https://blogger.com/feeds/8378574/posts/default

I created an up-resed version of the 2003 demo that Alan Kay and I did at the O'Reilly ETech conference. It really holds up nicely.

We have been working hard on the latest, greatest version of Croquet. Next week we will be rolling it out for our friends to play with. 

David A. Smith

Twitter: @Croquet
Skype: inventthefuture

I am a part of all that I have met; 
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 
For ever and forever when I move. 

Why AR Will Win And Why it Matters How it Will Win
David A Smith December 28, 2018 Originally printed in Michael Swaine's PragPub. https://theprosegarden.com/

“man is much more than a tool builder … he is an inventor of universes.” Alan Kay - “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages”
There is a race between the extraordinary and compelling Augmented Realities – and the necessary and powerful Augmented Human. It is essential that these be in balance or we will become a slave to the increasingly virtual world we live in rather than the master of it. We consider here the idea of a truly Augmented Reality – a digital extension to the world in which we will live all our future waking hours. A far more important concept is that of the Augmented Human – our next steps in evolution that will allow us to understand and control this Augmented Reality and, in turn, the universe. The Augmented Human is a better you.
What is AR I consider VR (virtual reality) to be a full subset of AR (augmented reality); a mode if you like. I deeply understand and appreciate the difference between the two, but I think that it is as irrelevant as trying to draw a line between smart phone and an MP3/music player.
I suppose I should give you my definition of what Augmented Reality will be. It is concise. AR will be everything your smart phone is today, but it will be visible every waking second, displaying the world as a living web browser.
This last is important, as it subsumes everything else. Think about how you use the web on a daily, or sometimes even minute by minute basis. Why is this important? Because AR will be like that but so much more. It will be amazingly addictive, and as we all know, addicting products are by far the best market – just ask the cigarette manufacturers.
Imagine an interesting opportunity for distraction every step you take walking down a city street. I am not just talking about restaurant menus here. You can query a quaint hotel you are standing beside and view a list of the famous people that lived … and died there. Interesting that it was once a brothel, even more interesting how that movie star ended up in a closet. Who was the architect, what other buildings did he design? When did he die and what from? What was the Spanish Flu, anyway? Everything you look at or is near you becomes a trigger for a wonderful exploration of streams of information and ideas. It will be useful in other ways too - you can look down through the pavement and see the subway lines and watch the trains move down the tracks. SimCity comes to life and you and everyone around you is a Sim. You can query for the closest subway stop, which cars are most crowded, are there any sexual predators on the car you are planning to get on? No problem, you have set your system to automatically tag people like that – when you do see him, he is painted a bright red and has a neon sign floating over his head. You can even select his history.
You walk past a car dealership and see a new sedan in the window. You pause to step into a fully immersive (VR) virtual car seat to explore its interior and try out a few features (without leaving the sidewalk). Oops, you are alerted that your red painted guy has just stepped within 100 feet of you. 
Time to move on.
Walking through a crowd, you can see Facebook icons pop over the heads of everyone that is a friend of yours on that service. I am talking about what is technologically feasible, not necessarily what society will approve of, but who knows. You see a good-looking person walking your way – cool, you can see that they are only one degree of separation from you on LinkedIn. You invite them into your network.
One of the creatures from a game you are playing appears from behind a car. It sees you and tries to escape, but you corner and capture it.
You get an alert that your video conference is about to start. Walk into the nearest Starbucks – immediately pick up the coffee you already ordered and paid for and sit down at an empty table. The other participants soon join you. Your AR device captures the position of your head, your face and facial expressions and of course where you are looking. Your colleagues look almost as live as if they were sitting next to you. No one else in the coffee shop even notices or cares that you are in a conversation with ghosts. One of the conference participants drops a document onto the table. It is a 3D chart of the projected growth of the new IoT toaster. The new toaster has just integrated Alexa, so it can carry on a conversation with you along with the rest of your other kitchen appliances. You have never met one of your colleagues in person and are not aware that he has removed a mole from his virtual cheek and has a virtual nose job.
The hot new app allows you to transform any of your friends into Hollywood characters, including their voices. You have decided that one of your co-workers will be Humphry Bogart, including hat and trench coat. Your boss is Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs – it makes everything he says so much more interesting. The receptionist becomes Rhett Butler – Clarke Gable with a sort of southern accent.
Most of these capabilities already exist in some form – probably on your phone. All of them will exist soon. They are just a bit inconvenient to access today. That is why you don’t use them every second. You can’t. Yet.
Friction That sounds like a wonderful world. Why don’t we have it now? When can we have it? Today, AR and VR are not great experiences. They are terrible. Current devices are complex, hard to set up, even harder to use. They are ugly, heavy and don’t really do much. They do sort of show what is possible once you finally get it working, but at the same time they highlight just how bad the current state of the art is. VR games demonstrate t he potential of the new medium, but even there, it is difficult to spend the same amount of time and attention that you would bring to a screen based version.
Friction is the barrier that your product must overcome to satisfy the customer.
In marketing, the reverse of Friction is, oddly enough, Stickiness. Today, a smart phone is incredibly sticky. AR and VR has a great deal of friction to overcome.
Compare AR and VR to the smart phone in your pocket. AR fails in so many ways.
Phones are beautiful, sleek, elegant – AR makes you look like an alien Bono with an umbilical cord. VR is worse, as not only can’t you see the world, the world sees you with a literal box on your head. Phones are invitingly seductive and like to be touched. The user strokes their finger across the screen, creating wonderful ripples in their personal probability pond.  Interestingly, phones are quite useless for fine manipulation. It is very hard to edit a document on the phone – almost impossible to select between letters in text. That fine manipulation is very important as we will see later. AR and VR have pointing rods with almost no haptic feedback at all aside from perhaps vibrating. It has none of the compelling qualities of the phone interface and is not even particularly good at gross manipulation. I know some people do amazing things in VR. Frankly, I am amazed that they can do that. I can’t. Picasso could draw amazing things in the air too. But he was Picasso.
We need a new way of interacting with this new idea space in the same way that the mouse was invented to be able to interact with our virtual desktop.
Phones are relatively inexpensive and self-contained. A great phone costs almost nothing, a high end one is still amazingly cheap for what you get.  Consider the power it provides when you have it in your hand. You don’t need to plug anything into it or plug it into anything to use it. It is a complete and efficient distraction. AR and VR usually require a wire with a hefty, expensive computer on the other end. There are cheaper alternatives, but there is a significant gap in capabilities.
Phones have so many interesting things you can do with them. Communicating with your friends, watching videos, playing games. VR and AR are still emerging markets based up some very flawed hardware. Developers consider the size of the target market for their apps, and though the phone today boasts billions of users, the user base for VR and AR worlds is in the relatively inactive millions.
Phones are instantly available and invisible. Your phone is in your pocket or purse. It alerts you that it wants attention and you have it turned on and in front of your face in just a few seconds. Most people do not remember taking their phone out to use it. It just magically appears in their hands and takes over their focus­. You never think about using the phone when you are using the phone – you see through it to the rich world on the other side of the screen. On the other hand, you have no choice but to think about AR and VR when you are attempting to use it from the time you set it up, to when you are engaged and immersed within it to when you try to do anything within it. It forces you to see the device as much as the world it is trying to present.
This last is very important. In a way, phones own you more than you own them. They constantly cry for your attention, and when they have it, they study you to determine how best to continue to keep you occupied. The phone is literally using the data it gets from you to figure out how to make itself even more addicting to you. Now that is a great drug.
If phones are such a powerful force that we can’t resist them or maybe even live without them, why does AR matter?
Because phones only OWN you. AR is everything a phone is but will BECOME you.
A Better You AR has some serious challenges but not one of them is insurmountable. What would AR devices be like for it to offer a serious challenge to the phone?
Most of all, AR must be friction free. It must be and will be easier to use than a phone. You just put it on your head and leave it there – a lightweight pair of glasses that look just like those you might be wearing today. You no longer search all your pockets to find it and then swipe your fingerprint or enter a code or stare deep into the eyes of the phone – the camera – hoping you look somehow like you did when you got to know it.  AR knows when you want it. It hears you when you speak. It knows what you are looking at. So be good for goodness sake. It will seem like you just think something, and it immediately appears. That is an invisible interface. Your phone is a boat anchor compared to AR done right.
AR must do everything a phone does now. AR devices will be phones – or at least a seamless extension of them. In turn, Will Wright pointed out that technology is an extension of the human body. If somebody hits your car, you don’t say that “my car was hit”. You say “someone hit me while I was driving”’. The car becomes “me”, an extension of your body. Your phone is an extension and a reflection of you in the same way, but AR is far more intimate and compelling. It is you.
AR must look cool. Or it must be worn by someone that is cool so that you think it is OK to wear it too. We are so shallow. It also needs to be lightweight, as well as cool (as in temperature).
noun: synergism 1.    the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
