Tue

Jun 27
2006

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Are Virtual U2 Concerts Better Than The Real Thing?

Phil Torrone sent in this bit of "news from the future" from MTV.com about virtual U2 concerts in Second Life:

Since 2005, four members of the U2inSL crew, living in locations as distant as California, Connecticut and Germany, have logged onto their computers and into the shared landscape of "Second Life" in order to steer digital replicas of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Running their characters through a series of stage moves and piping in audio recorded from an actual concert, they are able to create a virtual performance. Other "Second Life" citizens can attend as members of a character-packed audience.

Where "hackers" go today, will the band themselves go tomorrow? Seems likely. What's more, we really are entering, bit by bit, into the virtual reality metaverse of books like Neuromancer and Snow Crash.


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Comments: 7

  Roger Weeks [06.27.06 04:24 PM]

Well, Second Life is cool. But it's not immersive, not by any stretch of the imagination. Certainly not like the Metaverse of Snow Crash.

Even running on my G5 over a DSL line, SL is jerky. The graphics just aren't that great compared to say World of Warcraft. WoW even bogs down and gets jerky.

I don't see real immersive environments being practical for some time yet, not least because the display technologies just aren't there.

  Daniel Read [06.27.06 05:11 PM]

Tim wrote:

"What's more, we really are entering, bit by bit, into the virtual reality metaverse of books like Neuromancer and Snow Crash."

And let's not forget Bruce Sterling's The Artificial Kid! :-)

  gse [06.27.06 05:34 PM]

They're about as "better" as a high school talent show.

  Tim O'Reilly [06.27.06 07:40 PM]

Roger, and GSE --

Despite the title of the article, I don't think that "better" should be taken literally. Nor do I think that SL and its ilk aren't still pretty weak, relative to what science fiction writers have imagined, and what mainstream users will expect.

But this is the essence of Clayton Christenson's "innovator's dilemma" -- worse is better, because worse plays by a different set of rules. I remember Christenson saying that a lot of people misunderstand his argument, and think that incumbent companies ignore new technologies. He points out that RCA spent a billion dollars in today's money trying to make transistors good enough for the high fidelity listening experience that they and their users expected. But they just couldn't do it. Sony invented the future by going after a new market (really, two markets - portability and teenagers) where quality didn't matter. If you're as old as I am, you remember just how bad those early transistor radios were. About like SL is today.

  Roger Weeks [06.29.06 10:13 AM]

Absolutely. I have no doubt that immersive environments will get better over time. I look forward to being able to "lose myself" in one, some day soon. I just haven't been able to turn off my critical eye with any of the existing systems and suspend disbelief to actually feel part of that world.

Other folks don't seem to have that problem, but then I also used to get motion sickness from early 3-d games like Doom and Descent.

  florian [07.03.06 11:25 PM]

I agree that they are getting better, but better than the real thing ... never.

An immersive environment will never be able to tick all our sensory input like a concert is able to, 50.000 other apes standing and singing around you, sweat or rain, stars overhead the light show, the anticipation when you get tickets or drive there ... no sorry. Pretty interesting yes, would I go to a conference in an immersive environment, yes, to a football game ? ( soccer ) No.

  Florian [07.03.06 11:26 PM]

No Roger you aren't the only one, after playing Descent I alway had to lie don because I got so sick.

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