Neuronet – ‘Worlds First’ Real-Time Virtual Reality Network
Rezzing soon to a visual cortex near you, Neuronet is preparing to launch next year.
Set up by the IAVRT – “The International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies (IAVRT) is a not-for-profit professional organization dedicated to fostering scientific research and business development in the area of Virtual Reality (VR) technology for the benefit of society.” – wants to create a network of virtual reailty spaces, which will apparently be accessible/marketable via two top level domain names (TLDs) .vr and .cin
It looks like they care about alot of the important things which need to be under control and understood for this to all work.
They will surely make good money selling domain names under the .vr domain, but I don’t know too much about .cin (cinematic virtual reality neurosites). Who knows, it might get traction eventually.Domains names from both will cost $100US .
I have recently been suggesting to people that Linden Lab contact on organisation called ‘Sierratel‘ who appear to the people in charge of selling domain names with the .sl TLD. The trouble is, this company does not seem to reply to emails, so should really look for an agent/organization to handle the job. I think Second-Lifers would no doubt swarm to these and would provide decent income in other ways than rising land prices beyong many people’s reach.
Back to the Neuronet though, I am very much looking forward to the evolution of ‘truly’ immersive environments. I have always been closely watching the rise in speed in power of home PCs and their graphics capabilities, along with the rising speeds of internet connectivity. It will be interesting to see how the fantasy of a truly global 3D VR world lives up to the actuality of it. Will it scale? Is it secure? etc. Situations which LL are constantly dealing with. It appears that you will get a ‘development neurosite’ with your domain name for $2500US a year (wow), so I wonder if this means that people will be able to host their own nerusite systems on their own servers. No idea what the requirements and costs might be yet.
Pre-orders for names (The Sunrise Period) looks set to start in February 2007, with the General Registration period, which they call the ‘Land Rush’ period (already!) starting on June 4th 2007. MY BIRTHDAY!!! Ha! I want koz.vr 😀
I will also be keeping a close eye on an Australian/UK company called Inition (with a shop in London! W00t!) as they appear to sell just about everything you could want for an immersive existence in a 3D world. Great stuff! Some of the kits there looks prohibitively expensive, but some are certainly affordable for the hardcore pixelvertex junkies out there/here! 😉 I thoroughly recommend browsing through their huge range of products, as it really taught me alot about all the amazing VR devices which are now on the market, along with their current value. They sell kit for VR HUDs (heads up displays), headsets, glasses, gloves, motion capture kits, 3D digitizing/scanning and even 3D printing (rather like a friend, Mike Buckbee’s Fabjectory, which will ‘print’ a 3d sculpture of your Second Life avatar – amazing, and I still need to get one 😉 )
Unfortunately, this cool little device, ‘The Monkey’ has been discontinued. If anyone else out there knows of any motion (or pose) capture desktop mannekins out there, please do let me know. Thx 😉
It looks like 3D is not going to go away next year. On the contrary, it’s going to get deeper – much to the chagrin of many a 3D/SL-widow/widower out there already! :p
Also, the rebang blog seems highly suspicious of a potential scam!