When AR is really great, and it will be, you are going to put on your AR device in the morning and wear it all day long. It will be like hearing aids or dentures – or glasses. Indeed, normal glasses (and in-the-eye glasses from cataract surgery) augment your vision so that you can see the real world. Without them, you are blind, if not totally, to a debilitating degree. The same thing is true of a light bulb in a closed room. Nothing is visible until you turn the light on. As McLuhan says: “a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence”. Does the room exist without the bulb? Yes, but you could not see it, and would have a great deal of trouble interacting with it. But you never think about technologies like a light switch – they are friction free and have disappeared in a sense, though indeed they redefined what you are at a fundamental level. The digital world already exists – and is as much a part of our existence as the physical, but we are quite blind to it. We see glimpses of it in our offices and labs every once in a while, (at least I get to), and there is no question that the virtual light will soon be turned on. And just like with our glasses and light bulbs, the medium will seem to disappear, but in fact will redefine what we are.
This thing is far stickier than a phone. It is going to be the fusion of man and the Internet. The line between the two is about to be erased. And it is going to be glorious – and terrible.
The Bus or the Bulldozer Though it is rare that you use a computer to think, you never use a phone that way. You are a consumer of information, not a creator. Part of this is due to the phone’s limitations. You simply can’t be truly creative as a human today without fine manipulation. The phone interface is designed around gross manipulation because touch screens don’t allow you to easily specify a touch point – it is a touch area. This means the interaction targets on the phone must be larger to accommodate the gross manipulation that you can do with it. Without fine manipulation, it is very difficult to create, but virtually impossible to edit anything interesting. The vast majority of effort in creating anything interesting is in the editing, re-working, re-thinking. Things that you just can’t do with a phone. This doesn’t mean it is impossible – we are often impressed by some beautiful work that was created completely on a phone. Impressed not just because the creative effort is better – but because it could be created and completed that way at all.
That limitation in creativity is partially due to the inherent limitations of the design of the smart phone. It has a small screen and you have big fingers. But the display itself is small, which means that you don’t really have the room to express yourself if you wanted to. Real artists need room.
What is quite interesting is that this limitation became something of a feature – as far as the phone manufacturers saw it. The phone is not a very good creative device. However, it is an amazing consumer device. Consuming has two parts. Select what to consume – then consume it. We don’t need a particularly fine interface for that. More problematical was Apple Computer’s decision to enshrine this “feature” and to not allow any kind of programming environment on their phones at all. In fact, Scratch – a block programming language designed for children that works great on a phone – was blocked from the app store for many years until recently. This was an attempt to enforce the consumer nature of the device and it succeeded.
Phones are designed around the idea that you are a consumer of information and ideas. You can control where you go, but you can’t go anywhere that the phone hasn’t already anticipated. This is like getting on a bus. If you already know where you want to go, this is a convenient and fast way to travel there.
However, you can’t take the bus to someplace that is new and unexplored. For that, you need a more refined and powerful set of tools. You are better off with a bulldozer, something that is responsive to new ideas and lets you go anywhere you want. There are no barriers, except your imagination.
That is the true promise of AR – assuming it can escape the challenge of gross manipulation versus fine manipulation.
Amplifiers Why is it necessary to use AR and VR as creative platforms? How do we ensure that the human is empowered to extend, explore and share their ideas and their worlds? How do we amplify the properties that define humans as creative tool builders?
First, we can’t really understand how AR should work until we can create and modify the AR system from within it. It must be a creative amplifier. Our creations extend the capabilities of the system which then allows us to create something even better. The problem of AR today is that it is being built from the outside – like a ship in a bottle, with the intent that it can then be launched and won’t sink. It might be beautiful indeed, but you are coming at it from the wrong direction. Instead, we need to launch a raft with just enough capabilities so that we can design a ship as we learn to navigate the ocean. We will design the right kind of ship because it is the one we will be living on. We need to invent the VR and AR interfaces from within it and as we use it. This is not a new idea – it was the foundation of what Doug Engelbart demonstrated 50 years ago, create tools that allow you to create even better tools. Xerox Parc created the modern UI for computers and phones from within Smalltalk. Smalltalk allows the developer to reinvent every aspect of the system, from the foundational operating environment underneath to the actual widgets that the user can manipulate. Almost everything you use on a modern computer or phone was invented at Xerox in this way. I believe it is the only way to create a truly new and powerful platform. Will Wright describes it this way: “We now, with these little micro-worlds, have the ability to basically externalize what is in our imagination and share it with other people. You know, it used to be that you had to have a very rich skill set, like you had to be a fine artist to do that – you know, to paint something in your imagination and then share it with other people. But now with these tools, the creative leverage they give us, average, casual game players have the ability to externalize, create things out of their imagination, share it with other players, and actually have these shared imaginary worlds. And so I think that’s one of the examples of the computer giving creative leverage – a creative amplifier.”
Second, we need a vehicle to amplify our intelligence, both individually and collectively. Humanity is in a race with itself to determine its fate. We may be losing this race. We need to provide the right side with an unfair advantage that it very seriously lacks today. We may not be able to get there from here, at least not directly. Doug Engelbart demonstrated a new starting line in this race 50 years ago. He not only showed many of the foundations of human computer interface that we now take for granted, he also provided us with a new perspective on what the computer could really mean as an extension of a human. This was not an accident, but a pre-planned intentional act to redefine the nature of how the computer and human engage to become something greater than their parts. A synergism that defines the symbiont.
Even more spectacular was how he harnessed the newly empowered symbiont to include other humans, equally empowered with these technologies, so that they could collaborate to explore and create even greater things. His goal wasn’t to merely amplify the intelligence of a human – he intended to amplify the intelligence of humanity. For AR to truly shine, we must also look at it as a fundamentally disruptive event. AR isn’t a better phone, though the first popular versions of it will likely embrace that approach. They will be the first demonstration of what Augmented Reality has in store for us – for better and worse. We need something far more powerful – a tool that allows us to think,  explore, and create new tools that amplify our intelligence even more. Engelbart’s tricycle is a great analogy to the problem. Extending the phone into AR, with its inherent limitations and biases is like improving the capabilities of a tricycle. The new tricycle will be based on user feedback and will be a very compelling product, very stable and safe. It offers an awesome user experience, and is what everyone thinks they want. But that process will never result in a bicycle, a far more powerful product that dramatically multiplies its users speed. This is a disruptive product and requires what Clayton Christensen referred to as “discontinuous” innovation. Apple used to refer to the Macintosh as a Bicycle for the Mind – and indeed the Macintosh provided many of us with an incredible vehicle to construct new realities with. The Mac was NOT a better Apple ][. It was a very new thing. Our challenge is to ensure AR is done right.
Third, we need an intention amplifier. We need a new approach to user interaction in the 3D world that provides us with the free-form gross gestures that we have, but also the fine control that we get with the mouse, another Engelbart invention. The mouse was not an accidental design –Engelbart explored many alternatives for interfacing with the computer. The mouse was significantly better. The mouse amplifies the user’s actions while retaining control. Even on a large, multi-foot display like the one I am using, I can move my mouse from one side of the screen to the other and still be able to place the cursor between two letters to edit this document. The mouse amplified my reach but maintained the necessary fine control.
We have far better sensors than Engelbart had in his day. An equivalent to the mouse is certainly within reach. The body and hand are obvious targets for enhancement, but it is a mistake to simply project the bodies motion into the 3D world. Great user interfaces are invisible. The user thinks about what they want and the necessary actions to accomplish it occur. You don’t think about using a mouse – you think about what you want to be true. The best interfaces for AR will be based upon eye-tracking and voice. Hands, finger motions and gestures will aid that interface in the way meta keys aid the keyboardist, but these will be exceptions.
Fourth, we need a control amplifier. Facebook and Google make money by aggregating large amounts of attention and selling it to the highest bidder. Further, they train, or allow others to train the users to desire certain things. The main goals of machine learning on these platforms is to understand what people want and to then provide it to them. We see an almost real-time morph into these machine learning systems exploiting a user’s weakness to train them in what they might desire. Manipulating human behavior is a game, and Machine Learning systems are extremely good at games. The alternative is that the machine learning systems be harnessed to enable the individual user’s creativity and exploration. It should be a full partner in engaging, constructing and exploring new virtual universes. It needs to become another vehicle for fine manipulation by the user, an even sharper blade for our bulldozer enabling us to drive anywhere we want.
We are in a race between the extraordinary, compelling and addicting augmented realities – and the necessary and powerful augmented human. It is essential that these be in balance or humanity will become a slave to the increasingly virtual world we live in rather than the master of it. Augmented Reality is the place where we will live all our future waking hours. The “real” world as we know it will still be the digital world will co-exist and be mixed-in with it and be just as relevant as a light switch in a dark room is today. The digital world exists – you just can’t see it yet. The Augmented Human is our next step in evolution. We will understand, control, and extend this augmented reality and, in turn, the universe. We are about to turn on the light.

