There’s an interesting interview with a “Virtual Inventor” about mobile QR codes in virtual worlds.

The mind bristles with the possibilities at the other end of the scale from the Jitterbug (see last post). For those who don’t know, I spent a good deal of time in the early 90s researching “Mobile Virtual Reality”. Those were the seemingly cool days when we thought VR was about to break out and we’d all soon have affordable headsets, Silicon Graphics stations, wearable computers and whatnot. My recent trip to a VR lab in London led me to speculate in a “future of mobile” piece (published in Stefan Bertsch’s Thumb Culture) that headsets of one type or another will be commonplace mobile peripherals within the next 10 years.

Of course, that’s a meaningless bit of future-gazing, but it’s fascinating to think of the consequences. For example, in a face-to-face conversation, I could potentially be surfing while talking - both on the same topic. The prospect of QR codes providing a bridge between real and virtual worlds is equally fascinating in terms of potential social and psychological impacts. There are also a number of ethico-legal issues that we have yet to encounter, which I raise in the discussion of “air graffiti” on this blog several times (e.g. air tagging) and in my book.

What originally motivated me to research VR was an insight gained whilst working in a sea of blue office cubes (cells) amongst a bunch of cad guys. Using their Mentor Graphics workstations, they would engage in multi-player asteroids. That was fairly cool way back then, but the interesting observation was how much the players enjoyed shouting at each other over the cube walls. The gaming was taking place at two levels: visually and audibly. There was social interaction. Of course, this is now well known and we see VOIP is appearing in most MPGs out there. However, what I wanted to do was insert a talking head (i.e. avatar) for each player and use lip-synching with the audio.

Anyhow, I did the research into optimal techniques for sharing VR worlds over a low-bandwidth channel and it was all theoretical stuff. I lost interest simply because the technology was not up to the job. However, some mobiles now contain 3D graphics accelerators and are capable of real-time rendering of avatars, which includes changing of camera position (i.e. viewpoint), articulation of gestures and - yes - real-time lip syncing. I’ve seen it running on real phones.

There’s a lot of buzz about avatars and most operators will express an interest. We know that some have bought land in SecondLife and I have met others who want to create their own virtual worlds. The attraction is the prospect of a virtual economy and the creation of parallel currencies that eventually make their way in and out of the real world as hard currencies. Combine that with the micro-payment capabilities of mobiles, whether P-SMS or the forthcoming mobile payment systems (and they are coming…eventually) and we have the ingredients for a new growth industry.

Nonetheless, let’s get real for a moment. I’ve been doing “this is the future” presentations forever and often feel stuck in a groundhog day. “Didn’t I just say this yesterday about today?” I’m starting to get confused between fact and (science) fiction. Asimov might well have done better powerpoints. Of course, a lot of powerpoints are fiction and in need of the Bull Fighter. This has all led me to the point where I am now toying with science fiction writing. I have about 1000 powerpoints that seem to fall into that category, so I might just submit them to Asimov’s Sci-Fi magazine or publish them in SecondLife!

p.s. That picture above is me wearing my nephew’s toy “night vision” goggles, not a VR headset. Had you fooled? (I hope not.)

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