developerworks, Flash, wii

Over the last month or so, I’ve been wondering from an implementation perspective if Flash is a viable virtual worlds solution. I’ve said to my colleagues that in some cases, a web based world would be a nice fit, depending on what that world was trying to accomplish. There’s a somewhat infamous discussion as it relates to virtual world implementations, augmentation vs. immersion-to simply “augment” the web with the elements of a virtual world, or to immerse your audience within a world.

From reading this discussion, I began to explore ways that I might be able to “augment” our current web presence. Many problems that arise from the immersion approach that takes the audience to a new “location” stem from attempting to bring artifacts of the traditional web along with you. In addition, when a virtual world is accessed from the traditional “thick client” application, the issues with downloading, cross-platform support, and updates management comes to play.

Can we simply use the web to access and interact with virtual worlds? Well, isn’t that what Webkinz is? What about Club Penguin? Although these environments have a youthful audience in mind, still the function is the same. So, I began to look at Flash, since it seems to provide the richest web-based content that could possibly do the job.

I felt like such a newbie when it came to learning all about Flash, because there is a plethora of information, tools, tutorials, videos, and etc on creating Flash applications. And Actionscript, Wow! There’s tons of stuff out there about learning Actionscript and leveraging tools to do the job. One of the first things I decided to do with AS3 was to learn a 3D Gaming Engine built on AS3. There are 4 major projects for this type of work:

• Alternativa3d
• Papervision3d
• Sandy3d
• Away3d

I’ve also been playing around with FFilmation, the Isometric engine using AS3. There’s tons of stuff I could probably mention in this post, but just now that my attention is now slightly focused on how using these technologies can solve some of our problems with virtual worlds based on totally immersed environments. I’ll be catching us all up on some of the unique things that can be offered in this space.

3d, Flash, developerworks, gaming, virtualworlds 3d, Flash, gaming, virtualworlds

Join me at the Dr. Dobbs Island! I will be speaking at Grid Talk to announce the opening of the IBM developerWorks Island.

developerworks, ibm, secondlife

I am pleased to announce that the IBM developerWorks island is open! I’d like to invite all of you to drop by and take a look! We’re waiting for you to join us! Help us build an in-world community, while we build out the rest of the island. We’ve created a small briefing area in the southern part of the island, as well as a welcoming public sandbox area. For more information visit the IBM developerWorks community topic space on Second Life:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/secondlife

See you in SL!

Oh, almost forgot here are a few pics:

IBM developerWorks Rotunda I - Web Briefing Area

IBM developerWorks Public Sandbox North

One last thing- I have yet ANOTHER blog that I am maintaining:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/secondlife

developerworks, ibm, secondlife

The island development is underway. We are currently in preparations to open up the IBM developerWorks island for public access. We’ve had an island in Second Life for close to a year, where we’ve held a number of exclusive in-world events. But now, we are ready to move forward with building an in-world community.

One of the issues with user-generated content based virtual worlds like Second Life is the level of participation. Often times residents are unable to build, script, or terraform simply because they do not own or rent land. It’s also possible that they may not have affiliated themselves with estate owners either- which means that they are stuck with using the public sandboxes, which in some ways can be quite frustrating. developerWorks is truly giving Second Lifers a way to be a part of something- something that they can say they help establish. It reminds me of the “Home for Habitat” program, where people volunteer to build houses.

On December 17, be sure to drop by the IBM developerworks Island. You will probably find me there hanging out!

developerworks, ibm, secondlife