Croquet V embedded in my blog.

Andreas Raab was my best friend.
Andreas loved to challenge me to express and exceed my abilities. In so doing, he forced me to challenge him. We pushed each other up the tallest mountains where, together, we had the honor of viewing the world from a new point of view.
He loved to program. He was the best programmer I have ever known – by a lot. This is not an idle statement – I have known and worked with the best in the world. Andreas was better.
He loved exploring and understanding new systems. He was fearless. He would not only understand how to use the new tool to accomplish his task, he would also figure out how to make it even better for the next person.
Andreas loved to make great things for people to use. He was never content with “good enough”. Every line of code he wrote was an opportunity to teach someone a new idea. Every system he built greatly empowered the person willing to embrace it and it allowed them a new freedom to create and explore.
He loved beer and introduced me to some fantastic brews. Learning to drink from a German is a valuable skill.
He loved to violently explore ideas. We had many loud discussions –often at a bar, where we threw ideas back and forth like rag dolls. Most ideas did not survive. The ones that did were very strong.  He was as intent a listener as he was a proponent, and often succeeded in convincing himself he was wrong. He certainly convinced me he was right more often than not.
He loved food and was as essential a partner in exploring great restaurants as he was in exploring ideas.  We visited Canto do Brasil in San Francisco every weekend we could and always had two (three?) Caiparinhas each and the Feijoada. And of course, the steak at Angus Barn… (yes, he was jealous when we went without him).
He loved language – he was always searching for how to express an idea in English with just the right word or phrase. He loved coding in the same way. He loved exploring the subtleties and power of how ideas could be expressed, communicated and unleashed.
Andreas loved classical music. We carpooled to work every day and he always had the radio on the classical station when he picked me up. We challenged each other on what the piece was, who the composer was, and even who the performers were. It was probably the only thing I was better at than him.
Andreas loved his friends. There were no conditions or requirements. He worked to see the world from their perspective – honoring them by always caring enough to understand them. He also expected them to live up to his high standards of thought, action, caring and love.
Andreas loved Kathleen. He was always a positive person, but he glowed from the moment he met her. He loved her more than anything else in his life. She completed his world and he completed hers.

Tony Nemelka has just been named CEO of Teleplace and I couldn't be more pleased. I have had a number of discussions with him and some of the exceptional people he is bring with him since he started working with the company, and I am really impressed with his vision for the direction for the business and the clear focus he has on customer value. I am very proud that the company has been able to attract someone of Tony's caliber to be the CEO. No question that the company was ready for this next step. Greg Nuyens did an exceptional job positioning the company technically - Teleplace is the best collaboration platform in the world today, by quite a wide margin. Now it is time to leverage that technical advantage into a market advantage as well.

About three months ago, I joined Lockheed Martin STS as their Chief Innovation Officer. I have been wanting to pursue a project that was quite different from the direction that Teleplace has been going, and after about a year of discussion, it was clear that the direction I wanted to go and what Lockheed Martin was looking for fit extremely well.

It is too early to talk about what I will be doing, but if it works the way I think it should, it could have some very big results and may have an impact on everyone someday. I can tell you it is a very different world inside of a big company - there is still a requirement to be entrepreneurial and sell the ideas, but once a big company like this gets behind it, the resources available are simply amazing.

More to come for sure...

I just bought a new phone, and it wasn't an iPhone, but it is still very cool. I have been planning to buy an iPhone as my next communication device - all my friends have one. I am very glad that they no longer feel the urge to demonstrate how cool they are by showing me some stupid picture or new app on their iPhone - except for Frank, of course.

So why didn't I buy an iPhone? Well, it is a bit complicated. My family has five phones with Sprint. I actually had a Rumor, which is a pretty good texting phone, but not much use for anything else. I was reasonably happy with it, though the blue-tooth quality was pretty poor. It was not too useful in California - unless you are married to the governator. Sprint is pretty good for quality of reception, but I always thought the selections of their phones sucked. A few years ago, I decided I needed a Blackberry and tried to upgrade at Sprint. Believe it or not, they would not sell me one. They only sold them to businesses. Morons. I did buy a Blackberry from someone else and carried two phones. I dropped the Blackberry after a while, because I realized I could almost always check my email with my MacBook, even when I was traveling.

So why the new phone? Somehow, I must have either dropped or stepped on my Rumor. I had made two or three phone calls earlier in the day from my office. I put it in my pocket and went downstairs to talk to my wife and while I was talking to her I received another call. I took the phone out and pressed the answer button and then saw that it had a big crack in the center of the screen. Worse, the voice quality on the other end was totally garbled - like some sort of electronica convolution filter. It was basically toast. I needed my phone to work this week, as there are many things going on in my life (that I will be writing about soon) so whether I liked it or not, I had to go visit the Sprint store for a replacement.

When I got there I had a few nice surprises - first the selections of phones was not terrible. In fact it was getting interesting. No iPhone of course - this wasn't AT&T, but they had an Android phone and yes, they finally were offering Blackberries to real people, and a they had the new Palm WebOS-based phones. I was interested in the Google phone, but a friend of mine had just bought one and was trying to take some pictures in the bright sunlight. The screen was unusable. Also it was kind of big and bulky - sort of like what the old Soviet Union might build if they were trying to make an iPhone knock-off.

What really caught my eye was the Palm Pixi. It is the smaller and slightly cheaper brother to the Palm Pre (which had the very strange commercials last year). I like small phones, as I already carry too much hardware in my pockets. The Pixi was actually smaller than my old Rumor (which really wasn't that small) and it was a real smart phone. Better yet, Sprint was offering a hell of a data plan where my family's monthly costs, which did not include data, would actually drop with the new plan which did include it. The phone was $200 with a $100 rebate - including a new two year contract, but now, even that was pro-rated. Sprint is definitely getting aggressive.

So now the review of the Pixi. In a nutshell, it is terrific.

Here is a list of pros followed by cons:

Pros
- Setup was trivial. The guy at the Sprint store did most of the work and I had a working phone with all my contact info when I walked out.
- The phone perfectly integrates with Gmail, which is my main email connection these days. It pulled all of my contact info into the phone and I was immediately reading the most recent emails.
- It supports Google Calendar, which my wife and I share. And it issued calendar alerts. Very nice.
- It is quite small, but the built in thumb-keyboard is quite usable. It took a little getting used to, but it works fine and has a nicer feel than my Blackberry or my earlier RIM device. I do love the size - it is quite thin and feels very nice in my hands.
- Sprint's wireless network performance is great. I was at a Starbuck's with a friend of mine and wanted to show him a video I had posted to YouTube. He tried to access it with his iPhone, but I had it running on the Pixi well before he even had an connection. He never did get it to work, but he was using the AT&T network and not the local Wi-Fi.
- Web browsing works pretty good, given the size of the screen. Certain sites, like Boing Boing are excellent, because they have a mobile version automatically loaded. Amazon was a bit crappy, surprisingly.

