We’ve been wondering lately – in terms of public virtual worlds, which will be more robust and populous in 5 years, mirror world replication of our real life environment or fantasy-based environments? Should Second Life developers, or even Linden Lab itself, be more focused on realizing a mirror worlds of real life? Would it help attract more users? To be sure, there are specific measures they could take to make the platform more replication-friendly – but would that be wise?
In my mind, it seems likely that mirror and purely virtual worlds will inevitably co-exist, and what I’ve heard Theory Shaw refer to as a ‘middlescape’ that blend the two will emerge, but I think the purely virtual world will be much, much larger. No doubt, a replica of the real world will be a great tool – but a tool nonetheless. I see the purely virtual world environment not as a tool, but as a frontier – a new world with almost infinite possibilities that even the most cutting edge experiments still haven’t even scratched the surface of.
With these questions in mind, I found this Google Tech Talk to be quite interesting, since it highlights one technology that will help realize the mirror world, among other future possibilities for modeling urban environments that seems quite promising. via JeanRicard Broek’s awesome blog Architecture +
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6fAszlImPM]
