January 16, 2007
The Australian Open in Second Life - WOW!!!
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Today I had the very real and amazing privilege of being shown around the Rod Laver Arena that IBM built in Second Life.
To say it’s impressive is a massive understatement.
Having been invited by Brad Kasell who is Program Manager, Emerging Technologies (Asia-Pacific), IBM Software Group and the ‘big cheese’ behind it all, I was escorted around and shown the cool tricks and tips by the three developers on the project — ‘Maximus’ (Maxx Anderson; predominantly graphic work) ‘Gizzy’ (Kelly Daly; predominantly building work) and ‘Pipe’ (Chris Yeoh; predominantly scripting) (their Second Life/real names).
Due to the massive heat in Adelaide today, just after I had left the island, before I had a chance to save our chat session, the power failed (too many airconditioners on in Adelaide, I guess) so I lost much of the detail they provided me with. 
However, what I took away with me was more than enough to realise that a colossal undertaking had been successfully achieved.
Built to model the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, home of the annual Australian Open tennis tournament and that is currently running, the Second Life version is amazingly accurate. No, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles — that would slow everything down and increase lag times. But the major features are there, including centre court with a really nifty feature — you can open and close the roof on command. There’s also the Margaret Court Arena and the corporate marquee area, the cafe, the shop and more… all just like being there.
But if that wasn’t enough to impress you, then how’s this:
The entire design and build, including really nifty coding (more on that in a moment), took just three weeks. Three weeks!
Yes, as the team admit, they got used to seeing the sun rise from all-night coding sessions. But the team had a maximum of three month’s experience of building in Second Life before they started on this project.
That is amazing!
Coding
The coding that they wrote is stunning — no other word for it.
The match you see on the courts is just one rally behind the real thing. The scoreboards are real-time, showing the speed of the serve, time played and everything, exactly as it is in real life.
Pipe also created an object where, by clicking on it, you can actually take a player’s perspective, watch the ball come whizzing at you, move over the court to return it, and so on. Truly phenomenal coding.
But Pipe is by no means the only ‘hero’ of this project — all four team members are. Each did a bit of ‘everything’ to make sure it all came together — designing, graphics work, coding, building. Working from photos and a brief visit to the outside of the Arena, they created a living, breathing masterpiece. And you know how sometimes the ‘workers’ end up resenting their Manager because the manager takes all the credit? Not so in this case: the team adore Brad, and Brad took extensive pains to ensure that I understood that it was Pipe, Gizzy and Maximus who were the master craftsmen and women.
When you first get to the Arena you get the opportunity to pick up a free tennis racquet and a tournament t-shirt for your avatar, as well as purchase some real world ’stuff’ in your browser — a real t-shirt and some specially-branded tennis balls. Which is all well and good, but not the best stuff… 
The best stuff is the free HUD (Heads-Up Display) that you can collect. Once you drag it from your inventory to your avatar it sits top-right of your screen, keeping you abreast of the scores of every game that is currently being played, plus the programmed times of the next games, and so on.
Now, THAT’S cool!
There’s also a little animated ‘tennis ball’ creature you can pick up that follows you everywhere you go. Probably one of those ‘late night/early morning’ cool ideas that unfortunately didn’t quite come off. But that would be the only thing that didn’t delight and amaze me.
After you enter the turnstiles you can head either for the Margaret Court Arena or Centre Court. And it is in Centre Court that the technology starts to really shine…
That’s where you get to see the match from a player’s perspective, move about and see the game from various vantage points in the stands, the sidelines, and so on. Open and close the massive roof, watch the serve speed and other stats displays update in real time.
Very impressive technology!
And what I am especially grateful for was the opportunity to discuss the project with the folks who actually understand this technology.
With Kelly and Chris in Canberra, Brad in Melbourne, Maximus in Raleigh, NC (USA) and a visiting German IBMer all of us engaged in some great dialogue about what this signifies for both Second Life and business in general.