Cons
- The text is too small, especially for us old guys.
- The sound volume is not quite loud enough, even with it maxed out.
- When I called my mother, she said the sound quality on her end was echo-y, like I was far away from the phone.
- I tried to read a PDF document using the included Adobe reader app, but it didn't word wrap, so this was basically a lost cause. Seriously - if I zoom into a document using PDF, you really need to provide an option to wrap the text so I don't have to scroll left and right.
- Camera quality is poor. Good enough for a random picture now and then, but it won't replace my Casio Exilim.
- Takes a long time to charge (maybe 4-5 hours?)
- Charge lasts about 3 days with use. Since it was a new phone, I probably did more with it than I normally will in the future, so this probably caused the battery to drain quickly.
- Some apps re-orient based on the orientation of the phone. Others don't.
- It really needs a search app that has instant access.

Overall, this is a great non-Android Google phone. It is really nice how cleanly and easily it interfaces with my Google life. And I love the size. It is really quite elegant. It has only been three days now, so let's see how it holds up over the next few months.

As an aside, I had a rental car last week - a Ford Flex. This included the Microsoft Sync software. I might comment more on this later, but short answer - it was terrible. I actually liked the car (more of an SUV actually), but this software was really opaque. After linking it to my now sadly demised phone via BlueTooth I could not figure out how to get to the phone interface to make a call. I nearly had an accident trying to figure this thing out. I never did figure out how to use the built-in GPS for directions. Luckily I had my Garmin Nuvi with me. Sync is Bad Bad Bad. If anyone from Ford is reading this - I did like the Flex, but will never buy anything with Sync installed.

I just posted the video I made of Virtus Walkthrough. I created this in 1990 with David Easter and Mark Uland. I am actually demonstrating Virtus 4 here. Scott Haynes was responsible for this version, and I think it is the best version of Walkthrough we ever did. It was also, unfortunately the last. The overall design and interaction is almost identical to the original 1990 version, though. This is using a software renderer that I wrote and was greatly enhanced by the team led by Greg Rivera. It uses portals extensively, and though you won't notice it, it does not actually have a z-buffer. The objects are sorted using a kind of BSP thing I did that is extremely fast. I am actually running this on Parallels on an older Macbook, and it feels faster to me than Sketchup 7.1, which I run native. But of course, considering that this had to run in real time on sub-20 mHz 68010 and 68020 machines, this had to be pretty damn fast to work at all.

This is the system I first prototyped the virtual collaboration space in that I showed to Alan Kay. This led to the development of ICE (see previous post), OpenSpace, the Croquet Project, and Teleplace.

Virtus Walkthrough won many awards, including the very first Breakthrough Product of the Year from MacUser Magazine, and the PC Computing Best Drawing Program, where we beat Adobe Photoshop.

Here is the demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYMZzGPSjM

Searching through my digital archives, I found the following walkthough for "The Colony". Not terribly useful anymore, but it will give you an idea of the depth of the game. This walkthrough was written 20 years ago...

"The Colony" Revealed

Copyright © 1989 by David A. Smith


GETTING STARTED

Where am I?
You are on the DAS cruiser on the bridge. You have just crash landed on the colony planet 5-DELTA-5.
Why is everything so dark and nothing seems to be working?
The ships reactor is out; you need to turn on the emergency power.
How do I use the console?
Run into it.
Why does the right button of the bridge console blow up the ship?
That is not its intention.
How do I turn on the emergency power?
Press the left button on the bridge console.
I can't open the airlock.
You must unlock it using the decoder and the console directly to the left of the airlock. Don't forget to press the "E" (Enter) key after entering the code. Unlocking it does not open it. You still need to press the +/- button on the airlock door.
When I go out the second airlock door I die.
Did you close the first door behind you first?
How do you close the inner door once inside the airlock?
Simply turn around and run into the airlock door again (the one you just came through) and press the +/- button.
Yes, I closed the inside airlock door. I still die.
Are you wearing your power spacesuit?
How do I put on my power spacesuit?
Use the power spacesuit installer.
What is that?
That is the strange looking device you see as you come down the stairs. Run into it and set your armor and weapons power levels.




I die when I go into the room on the lower level just to the left of the stairway.
Don't go in that room, it is a holding cell for prisoners (you are a Space Marshall remember?), you were standing on an electrified security grid on the floor.
What's wrong with the spaceship?
The reactor core has been damaged.
How do I fix the reactor?
You need to visit the colony first.

ON THE PLANET SURFACE

What are the pyramid shaped objects all over the planet surface?
These are "natural occurring rock formations".
How many 'bug' creatures are there?
There are an infinite number of creatures on the surface of the planet.
I keep getting killed when I fight them.
Then don't fight them.
They chase me.
You can run faster than they can.
Even if I don't fight the creatures I do not last very long on the planet surface.
See Power Spacesuit.

FINDING THE COLONY

Where is the colony?
It is outside of the ship.
It is underground.
The entrance looks like a large box with a door in it.
It is not far.
You can see both the colony and your spaceship when you are directly between them.
Go north-east from the space ship.

POWER SPACESUIT

I found the power spacesuit installer but I can't get it to work. Nothing happens when I run into it.
The emergency power needs to be on before the installer will work.
Why do I die so quickly, even when I use the heavy armor and weapons?
The power spacesuit drains your energy in proportion to the level you set it at. The heavier your setting the faster the drain. When all of your energy is gone you are dead.
What is the meaning of the power suit scale on the left of the screen?
This indicates the energy levels of you weapons, armor and life force. When the life force level reaches zero you are dead.
What kind of scale does it use?
It is logarithmic. For example, the lowest bar is equal to 1, then next up is 2 or more, then 4 or more, then 8,16,32,...

INSIDE THE COLONY

I found the colony but when I try to open the inside airlock door I died.
See GETTING STARTED.
Once inside the colony, just past the airlock, there is a door that is always blocked. What's on the other side?
You don't need to know yet.
I keep running out of energy, how can I raise my energy levels?
Eat the small "eggs" of the creatures. These are energy pods that will hatch later but when they are in the dormant state your power spacesuit can absorb the energy they contain.
What are these creatures inside the colony?
Search for the Conference Room on level 1. There you will find some interesting information on the different alien types and their capabilities.

EGGS

Where do the "eggs" come from?
From the creatures. They are actually dormant creatures that may "hatch" at any time. Note that most creatures can lay eggs but only of the same type. The queens can lay any type of egg.
What are they good for?
Your power spacesuit can actually absorb the energy they contain, at the same time destroying the creature that would normally be hatching from it. Note that different eggs help your power ratings in different ways, compare the eggs shapes to your power suit display.

REACTORS

How do I fix the reactor on the spaceship?
The reactor core is damaged, it needs to be replaced.
Where can I get a new reactor core?
Somewhere inside the colony.
How do I get to the reactor core?
You need to lower the core from the ceiling. Use the console in front of the reactor.
What are the codes I need to enter at the console to lower the reactor cores?
The code for the ship reactor is inside a desk on the ship.
The code for the colony reactor is inside a desk in the colony.
Where is the code for the colony reactor?
On level 1.
I tried to retrieve the colony reactor core and tote it to the ship. Succeeded admirably. But when I lowered it to the floor prior to switching it with the ship's reactor core, guess what? It disintegrated. Poof! No more colony reactor.
The only place that you can put the reactor core without breaking it is inside a reactor (either one).
Then how do I put the colony reactor core in the ship's reactor?
You need to have already taken out the ship's reactor core!

