Sony's Community Place Browser
Sony Corporation's various divisions, including Sony Research
Laboratories in Japan and Sony Pictures Image Works (SPIW) in
California, have been working on computer spaces to support what
they call "virtual society". The latest incarnation
of this work is Sony's Community Place Browser (CPB). Sorry for
all the new acronyms, to people like me it is just an impulse,
so please excuse us! Sony's challenge with CPB was to implement
a full version of the second release of the Virtual Reality Modeling
Language (VRML 2.0) complete with behaviors (i.e.: things move)
driven by the Internet programming language Java.
With CPB you can explore some of the best VRML worlds inhabited
by avatars. CPB is already being used to build large public trials
of multi-user spaces, as we shall see later in this section.
Virtual Society on the Web
Sony states that the goal of the Virtual Society project is to
create: a seamless integration of real society and electronic
society, another kind of community, a virtual society that's fun,
fast and free. To make your place in virtual society, download
the Community Place Browser (CPB) from Sony Pictures Imageworks'
site at: http://vs.spiw.com/vs/.
This a small and simple application (although the download is
over 5MB) which can run as a plug-in to Netscape or stand-alone.
If you are running it stand-alone, you can try the built-in voice
chat.
The Interface
From the following figure we can see CPB in action, with a few
avatars there (these were SPIW employees there to give me a tour).
Figure 14.5.1: cp1b.jpg
Avatars in
the Sony ChatRoom
Text chat is shown above avatar heads in a translucent bar, a
nice touch allowing you to look through someone else's chat to
read another conversation. The main chat interface is a window
which pops up by the browser window. The following figure shows
the MultiUser Window. When you click on the row of emoticons (smiley
faces) CPB will send funny sounds into the world and make your
avatar gesture for everyone to see. In the text chat itself, all
the avatar aliases (names people chose) are shown in color along
with the chat, making it easy to trace conversational threads.
Note that you have to click between the chat window and the browser
to go from moving to talking. Hopefully Sony will improve this.
Well designed worlds allow you to walk while you type.
Figure 14.5.2: cp4c.jpg
The MultiUser
Window and its emoticon gestures
The speaker/microphone icon combination at the bottom of the MultiUser
Window are controls enabling the use of your PC's microphone to
speak to other people in the world. My microphone was gray, despite
efforts to get sound working. I could not talk and the only thing
I heard was the sound gestures emanating from my PC's speakers
every time someone pressed one of the smiley faces (whoop dee-doo!).
I expect you will be able to get sound working and try it out.
Voice done well gives you a great sense of 'presence' in the world.
With voice, you can communicate a wider bandwidth of human emotion
and culture (don't need those smiley emoticons so much).
Figure 14.5.3: cp3b.jpg
VRML Moves!
CPB is has support of VRML 2.0 behaviors, which are implemented
not only in the worlds but in the avatar editor. As the preceding
image shows, I found an undulating ceiling sculpture which was
turned on by the proximity of another avatar. The addition of
Java into the equation means that simple animations like this
can grow to become very entertaining, including sound, textures
and more shape shifting.
Navigation is somewhat tricky in CPB worlds. Holding the mouse
button down and moving your mouse is one awkward way to move.
Keyboard cursor keys can also control movement and a series of
simple icons on the right and bottom sides of the browser window
allow you to initiate some common motions like floating or turning
around. Related to navigation is collision detection. Some objects
you will collide with while others you pass right through. This
is a source of confusion in all VRML environments and leads to
frightening experiences like being buried in walls or falling
out of the world.
The Worlds
The initial Sony world looks a little bit plastic but this is
just a basic VRML space. CPB can load in a variety of VRML 2.0
worlds and models so you can use it to build your own world (see
our chapter called Build your own World, design your own Avatar).
Some beautiful worlds built for The Mirror project (in
conjunction with the BBC television programme The Net)
by British Telecom and partners showed what could be done with
the Sony tools. I recommend visiting http://www.bbc.co.uk/the_mirror/
to find out more about what went on in The Mirror when it was
on-line between 13 January and 28 February, 1996. See more on
The Mirror in the section Worlds That Were later in this chapter.
The Honjo Jidai Mura and Sapari Park worlds were built using CPB
for Japanese speaking users. Honjo Jidai Mura is a model of an
old Japanese city built showing how it looked about 200 years
ago. It was captured from old Nishiki-e (Japanese polychrome woodblock
prints of the Ukiyo-e). You can visit Honjo Jidai Mura through
the English website at: http://gcoj.com/english/index.html.
Sapari Park is a fun relaxation and play zone (in Japanese only)
and can be found at: http://pc.sony.co.jp/sapari/index.htm.
The Community
As CPB worlds are pretty new, the community is still evolving.
As I don't speak Japanese, I could not do much reporting on the
Honjo Jidai Mura and Sapari Park worlds, which are very active
places. Keep a close eye on Virtual Society on the Web as this
exciting new social technology continues to evolve.
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Virtual Society Homepage (mostly in Japanese) is at: http://vs.sony.co.jp
Find VRML Models for use in constructing VRML 2.0 worlds for Community Places and other browsers at: http://www.ocnus.com/models/models.html.
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