I have been looking at ways of making virtual meetings easier, more effective and fun. As part of that I have looked again at secondlife, and one of my new correspondents pointed me at “The future is virtually here”. This, despite being published last August, and while containing two fun stories about EVE Online, tries too hard in my mind to use language which proves the author’s Yoof credentials. Also quoting IBM and World of Warcraft as the exemplar’s of using virtual worlds is, to my mind lazy. Many (or was it several) companies use secondlife as a virtual store front, although I admit that IBM’s virtual data centre, (see also my blog report on the IBM virtual data center) is a quite a cute toy, but a number of people are on the trail of WoW, and its monthly subscription is high for school students. The killer app. for virtual worlds seems to be training.
Sun has just launched its “Solaris Campus” on secondlife, but its the truly compelling case for virtual training is where the where real life exercises are either very expensive or very dangerous, such as the US Marines’ use of Doom, and its growing use in urban disaster relief planning. It’s certainly dangerous training soldiers realistically.
I have argued before that game fan forums helped develop remote collaboration techniques and the games world is now offering a lot to the infrastructure providers. Besides Sun ‘s very own…