TELEPORTERS

Where are the teleporters?
On level 4 and in Lab A.
I can not get any of the teleporters to work, what do I need to do?
Keep looking for other teleporters.
I found the teleporters in Lab A but can't move them anywhere to make use of their capabilities.
You need a forklift.
What is the order of the teleporters in Lab A?
1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, and 4 to nowhere!
How are the teleporters going to help me play the game?
If you manage to get them to strategic locations, you will be able to make many effortless trips (such as between your ship and the colony) with the various objects you need to successfully complete the game.
If I'm inside the forklift and try to enter a teleporter, the forklift thinks I want to lift the teleporter.
Try picking up something else (a box is usually handy) with the forklift before entering the teleporter.
If I'm in the forklift and want to pick up a transporter WITHOUT entering it...how is that done?
Teleporters and forklifts work this way:

1. You can enter a teleporter if you are not inside a forklift.
2. If you are in a forklift and you are carrying an object (such as a
box) you will also enter the teleporter.
3. If you are not carrying any objects with the forklift you
will pick up the teleporter with the forklift.

The reason for this is simply that the user interface was much simpler
to build and understand. The alternative was to have the user answer
a dialog about whether he/she wished to enter or lift the teleporter.
I did not want to have a dialog box anywhere in Colony (except for
saving games of course). This was to keep the game as natural as
possible. In this case the forklift is allowed to make the decision
for you.

Similarly, a number of things are the way they are to make the game players life easier. I would have preferred all doors to be opened AND closed by the game player but this gets tedious quickly. So the compromise is the airlock. A number of things are the way they are to make the game players life more miserable but that is the nature of these things.

FORKLIFT

Where is the forklift?
In the colony.
On level 5.
In storage room 5.
What is it good for?
It can carry large objects.
What large objects?
Teleporters, cryogenic chambers, boxes, and reactor cores.
I have trouble getting out of the forklift sometimes.
The forklift will not let you exit if there is an object directly
behind you (something about not allowing two objects to occupy the
same space at the same time). It will also not allow you to exit
into a wall. This may seem slightly random until you start considering
exactly what is around you. Remember this game takes place in 360
degrees. Just because you can't see an object does not mean that it is not there.
I have trouble dropping objects sometimes.
The forklift drops the object in the square you are in. Since only one object can occupy a square, you (and the forklift) get pushed back a square. However if there is something behind you ( wall, post, alien, etc), it appears to drop it but doesn't. You can tell because the forklift thinks it is still carrying the object (which it is) and the object is not sitting in front of you ready to be picked up again.
The forklift can not go upstairs.
That's right.
How do I get the forklift up the stairs to the colony airlock?
There is another way to the airlock that does not use stairs.
Can the forklift go outside?
Yes.
Does the forklift protect me from the creatures shooting?
Not at all, in fact you can not even shoot back while inside!

CRYOGENIC CHAMBERS

How many cryogenic chambers are there?
There are 6 of them.
Where are the cryogenic chambers?
Level 1 - 1
Level 2 - 0
Level 3 - 1
Level 4 - 2
Level 5 - 1
Level 6 - 1
Can you be a little more specific?
The first cryogenic chamber is in the security area on level 1. Be careful of the security grid as you make your way to it. It is in the upper part of the level 1 map.
The second chamber is on level 3. It is actually near the stairs located in the upper right hand corner but you need to go through apartment 33 to get to it. It is through the door behind the dining room table.
The next two chambers are on level 4. One is located inside of Lab 1 at the lower right of the map but you need to be pretty strong to get across all of the security grids that you will encounter on the way. Don't forget that you need to come back the same way. The next one is located in the maze found in the lower left. Just follow the map to be safe, you may make a wrong turn and wind up in the Dave Bowman memorial room.
The next chamber is found on level 5. It is in the very center of the maze in the lower left of the level 5 map. See STRANGE ROOMS AND MAZES for more information. You can get out of it if you do not go into the same room as the cryogenic chamber is in, however, then you can not rescue that child. Something to think about.
The last chamber is found on level 6. It is also in a maze (see the level 6 map) that starts behind a column after you have gone down one level of stairs from level 5.

STRANGE ROOMS AND MAZES

Is there a way out of the David Bowman suite?
Niy,ha,ha,...There is no way out of the David Bowman Suite. Yes, you have fallen into my trap! You will be in there FOREVER!!!!!
(or at least until you load the game you saved right before entering it.....)
I am lost in the Level 5 maze. I feel like I am going around and around in circles.
Yes, you probably are. You can sometimes use the pattern of eggs in each room to map out the maze. Or use boxes and the forklift.
I still can't figure out the Level 5 maze!
This maze is actually a 5X5 set of 3X3 rooms that folds in on itself.
I just got into the room with the cryogenic chamber in the maze on Level 5. I have the forklift to carry the cryogenic chamber but I can't get out of the room! There is no door!
You need to carry a teleporter in with you to teleport out again with the cryogenic chamber.
If you go east five squares from the east elevator on Level 5, you can look east across a vent grid into another area, but I never found an access point to that area. Am I missing something, or is there really no way to get there?
The vent grid area that you referred to is actually a joke. I thought that I would create this really interesting room that no one could ever get to thus creating a great mystery. Turned out that Peter Sills of Mindscape figured out a way to get into that room so I guess the joke is on me.
I can't seem to get into Lab 1 on Level 4...the security grids suck me dry before I can get anywhere.
You need to be pretty strong to get by this. Also try going very quickly through these corridors, the less time you spend on them the better.
On Level 4, just around the corner from the elevators is a door that leads to an infinite corridor that also contains a security grid. Does it lead anywhere?
No, it simply wraps on itself.

QUEENS

What happens when I kill a queen on a level?
Almost all of the creatures on that level revert to eggs. Munch, munch. Keep in mind that once you have done this and have already eaten all the eggs on this level you may wind up starving yourself to death.
I have located the Prime Queen at the reactor, but everytime I get through the security grid and attempt to attack - I'M DEAD.
Although she can be destroyed if you are strong enough, ask yourself, "is that really what I want to do with the next few hours of my life?".

END GAME

I have six frozen kids on my ship. I have a new reactor core. I killed the Prime Queen. What the heck do I do now? I am really lost. I can't get the ship to take off. I'm getting old. Help, please!
Go to the main console on the bridge of the space ship and press the bar on the far right. This will take you into orbit.
How do I blow up the colony without blowing up myself with it?
Use the planet smasher, remember the button on the bridge console that tends to self destruct? Remember it is the button on the right!

MISCELLANEOUS

The aliens get stronger the further you descend into the colony. This is due
to the proximity to both the Prime Queen and the central reactor. Also, the
eggs laid by the creatures get more potent as well.

Medium and Heavy Weapons use more energy than light! On the first couple of levels the energy you are picking up per egg is relatively weak and does not lend a lot of power to the weapons and armor you are carrying. However, as light weapons and armor use significantly less power, a little can go a long way.

It takes less energy to kill the aliens on the higher levels. You can "overkill" the aliens on level 1 for example if you were using heavy weapons. Sort of like using 10 sticks of TNT when one will do.

Don't duke it out with the aliens if you do not have to!!! We won't think you're a coward if you just run for it.

THE STORY OF THE COLONISTS

Many research scientists, military personnel and other professionals (along with their families) lived here. The purpose of the colony was to conduct teleportation research. The risks involved in this sort of pioneering work warranted the isolated location. It was classified just how much progress had been made, but it was known that a prototype teleportation system was in the works. The scientists closest to the project knew, however, just how far they had come. They had successfully transported objects and, yes, people with no adverse effects. It was actually possible to short-cut space and time!
But then unexplainable things started occuring. First it was noticed that rooms and walls in some parts of the colony were warping. Colonists would go out a door on one level and emerge on another. Corridors became labyrinthine. Rooms became exitless. And then strange creatures were sighted. There was speculation that these creatures had been either created by, or emerged from another dimension because of, the teleportation experiments.
It was also quickly realized that these creatures were dangerous. Every possible measure was taken. The experiments were stopped. Colonists tried desperately to fight back. They were largely unsuccessful, but discoveries were made about the nature of the creatures' existence: if they were shot at enough, instead of being killed they reverted to a pure energy form.
Eventually, the colonists realized that it was hopeless. They sent out a distress call, and used the few cryogenic chambers they had to keep the children out of danger. All they could do was pray that somehow, someone would come and discover the horrors that had happened, rescue their precious children and destroy the results of their hasty research.

