Bumped into this teaser and could not resist from sharing it – a true VR dream life ! Apparently the animation series did not go past the teaser phase, too bad !

Technologyreview has a nice cover of this week’s Siggraph 2009.
One innovative interface that really caught my attention is this work from INRIA merging camera analysis for precise motion detection and a HMD for full immersion. Results are stunning but as they say “A cluster of PCs is needed to perform the necessary image capture and 3D modeling”.
Indeed, camera processing is always a pain, as at VR-WEAR we developed a mod to the Second Life viewer using the webcam to analyse the user’s facial expression and paste it to his avatar, we witnessed some serious processing power trouble between our algorithms and the already ultra CPU-savvy Second Life browser. Anyway, can’t wait for these things to get mainstream and maybe game consoles such as Xbox 360′s Natal project will give enough power to let the mass market experience this level of interaction.

Virtualization Gate: Siggraph 2009 Emerging Technologies
par InriaGrImage

Damn that’s the killer app… the JoyDick !

The VR-WEAR modification of the Second Life client never intended to be commercial, and as such we decided to release our modification as a patch to let others contribute to our work.
The modification relies on the integration of the OpenCV library plus a pile of custom filters enabling us to detect specific motions on the user’s head by monitoring the computer’s webcam.
The amazing feedback and the pile of request to release the code are now fulfilled, let me know if you wish to help so we can coordinate the next steps of the project.
The patches for both windows and OSX can be found on the dedicated blog.

As you may now, I’m currently raising a seed round for my latest venture, VR-WEAR (For those whom I didn’t yet pitch, VR-WEAR designs produces and sells Virtual Reality devices for video games). As the French seed market got pretty hard to address since the September crisis and as I’m looking for quite a lot of money (500-700k€ which is pretty big for seed in France) I though I might give a try to those dating sites between angel investors and entrepreneurs and I must confess I’m a bit troubled by the results.
I registered on two of those, Capital PME which is edited by OSEO, the French Innovation agency, and Capangel from a local startup.

First of all it feels always a bit strange to fill so intimate data about your project in those “public” places. I almost feel like now that it’s there I should make a video of the presentation and post in on my blog while I’m at it… and that definitely sounds wrong.
What’s even more puzzling is that a lot of the people viewing my company’s profile obviously are newbies in both technology startups and angel investing which basically leads to pretty heavy differences of point of view. For instance I had a funny talk with one guy who did not spend one sec trying to understand what it is we’re trying to achieve with VR-WEAR but instead only was worrying how we are valuating the company after the September crisis…

While I was thinking those kind of initiatives were pretty meaningful for private investors willing to find some fun projects to invest in as heir risk is really limited thanks to the latest tax savings regulations, after that kind of interactions I’m getting pretty worried that the lack of experience in that very specific field of expertise which is investing in technology startups is going to be a real problem both at the investment phase and afterwards…

What is your opinion ? Should a startup looking for seed be on those uncontrolled websites where anyone can register as an investor and were no check is done on wether one has any capacity of investment and any expertise (or has understood the risks and the usual dynamics of how things usually work) over that specific type of investments?

Update : On CapAngel it seems that I must send out an invitation code to anyone willing to access my company profile – sounds reasonable… It’s not how Capital PME handles it though.

3D web is an amazing playground for me. While we are really early stage in terms of usage and adoption, we already have a lot of pretty amazing implementations of 3DWeb environments and while the initial hype we witnessed in 2006/2007 is now over real use cases are starting to happen.
Also it’s getting harder and harder to make a difference between an online 3D game (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft and a 3DWeb environment such as Second Life. Indeed while the latter misses NPCs and objectives and allows user generated contents, both are place where users/players seek each other to spend a time “together” around a common objective shared within that world, wether it’s talking about how to convince the curmudgeon on a role playing session or take down Malygos in WoW.

First Prediction : Most first-tier businesses will be carrying out experiments about the use of 3Dweb within their organization as a powerful brainstorming / meeting tool and will be seeking for ROI not press coverage – those experiments will mostly remain under the hood and private.

Second Prediction : Bots and NPCs will become common thing within 3Dweb environments and IA will be able to start showing its full potential. Those bots will enable a persistent presence within virtual worlds and will try to fight the “alone” effect you get when entering Second Life at random times.

Third Prediction : Accessories especially designed to engage in 3D web will roll out and the one already on the market will strongly develop. We can think here about Logitech’s 3DConnexion or VR-WEAR‘s devices and SL-viewer (a webcam *is* a device after all).

Fourth Prediction : 3Dweb will get mobile and to the games consoles. 2009 will see reference implementations of major 3Dwebs on non-PC communicating platforms. While console makers are working on their own 3Dweb software (Playstation Home, and Xbox’s avatars and soon to be virtual world) market leaders will have to move to this market.

Fifth Prediction : 3Dweb will interconnect seamlessly with 2Dweb communication tools. First experiments were witnessed through tools such as SL-Messenger enabling msn/gtalk/aim/yahoochat/twitter/visualbookmarking from Second Life which will evolve as interconnection platforms for 3Dweb communities and common web communities.