NMC Campus Observer

Future Perfect: Imagining a Better World

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Oct 20, 2006 09:53pm

And for another fabulous phase of the SLATENIGHT session on campus today, this was an exciting presentation by Dell Willberg, creative designer and writer for Slatenight.

Dell displayed some visuals suggesting some uncanny realism for avatars, 3-5 years out, much more realistic natural environments. He predicted:

Within 10 years, 80 percent of the worldwide broadband population will spend 60 percent of their time in virtual reality.

So there is huge potential looming for Second Life’s future. Dell thinks the capability will be enhanced to allow much larger events to take place.

Dell speaks about “Singularity” and increased intelligence in virtual worlds.

Near term developments he sees include:

• In world Voice chat (already here)
• real-time language translation
• E-bay, Google, Amazon, Skype, web browsing in world
• Improved sound quality
• Improved graphics rednering
• Productivity applications (e.g. so presentations could be created in world, rather than imported

There were quite a bit more futuristic ideas Dell describes as very realistic. Tune in to the podcast for more of his predictions.

Future Perfect

Story filed under: Audio / Video, People, Places, Things, What's Happening

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