THE WALKTHROUGH

TRUST ME... it's really an easy game... heh heh ...

Note that the following is to be used only as an example solution to "The Colony". There are many other ways to complete the game!

5-DELTA-5 REPORT
2/11/57

After crash landing on the planet where colony 5-DELTA-5 is located, I slowly regained consciousness. I realized that my reactor core was damaged. So was my memory. I did remember to press the left button on the bridge console (instead of the right, which would have been an instant disaster!). I went downstairs to the power spacesuit installer and, since my energy reserves were low, installed my suit at lowest levels for both weapons and armor.

"So far so good" I thought to myself as I used the security console to the left of the airlock to unlock the airlock control button. I entered the corresponding code from my decoder, pressed the "E" button (for "Enter") and went to the airlock, pressed the now unlocked +/- button and stepped through. I almost forgot to go back to the inside door to close it again, but once that was done I opened the outside airlock door and stepped out onto the planet.

BANG! Something shot at me! I looked around and saw a squat giant bug like creature coming straight at me. It was obvious that this was no friendly hello so I ran away from it as fast as I could go. Since I didn't know where the entrance to the colony was and since I didn't want to get lost, I kept the ship in sight as I circled it, trying to keep away from the creature and all of his friends at the same time.

I finally saw the entrance directly north-east of the ship and ran to it with the creatures close behind. If these things were indicative of what I was to find inside of the colony, I was in real trouble! I got to the colony and found, much to my relief, that the airlock door was open and that the airlock was the same model type as the one on the spaceship.

I went inside, closed the airlock behind me and turning around noticed a large pyramidal shaped creature eyeing me suspiciously. It didn't eye long for it immediately began an attack. Since I was not in any position to run now all I could do was shoot back. After about two or three shots the creature shuddered and actually began to shrink. I went up to it to study the remains a little closer and when I went too near my power spacesuit began to whir and the collapsed creature disappeared! I checked my power levels and noted that all of them had increased, which was useful because I was very near a terminal condition when I found the entrance to the colony. So these creatures, or at least their remains, were useful after all.

Entering the inside airlock door, I noticed a door on the other side of the room. I tried to go through it but there was something on the other side blocking the entrance. Turning around, I noticed the stairs and went down these instead. I looked around this area, saw a hallway leading from the stairs and, double doors leading to an auditorium. I went down the hallway and made a right turn. I found an office at the end of this corridor and inside it in the lower left drawer, found a reactor code of the same type I kept in my desk on the ship. "Great", I thought to myself, "They have the same kind of reactor as I use on my ship, all I have to do is borrow theirs to get things working again!".

I didn't have long to rejoice about my good fortune because another one of the creatures came up behind me and started blasting. This one was just like the previous except that he was kind of upside down. I dispatched with him, and this time decided to examine the little beastie. After a short time the collapsed creature began to shudder again and then it grew back to its full size. Knowing what to expect this time I shot it down to size again and this time stopped to let my suit suck up the remains.

I went out of the office back into the hall and saw yet another creature, looking away from me. This one was diamond shaped. As I watched it I saw it actually lay a miniature carbon copy of itself. "So the collapsed creatures are actually eggs!" I said to myself. Not waiting for an invitation from the creature I started blasting away at it. This time instead of shrinking away it just blew up! I guess that since it was standing on one of its eggs it had no where to go. I ran to the newly laid egg and feasted my suit on it. Things were definitely improving!

Further down the hall I saw a cafeteria on one side and a conference room on the other. Inside the conference room on the table I found a slide projector. Turning it on, I flipped through the slides while the voice over told me all about what I was up against. Looked like there was going to be a tough battle ahead.

I walked back out into the hall and needless to say I ran into even more of the creatures and their eggs. I avoided the creatures because I didn't feel like my suit was up to the fight but the eggs were delicious, thank you. After a little of this, my power spacesuit was beginning to look healthier. I just had to make sure that I ate as many eggs as I could.

I came to the elevators next. I decided to explore this level a little more and build up my strength before I went down there. In my exploration of level one I found a library, a storage area, and a security area. One thing I didn't find was people. Not even any bodies. That is until I came to the first cell in the security area. There inside was a cryogenic chamber. Not only that, but it was occupied. A couple of creatures were hanging around so I took care of them. The cryochamber had a note warning not to open it up so I had to figure out a way to get this thing back to the ship intact. Well, it would have to wait until later.

I went back to the elevators, and took one to level 2. As soon as I stepped off I ran into the biggest eyeball I had ever seen. I thought it might be one of the kid's balloons until it fired at me. I shot back. This one was a little tougher than the creatures on level one. In fact all of the creatures were a bit nastier. I could hardly wait till I got to the bottom level.

This was an apartment level. Nothing really useful that I could find. There weren't any cryochambers here. Just a lot of empty beds and a school. Very depressing. I did run into a queen. Very nasty thing. I nearly lost it all here. A number of other creatures were standing around, looking pretty disinterested in the battle. They are not very smart. When I did kill the queen, she didn't shrink like the others, she just blew up. When she was gone all of the other creatures seemed to lose the will to live also and they collapsed to their egg state. Needless to say, this did wonders for my ego and my power spacesuit.

The next level was another apartment level. Here I found another cryochamber in apartment 33. I could also tell that things were beginning to get weird. I went through a closet door and found myself on another level at one point. The creatures must have had something to do with it.

The next level was the lab area. Here I found a number of labs with partially working teleporters. They didn't look particularly safe so I stayed away from them. I did find another cryochamber in Lab 1, however. This was not easy to get to. There were a lot of security grids to cross. Another cryochamber was in a maze on this level. Well, I would have to come back for them later.

Inside of Lab 2, in the closet of all places, was a corridor that led to tunnel that brought me out to a hidden laboratory. Inside this lab there were four teleporters. These looked like they were ready to go, so I decided to try one out. I entered teleporter number 1 and after closing the door there was a tremendous burst. I opened the door and found myself coming out of teleporter 2. "This may prove to be useful", I said to myself, having expected to come out of teleporter one again.

I went back to level 4 and took the elevator down to level 5. This was the storage area. Inside of storage room 5 was a nice big forklift. This was going to be easy, I thought. Also, while I was on this level, a voice came to me (suspension of disbelief required here) that told me there was yet another child somewhere in a maze on this level and that it was inside a room that had doors into it, but no doors out. Well, since I always listen to voices, I stayed out of the maze, but I did keep the teleporters in mind for use later.

Since this was the lowest level that the elevator went to I took the stairs down to the next level. I found another cryochamber here, inside a maze that was hidden behind a column. I took the stairs down two more levels where I not only found the reactor, but I found a set of security grids protecting it and what looked to be the Prime Queen of the creatures. Not wanting to deal with her just yet I decided to first rescue all of the children.

The first thing I did was to go back to level five and retrieve the forklift out of storage room 5. I took this up the elevator and into Lab 2, down the secret hall into the tunnel and I picked up teleporter number 3. I took it back to where the elevators were, then up to level 1. I carried it to the stairs leading to the airlock and then came to the numbing realization that forklifts can't go up stairs. Well, that was a disappointment. But they must have gotten it into the colony in some way. Then I remembered the blocked door just as you enter the colony from the airlocks. What was on the other side? After a little more exploration I found that inside the storage area on this level was a number of boxes blocking a door. I put down the teleporter, picked up the boxes and moved them out of the way, and then picked the teleporter up again and went out. Lo and behold, I found myself in front of the airlock doors! I simply went through them, turned southwest, and carried the teleporter back to the ship.

Once inside the ship I was being really clever. I put the teleporter down inside of the reactor room and then tried to take the forklift into it instead of lifting it. This did not work. The forklift insisted on trying to carry it. I realized that since that was what it was programmed to do I had no choice but to carry something with me when I went through it. So I went to the ship store and picked up a box with the forklift and, since the forklift could not carry more than one object at a time it was forced to enter the teleporter. After closing the door, I was teleported back to teleporter number 4, just like before. I put down the box , picked up teleporter 2, and carried it back to the elevators on level 4.

