> it is hard (for me)
> to look very far into the future of videoconferencing without seeing
> good reasons why it is going to have to move away from the camera
> metaphor, if only because cameras have too many inherent limitations
> (like points of view). Once you have done that, why not move all the
> way to avatars? Lots of room for discussion here....

Thanks, Fred. Check out this post on the Oddcast blog you might find
interesting:

10 Reasons to go Virtual Instead of Video
http://blog.oddcast.com/2006/10/why_not_use_vid.html

Oddcast http://www.oddcast.com makes talking avatars on the web. I
fiddled around with one on my MySpace page not too long ago: http://
myspace.com/jerrypaffendorf .

Peter Ludlow (one of the first salon speakers back in 2005) and I
were on SecondCast recently talking about the press about SL and
outside business entering the world http://www.secondcast.com/?p=68
and he was asking why some of the music events in SL that were
attended by fewer people than in a virtual world like Habbo Hotel
were getting more attention. Aside from SL getting written about a
lot lately, I think it certainly has to do with the multiple
viewpoints and camera flexibility you're talking about here: SL is an
absolute unique image generating machine. With video from a single
perspective or with the kind of flat virtual world like Habbo Hotel
you can't explore perspective. That's very, very powerful and
something to add to the Oddcast list.

Not sure how we can weave it in heavily in this salon, but avatar
teleconferencing certainly serves to make everything just that much
more ARG :),

Jerry



On Nov 11, 2006, at 4:53 PM, Fred Hapgood wrote:

>
>> Any thoughts on framing some particular ARG salon themes? Any cool
>> ideas for a setting or some inworld ARG tie-in with the salon?
>
> This might not be central to the mission, but I'm interested in the
> integration of video- or teleconferencing and virtual worlds. In
> particular I'm curious about how the latter might change the former,
> though the other side of the story -- how teleconferencing might drive
> VW graphics -- is pretty interesting too. Anyway, it is hard (for me)
> to look very far into the future of videoconferencing without seeing
> good reasons why it is going to have to move away from the camera
> metaphor, if only because cameras have too many inherent limitations
> (like points of view). Once you have done that, why not move all the
> way to avatars? Lots of room for discussion here....
>
> Fred Hapgood
> www.pobox.com/~fhapgood
> www.BostonScienceAndEngineeringLectures.com
>
>
>