For example, it will soon be ‘expected’ that corporate presences in SL will offer real-world merchandise that you order in-world and pick up outside of Second Life. Dell do it, as does American Apparel; soon everyone will have to do it. 
The ability to stream event data — the zeros and ones of massive number-crunching machines — and turn it into moving 3D images is currently only within the $$ and technical grasp of the major corporate, but as broadband speeds increase and costs of entry decrease, that ability will start moving down the food chain to SMEs (Small-Medium sized Enterprises) and the cashed-up startup/micro company.
Now that Second Life have opened up some of its coding to the OpenSource community we can expect the development of new technologies and tools with which to enrich the user experience. Once Linden Lab open up their servers to the OpenSource community expect to see cool things like these:
- freely jumping from virtual community to virtual community, taking your virtual bank account with you
- leave Second Life, head over to another community, purchase some goodies, then return with those goodies to your Second Life home (even become an ‘international’ wholesaler — finding ‘cool’ and marketable items in other communities and bring them to Second Life to market and sell)
- freely jumping into your Second Life home, sitting down at your Second Life computer screen and engaging in real time with your bank and finance company
- whilst sitting at your computer screen send emails from within Second Life to external agencies — and receive replies in return
- 24/7 customer service reps present with which to interact
- sub-communities becoming their own enclaves — such as my much-touted ‘Second Business Life’ (no silly furry avatars; no tails; your avatar uses your real name should you so choose; transfer of funds, documents, goods and services all from within the one area, much like a 3D wiki)
Now, Tennis Australia need to sign off on the project before the general (SL) public can enter the place. At the moment entry is strictly by invitation only, and once you have visited you are ‘bounced out’ of the access group so you can’t sneak back in later.
So the chances of you getting in to have a gander are exceedingly remote unless you are either a journalist or one of IBM’s key clients — which makes me doubly, nay TRIPLY flattered to have been invited.
So in the meantime feel free to click on any of the images you see here and they will open up much larger.
For a long time ‘Big Blue’ has had a stuffy, ‘old-fashioned blue suit, white shirt and dull tie’ reputation. It is my fervent hope that the world now realises that there are parts of Big Blue that are very ‘of this brave new world’.
I for one can now no longer perceive of them as a bunch of stuffy ’stiff shirts’. For one thing, Kelly has a very young and attractive avatar, and anyone who can code their avatar to pirouette with such grace and flair when she lands after a spot of flying, let alone code and build a monster project of this size with her colleagues, plus deal with real-time data and turn it into something that makes ’sense’, is clearly someone to be reckoned with. Kelly, Chris and Maxx clearly know where their towels are.
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6 Responses to “The Australian Open in Second Life - WOW!!!”
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January 16th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Thanks Lee - sounds like you enjoyed it
Cheers, Brad
January 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Damned astonishing!
…and, you must be a Really BIG Shot to get a tour like that! Guess they listen to/watch your podcast(s), and recognize Quality when they see it.
Love & Peace, Clarence
June 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am
[...] Back in January of this year (it feels like ages ago!) I was given a fantastic sneak preview of what IBM had been up to when they allowed me to visit their Australian Open site. [...]
June 20th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
[...] Back in January of this year (it feels like ages ago!) I was given a fantastic sneak preview of what IBM had been up to when they allowed me to visit their Australian Open site. [...]
September 12th, 2007 at 8:31 am
[...] from IBM to Microsoft? Who is Brad Kasell? He was the brains behind the wonderful and wondrous Australian Open Second Life creation. Brad and his team pushed the Second Life technology to the limit to bring the tennis to [...]
September 12th, 2007 at 8:32 am
[...] from IBM to Microsoft? Who is Brad Kasell? He was the brains behind the wonderful and wondrous Australian Open Second Life creation. Brad and his team pushed the Second Life technology to the limit to bring the tennis to [...]