Now I was ready to do some serious rescuing. I took the forklift up to security area in level one and picked up the first cryochamber. I carried it down to level 4 and into the teleporter and teleported to the ship. I carried it to the front empty room of the ship. One down and five to go. I picked up another box, and teleported back to the lab. This time I picked up teleporter 4 and carried it back, and placed it beside teleporter 2.

I then went to level 3 and apartment 33 and carried the cryo back down the elevator, through teleporter 2 back to the ship, got another box and was back in a flash. This was almost too easy. But then I realized I was running out of boxes on the ship.

The next cryochamber was in the maze on level 4 so I went in and, carefully avoiding the Dave Bowman memorial room, retrieved it (I'm really good at mazes). Teleporting back to the ship I placed it beside the other two. I was halfway done! I grabbed another box and noted that there was only one left after this. Back to the colony and into Lab 1.
By this time I was pretty strong, so the security plates in this area were not too much of a problem. I also went over them as fast as I could; they can hurt if you stick around. I had to pause every so often to dispatch a creature or two, nothing serious. I got to the lab, retrieved the cryochamber and went back the same way I came, much faster this time since there were no creatures blocking my path. I then teleported back to the ship with cryochamber number 4.

Alas, I was down to my last box. I picked it up and teleported back to the colony. Now I was going to have to think. The next cryochamber was somewhere in the maze on level 5, inside a room with no exit doors. Luckily, I had another teleporter that I could waste on this project so I went back through Lab 2 to the tunnel and the hidden lab and picked up the last teleporter. I carried it back up, then down the elevator to level 5 and into the maze. I quickly found the room with the cryochamber in it, put down the teleporter, picked up the chamber and stepped into teleporter 1 inside the room and was transported to teleporter 2 near the elevators. Then I turned around, got back into teleporter 2 and found myself back on the ship.

Well, there were five of the cryogenic chambers sitting next to each other. Only one left. Unfortunately, I had to walk back to the colony because I didn't have any boxes left. It was a short trip.

Emerging from the airlock, I wasn't paying attention and walked down the stairs while I was inside the forklift. When I woke up, I was down at the bottom of the stairs. I could tell that getting cryochamber number 6 was not going to be fun.

I took the elevator down to level 4, picked up teleporter number 2 and went down the elevator again to level 5. There I took the stairs down to level 6 (yet another fall, nothing damaged though) and went into the maze to recover the sixth and last cryogenic chamber. Once this was done and I had placed it next to the other five on the ship I realized that I had no boxes left to carry into the teleporter and that the outside airlock door was open. I was stuck!

I then remembered that I had to replace the ship's reactor core. I got out of the forklift, went upstairs to my desk and read the code inside the drawer. I went back down to the reactor console and entered the code, being very careful because the wrong code would blow it up. The reactor core dropped down from the ceiling and I got back into the forklift and picked it up and then got back into the teleporter. I found myself back on level 4. I took the elevator back down to where I had left teleporter 2 and put down the spent reactor core. Since these cores are very fragile, when I dropped it, it smashed into a million pieces. No great loss however. I picked up the teleporter and carried it back to the stairs down to level 7 and then to level 8. I then ran across the security grid, dropped the teleporter, jumped out of the forklift and ran smack into the Prime Queen. Boy, was she mad. I didn't feel up to arguing with her so I ran around to the other side of the teleporter. She lost interest in chasing after me. All I had to do was enter the reactor code I found in the desk back on level one. I entered the code, the reactor core dropped, I jumped back into the forklift and amid a flurry of shots from the Queen and her friend, I grabbed the reactor core, and got back into the teleporter. I noticed that the lights went out in the colony when the core was removed, but there wasn't anybody left to miss it.

I closed the teleporter door and the next thing I knew, I was back on the ship. I placed the new core into the reactor. Got out of the forklift, entered the reactor code to lift the core back inside and went upstairs.

All systems were "GO" when I got back to my console. I pulled up the accelerator and the next thing I saw was the planet shrinking under me as I went into orbit. I looked down at the innocent sphere which I was about to crush the life out of and said "No matter where you go, there you are." I smiled as I pressed the planet smasher button and sat back to watch one of the best fireworks displays this side of the galaxy. The only thing left to do was to collect my medals.

SPACE MARSHALL ACADEMY ENTRANCE EXAM

What happens when you set the date to 12/25?
How many queens are there inside the Colony?
Where do you go when you lift teleporter 3 with the lifter and enter teleporter 2?
What is the voice saying in the slide shows (Only on Macintosh version)? (Hint: .sdrawkcab s'tI)
What year does the adventure take place? Bonus: what is its significance?
Where are the chattering teeth?
What topological shape is the planet?
Assuming that at your slowest speed each step is a distance of 1 meter what is the radius of the planet?
Where do the doors in the room on the other side of the big pit on level 5 lead?
What happens when you hold down both the mouse button and the space bar when you are in the middle of a fight?
If you don't have the will or the energy to fight a creature, but it is blocking your path, how can you get by it?
How many movies can you name that influenced some aspect of the design of "The Colony"?

Brandon Boyer at Boing Boing Offworld was kind enough to post a link to the Colony videos I made. You can see it here:

A Look Back At the Colony

ICE stands for Interactive Collaboration Environment. This is the real proto-Croquet architecture I built at Virtus. The ideas were strongly influenced by Apple's OpenDoc architecture and conversations with Alan Kay. There were two versions of this, one with some really neat recursive drag and drop capabilities. This system was collaborative from the start, including voice and video. The "avatars" were flying TVs with video images of the other users on them. The video was from some special cards that are long gone, so I could not show that in this demo. Once again, thanks to David Easter for providing the machine I used to record this demo. David also designed much of the component architecture that we built here. The second video is in some ways even more interesting than the first. We actually made the entire ICE system itself a component which meant that we could drag and drop ICE into a 3D window in the space. Early portals!

Enjoy it.

ICE Version 1



ICE Version 2

I finally got around to posting the videos I made of The Colony. I had to borrow an old Macintosh from David Easter (who also did the ports to the PC and the Amiga) to make these, and I used a video camera to record them. This demonstrates the game, and I talk a bit about the technology behind it and why I designed the game play the way I did. Let me know what you think. I will also be posting some videos of Virtus ICE (Interactive Collaboration Environment). This was where the ideas for what became Croquet and then Qwaq Forums began.

The Colony videos are in two parts and you can see them here.

Part 1:


Part 2:

We were in the Wall Street Journal - with a picture! Check it out here:

Virtual World Gets Another Life

It includes an image of the new "Business Avatars" which have not been release yet, but look wonderful.

I have been spending a large amount of time talking to people about interoperability in virtual worlds. One problem is defining what it means - and why it is important. From what I can tell, the main thing people are looking for is a way to easily traverse from one virtual world to another. It would be great to be able to jump through a portal from Second Life into Qwaq and back. We already support URLs as links between Qwaq spaces. Adding a Second Life island would be a bit tricky, but I think it could be done.

There is also mention of having one's avatar go along for the ride, but it turns out that this is not that important, and may not even be a good idea. One way to think about it is people already have multiple identities online. I have a work email address, personal email, and a number of random older email addresses that I still get mail from. I don't like mixing them, and I have different expectations for the kind of mail I get from them, and people have different expectations from me depending on whether it is a work or personal email. That doesn't even begin to address the difference in security requirements.

Avatars are context specific artifacts. My avatar in World of Warcraft makes no sense in my business world. An obfuscated name model like Second Life makes no sense in business either - good business practice is built upon a strong trust relationship. If I don't even know who you are I can't do business with you.

On the other hand, if you like how your avatar looks in world A, it would be nice to have a similar version in world B. I like having the same name for my email addresses at gmail and at Qwaq, even if my role in each is different.

Andreas Raab wrote:

In its ongoing commitment to Open Source, Qwaq has decided to release
the first multi-core capable Croquet VM under the MIT license.

Hydra VM is a virtual machine capable of running multiple Croquet images
side-by-side, therefore being able to effectively utilize multi-core
CPUs. Hydra VM is still in an early phase of development, but given the
(very successful) early results, Qwaq has decided to make it available
to general public in the hope that other people will help Igor to make
further progress in developing Hydra VM.

