e.

My supervisor is trying to get into virtual worlds, simply just for meetings and what not so as a “millenia” kid she got me to do the research. So I’m just wondering. Everything’s pretty new to me. I can honestly say I never even heard about Second Life until last week.

In my mind there’s an image of a real world oriented virtual world where my CAD designed living quarters are because the apartment place makes the virtual world version available as part of it’s marketing efforts. My real furniture is in the virtual apartment because the furniture makers make the model available as part of their marketing and I chose to put it in my virtual apartment. When I buy a neat gadget in the real world I hold it’s UPC code up to my webcam and the model of my neat gadget appears on my virtual nicknack rack. If its the sort of thing that would be useful in a virtual world the company that sells it would have created the script to produce it’s virtual world behavior. If not they’ll have a link to some promotional info. The folks that design cars on CAD systems will make the cars models available, scripted for use in a virtual world. Every sort of real world item that is designed on a computer will be in the real world oriented virtual world because it will be in the interests of product makers to promote their products.

This real world oriented virtual world won’t be experienced just from behind your computer desk, it will be on your mobile devices, your cell phones, your cars nav systems, etc.

Here in the world of today I’d like to see the Zoho people add some virtual world features to their online collaboration offerings or at least do what’s necessary to have some mashup between a virtual world and the Zoho collaboration products.

But I can tell you that our clients, even those with previous experience in Second Life, do not complain of QF avatars. They are just interested in QF as a collaborative workspace, and many actually _prefer_ the flat faces of QF avatars because you can display your webcam feed on your avatar face (this features is only available in the Mac version of QF at the moment). The webcam option is considered more important that the realism of the avatar. Actually, a good way to describe QF to a potential client is as an advanced collaboration and videoconferencing environment with shared document editing capability, without even saying the word “virtual” tat may scare the most conservative clients.

a) security– you can run Qwaq behind your firewall

b) document integration

Point b, in my opinion, also makes it easier– out of the box– for corporate collaboration use than platforms like Forterra and Multiverse. I can’t speak to Forterra, but I’m sure document integration could be developed for Multiverse, which is free to develop on as long as your worlds are free to use (they can still be closed/restricted access).

And, as an aside, I don’t think Qwaq has to look like shit. As I recall from a developer demo, it can take standard 3d models. It’s just, like so many technology companies, they didn’t put any resources into design for the demo.

There are lots of choices for 3d collaboration out there, and Second Life is one of the poorest options if you need security or stability at all. (I say this as a Second Life user and as a professional virtual worlds developer.)

In addition to Second Life you could have compared Qwaq to Ogoglio, Project Wonderland, or any of the other virtual world applications that are actually dedicated to “work”. I can’t understand why you didn’t.