SenseMedia's The Sprawl: Pan Pacific Worlds
From deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains and spreading out across
the Pacific Rim comes this little known but fascinating group
collaborative project. Modeled loosely on Gibson's Sprawl
in Neuromancer, Sensemedia's Sprawl is a series of several
dozen servers in a scaleable, hubless network located mostly in
the US and Japan. A lot of hard work by SenseMedia's two principals
and volunteers has layered 3D VRML 1.0 virtual worlds (VRML 2.0
by the time you read this book) on top of a Lambda MOO server
(ChibaMOO).
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SenseMedia's VooDo browser can be accessed through Netscape 3.0
on a PC (Win95/NT) or a Power Macintosh (3D virtual worlds come
to the Mac!). You must first download and install any capable
VRML 1.0C or higher browser plug-in (live3D, WorldView or Cosmo
Player recommended) and then contact SenseMedia for an account
at: http://www.sensemedia.net/
or emailing info@sensemedia.net.
To find a VRML plug-in visit one of the following sites and download and install the plug-in for Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer:
- For live3D from Netscape: http://www.netscape.com/comprod/products/navigator/live3d/
- For WorldView from Intervista: http://www.intervista.com
- For Cosmo Player from Silicon Graphics: http://vrml.sgi.com
To try The Sprawl go to: http://www.sensemedia.net/voodo and login as 'guest' with no password, you can look around.
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The Interface
Figure 14.6.1: sp1ca.jpg
SenseMedia's VooDo Browser interface
Click here to get print resolution version
This figure shows the VooDo client open within Netscape 3.0 with
a second Netscape window on the right hand side for locations
and a frame below for text and command entry. You navigate using
your mouse or keyboard commands in the main window and type MOO
instructions or text chat into the entry area at the bottom of
the browser. It helps to be MOO-literate although there is a help
system available. The interface is complex but easy once you have
masters some basic commands.
One of the most powerful features is the ability to create your
own VRML 'rooms' with a simple MOO command. The figure above shows
an overview of the Sprawl where the buildings on this digital
plain represent VRML areas on different servers.. This kind of
virtual world is called hubless, which means that there is no
central server and the overview of the world must be pulled together
for display in real time (it can be slow).
I created and entered a room 'digigarden' in the Sprawl with these two commands:
@dig digigarden
@go #1935
which made a room on a server in Honolulu assigned the unique
ID 1935. I then was able to plaster a texture map onto the walls
of my room. The SenseMedia people imported some of our infamous
'biota' VRML (see the chapter in this book called Life in Digital
Space) and placed it into the room (shown below). Would building
VRML areas into other VRML multi-user worlds be so easy!
Figure 14.6.2: sp5d.jpg
Comunicating with an avatar in a homebuilt biota Sprawl VRML 1.0 room
Here I am visiting my completed room with Irradiate, an avatar
from the SenseMedia team, to talk over this first ever biota area
in a VRML world. Hundreds of other rooms have been created, even
full art galleries, including one of the work of photographer
Daniel Leighton..
The Worlds
The SenseMedia world, being a community creation, has a wide variety
of styles and quality of content. From simple rooms like the one
I constructed to Stonehenge monuments (every world seems to have
its Stonehenge!) to large auditoriums for concerts, the Sprawl
seems to have never ending content. If you are using the Sprawl
with the Live3D 1.0 plug-in on the Windows platform, you can animations.
In some versions, your avatar is merely a placeholder, announcing
your presence in a room. This environment is really centered on
the MOO dialogue and command structure and this is where a great
deal of interface and attention is focused.
Note that you can use the Sprawl with Chaco's Pueblo (also discussed
in this chapter). Avatars move in the Pueblo enhanced version.
For a preview of Sprawl worlds and good screen shots, see: http://www.picosof.com/sprawl/.
The Community
I was not able to talk to more than a few people in the Sprawl
on my guided tours but I did get a sense that this is a truly
dedicated 'homebrew' VRML community, adept in stepping around
the glitches and creating innovative fixes to keep the world going.
The Sprawl reminds me of Terra Vista, another grassroots project
in VRML community building (see http://www.terravista.org).
Kayla Block and Samuel Latt Epstein (developers of the Sprawl)
tell me that they have about 3500 people who login at least once
every 3 months across 5 nodes located in Fujisawa, Japan; Hokkaido,
Japan; Sydney, Australia; and Honolulu, Hawaii. She says that
the average number of people logged in at any one time across
nodes is 50-70. A sense of the SenseMedia community can be gained
by visiting their white papers collection at: http://sensemedia.net/papers.