The offical release is available here:

http://www.qwaq.com/HydraVM


and contains the following files:

* HydraVM-bin.zip - A prebuilt Windows version of Hydra VM.
* HydraVM-src.zip - The (C) source tree for building Hydra VM.
* HydraVM-pkg.zip - The (Squeak) packages needed to build Hydra VM.

Mark McCahill and I have been discussing the top priorities for Croquet moving forward. Here is the list of the top six things that we will be doing for 2008. The main theme is interoperability. This is interoperability at many levels. First, ensuring Qwaq Forums and Open Croquet worlds are interoperable. Looking beyond that is allowing Croquet worlds and avatars to interoperate with other platforms. This will be a large effort, but many of the technical hurdles have already been jumped.


- XML space description: a common space description file format in XML to allow the open source and QWAQ clients to read stored copies of each other's worlds.

Minimizing the size of objects being replicated is important so that spaces may be saved compactly and new user joining the replicated space can do so quickly.

In practice this means meshes and textures should be referred to by name in the replicated space, and fetched by each client
independently of joining the space. By fetching these large objects independently of the replicated space, clients can maintain locally cached copies which speeds joining the space. An XML description of the space also simplifies programatically generating space descriptions, and aids in integration with various search engine technologies.

Moreover, an XML-based space description also allows for the possibility of a croquet browser written in another language or based on a different code base. However, this implies changes to the rendering engine since we would be moving textures/mesh definitions outside the replicated space. QWAQ's forums have shown that this approach has many virtues. Ultimately we might want to use an extended version of Collada - but the first step would be to align the Open source and QWAQ code bases so we can read each other's world definitions.


- robust Jabber client: SSL TLS support ( OpenSSL plugin?)

This work can happen in the open source arena and is relatively independent of changes to space description formats. The current Jabber client does not support SSL transport level security and needs to - since most Jabber servers require SSL TLS. Supporting an open standard IM/Chat is a key for interoperability with the chat world, and ideally would allow cross world chat with other environments (such as Second Life) should those worlds decide to do the right thing and support a standards based chat protocol for inter world chatting. We also need this work so that we can advertise presence outside Croquet using an open standards-base approach.


- message router/timestamper: optional message router/timestamper as an Apache plugin?

The microserver is a message router/timestamper for sites that want a standalone message router to augment the croquet client built-in router. We can leverage the support that the apache server codebase has by providing an option to externalize the message router function.

This also opens the possibility of simplifying access control/authentication integration with existing enterprise AuthN/AuthZ
systems. By creating a microserver that plays in the apache space we can leverage existing Apache web server authentication/access control modules.


- plugin API for extending space definitions: various browsers will extend functionality of spaces by adding new features, we need a definition for how this happens

We expect that various browsers will extend functionality of spaces by adding new features. We need a standard way to describe these plugins that allows less well endowed clients to at least display a placeholder for content they cannot render and point to how to get the required extension. This is analogous to plugins for web pages.

Note that these plugins may affect both the replicated space -and- the non-replicated inside-the-helmet user interface of a croquet client.


- scripting for user-defined behaviors: Javascript, Lua, panels, roll-your-own, and all that jazz

If we have a common XML format for describing spaces we have half of what we need. The other half is a common way of describing user-created behaviors, so a scripting language - like lua or javascript - would allow for actions to be stored along with models and textures. This implies that browsers will all need to support the scripting language.


- avatar definitions: enabling Akbar 'n Jef's Avatar Hut

Users of social spaces care a lot about their representation in-world
- we need to converge on avatar standards so that each implementation of croquet is not re-inventing this particular wheel. That, and a good babyfur avatar should be a lifetime investment.

I am sure everyone has their own opinion about scripting inside of Croquet. Here are mine:

- The scripting we use should be a popular language. Javascript is the obvious choice. Lua gets high marks for coolness, but most people have never even heard of it. It would be great to include any language, but getting the first one to work is a big enough project.
- It needs to work INSIDE of the Island. That is, it should offer the exact same guarantees of determinism that Croquet Islands provide.
- It must utilize the same numerics package that we have added to Squeak/Croquet. (Otherwise the previous will fail.)
- It must be enhanced to support #future messages directly. You MUST NOT loop to simulate in Croquet. Bad bad bad.
- The interface for editing the scripting language must be INSIDE of the Island. In other words - extreme programming on steroids! Scripting is a form of communication. When we came up with the idea for Croquet the intent was not to have a virtual mall and hang out. It is intended to be a high bandwidth communication medium. This includes the ability to dynamically express a simulation as part of the conversation! Hence the expression itself is a part of the communication. The editing is part of the argument between the participants.

This is probably more important to me than others, but until this is available, it ain't Croquet.

Qwaq and Intel just announced that we will be collaborating to bring Mirimar technologies that were developed at Intel to market. This is exciting for a number of reasons. Mirimar is a beautiful and seamless interface with the users desktop, which will make Qwaq Forums even more of a compelling experience. And of course we get the opportunity to work directly with Intel and in particular with John David Miller, one of the principals behind Mirimar to develop and integrate this technology. JDM is definitely one of us - and we have had a lot of fun working with and learning from him over the last year. It will be fun to roll this product out the door.

Press release here:
Intel-Qwaq Press Release

Official video of Justin Rattner's keynote including a guest appearance by Greg Nuyens. This seems to require IE and a PC:
Intel Developer Forum Webcasts

This is just the video part - no slides, but seems to work everywhere:
Intel Developer Forum Video

I have been spending a great deal of my time lately thinking about scripting issues. Most people are a bit wary of diving into Smalltalk to get things done. Of course, it is really a marvelous scripting language in many ways, but people tend to find it a bit difficult. I think the reason for this is the same reason Lisp is a bit difficult. Both Smalltalk and Lisp have extremely regular syntax structure. In Smalltalk, even the traditional control structures (if/then, while, for) are just normal object messages that look the same as any other object messages. Most other languages have "exceptional" syntax, in that they have a number of reserved key words, and often have specific non-regular syntax to support these "exceptions". This makes it easier to visually parse, as most developers also tend to format their code around this non-regular syntax. This is especially useful to new programmers, because they can use this as a way to understand the code they are looking at.

Smalltalk and Lisp programmer usually format their code in a way to hilight the flow of control as well, but since every line of code starts with an actual object followed by a message, even this is still harder to immediately recognize.

Scratch is beautiful visual scripting language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT where they have moved very strongly in the direction of hilighting these very same control structures by using multiple shaped and colored tiles. What is nice about this is it makes it very easy to understand the structure of a program at a glance, and the program itself is simply "assembled" like you might put Lego blocks together. Interestingly, Scratch is built on top of Squeak - a version of Smalltalk.

We have been looking at a number of scripting languages over the past year, and have even integrated Python directly into Qwaq Forums. We are also looking very closely at Javascript and Lua. In particular, I love Lua, as it really gives me a lot of the capabilities I miss in Smalltalk - functions are first class objects and it has full closure support. This allows for some very interesting capabilities in code. I have been saying that I was thinking about building Wicket in Python in the past, but I believe Lua would be a much better choice.

A draft of the Croquet Road Map is now available here:
Go here: Croquet Road Map.

There are three critical items: Island Classes, Two Dimension Infrastructure, and Documentation. These are the essential elements of the next big Croquet release, which I will discuss a bit later.

The first item probably needs some elaboration. Island Classes are classes that are part of the replicated Island's definition. They can be edited like any other class, but only exist inside of a particular Island. The code can be reused only by copying the classes between Islands. This goes beyond a uni-class framework, turning Islands into complete encapsulated development environments. This may raise more questions than it answers, but it is a critical aspect of what we were after when we created Croquet - the ability to share even complex simulations between users in a protected space.

I participated in a panel at the Spring Internet2 members meeting and a video of it is available online. For those of you wanting to get a demo of Qwaq Forums - check it out. Beware, there is about 3-5 minutes of nothing happening at the beginning of the video. Don't give up. I am the first speaker, but it is well worth watching Sandra Kearney at IBM and Robert Gehorsam of Forterra Systems and the excellent questions at the end of our short presentations.

Go here: Internet2 VR Panel

Click here to show your support for Alan.