Where is this all going? Part One: Augmented Reality.

This is going to kick off a series of articles that point you down the road of where Second Life is headed and what we’ll ultimately be doing here.

I want to preface the series with a couple of caveats. First, in many places, I will be referring to where I think “Second Life” is headed. The truth is, I don’t know how long Second Life will be able to carry the torch here. Linden Labs may drop out of the race, or they may be slow to adapt a change that some other similar company adapts. So when I say “Second Life” I’m often going to mean “Second Life or it’s successors.”

Second, there is a tendency among those like myself who like to read about cutting edge science and technology research to get overexcited about whats coming. We often have bad expectations about how soon a technology will be at the consumer level, or what it will be ultimately capable of. Timetables for the future are well above my expertise, even above the expertise of people who have actual expertise.

I bring these potentials to your attention at all to link what you’re doing today to what you might be doing a decade or two from now. Its the first reason I came to Second Life.

As always, I’m going to do this in parts so you can skip or skim what you don’t need.

The first few parts of this series (possibly the whole series, at this writing, I only have three parts planned out) are going to focus on the ever thinning barrier between the virtual world and the real world. Already, its increasingly common for people to take their computer and their internet with them in their pockets. Technologies coming soon will allow us to take more than just our experiences from Second Life to the real world, and will allow us to inject ourselves more into the Second Life experience than we do now.

This article will start with one such technology. Augmented Reality.

Introduction to Augmented Reality (AR)

AR as a concept predates Second Life and exists entirely independent of it. Augmented Reality is the process of overlaying information and virtual constructs onto the physical world. The idea is to make those constructs and that information useful to you where you currently are in real time.

Probably the first example of this already widely in use is GPS navigation. Many of us today enjoy the benefit of being able to tell a small computer where we’re going and have it read directions back to us in real time as we drive.

My brother has a more sophisticated version of this on his phone (a Droid), that allows him to simply say something like “I want to go to McDonald’s.” Google then figures out where my brother, where the nearest McDonald’s is, and verbally gives him driving directions to the McDonald’s. If he sees something he likes in a store, he can take a picture of the barcode and Google will give him a comparative listing of prices for the same product at online shops and nearby physical stores, and can then give him directions to those stores if he wants to buy this product there. Augmented reality is already beginning to have a huge impact on our society.

But that’s only the beginning. A more expansive form of augmented reality might involve wearing video lenses in public that overlay useful graphics and information over what you’re seeing. Imagine you’re looking for your friend in a crowd and a digital arrow graphic pops up indicating which way you should turn and walk and puts another arrow over your friend’s head when you’re close enough and looking in the right direction. Imagine nametags floating over people’s heads (especially useful at parties if you’re bad with names), if you play Second Life or similar games, you’re already used to this.

There are still some serious technical challenges to making widespread application of this, not the least of which is that the GPS used in many existing AR applications lack the precision to do this by at least a few orders of magnitude, and the computer power necessary to render these graphics in real time with sensitivity to your position and orientation requires at least a small backpack. But we will be seeing this sort of thing eventually.

How does this relate to Second Life?

Applications for this are already being worked on. These researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have already experimenting with mixed reality environments in Second Life.

Imagine building a replica of your house in Second Life, overlaying that on your real house as a frame of reference and having your avatar buddies over for a walkthrough. From your perspective, you would really be on your house and the video lenses would be overlaying images of your SL buddies walking around in a real environment.
As the technology improves, you may be able to take your SL buddies out with you on your evening walk.

You may ask “If you’re going into the real world, why not walk with your local friends?” Its great if you can do that, but maybe you’re closer to your SL buddies, or maybe your SL buddies are available to “walk” with you when your physically local friends are not. Its just another set of options for you. Its just one of the many little ways this type of technology can change your life.

Second Life is already opening you to that flexibility as you can decide you want a roof with green shingles right now and then the next minute switch to blue with a few simple clicks. And for those of us who live in the world of today, that preparation is welcome as we certainly would struggle to live in an increasingly mutable world if it were thrust on us later in life with no preparation.

With the “mixed reality” that Georgia Institute of Technology was experimenting with, elements have the potential to go back and forth. Your real body or room or stuff could be projected into the real world and virtual objects can be projected into this world. The barriers between the real world and the virtual one become thinner.

Now, as I said at the beginning of the article, I don’t know that Second Life will be the virtual world that ultimately realizes this potential. While they have led in metaverse development in the past, they may end up preoccupied with maintenance of the world they’ve created leaving another company to move ahead of them to the next step. Either way though, this is our future, and Second Life’s role in getting us there cannot be denied.

Second Life is the sandbox for the coming Metaverse. Many of the issues we will face in that world are already being encountered here and the solutions are being developed here as well. Whoever inherits this future will benefit from our experiences and the collective knowledge base we’ve built in this natal phase of virtual development. Whether we’re a programmer, a player, a merchant, or even one of our local troublemakers, we play a role in that development for better or for worse. Lets make it for the better.