Ideas

A cool idea, but there are some serious problems to over come and address.

1) Cost: you are looking at between $250,000 - $3,000,000 to get a prototype and/or beta up and running. So that is a serious problem to address. For example, you could use Hero Engine, a turn key MMO environment solution, it has a base price of around $1.5 million dollars. That is JUST for the tools.

2) Copyright: a lot of the works in a museum are copyrighted or owned, and you can not use them without permission.

3) Complexity: a 3D massively multiuser virtual world is a very complicated thing to build, would require an insane effort to crowd source, and there are some serious layers of complexity in the software/hardware architecture.

Is there a way you could strip the idea down to something simpler?

Daraddishman sais it all, not to mention the fact that you need to make a lot of money to get back your investment

Not entirely true and I think it was commented following the wrong information and here is why:

1.- No, the Hero engine is not the only engine available, there is the "ogre" engine and the "multiverse" engine (along with many others), both completely free and capable of up to date competitive graphics.
From these, the Multiverse's license specifies that they perceive a 10% of the income produced by the game with no upfront cost which is good in my oppinion.
And they host the world in their own servers, so that eases quite a huge amount of the initial resources, they have another license that lets you host the world in your own servers and can be bought later on so you can control everything.

There are many other free engines like the ones used in games like flyff, rappelz, last chaos, etc. So its wrong to assume that the tools alone are going to be up to 3 millions when its not true, if that where the case today there wouldn’t exist the huge amount of free to play mmorpg games and virtual business presentations.

2.- There is so much educational material not owned by museums, one example would be the dinosaurs, that is not owned by a museum, they might own the skeletons but not the essence of the creatures, same happen with extinct and soon to be animals, or insects and plants.
There could be a physics museum with practical demonstrations (gravity, friction, etc) not owned by museums either, there could also be exhibits about the principles of mechanics and easy experiments that can be done at home by young people..... not owned by museums.

A space museum doesn’t have to revolve around the Nasa since they don’t own the planets and everything in the galaxy; but since this is intended for free educational purposes we can contact Nasa and/or any museums and we might be able to have support from them, its not a good idea to throw this option away so lightly.

3.-Of course the idea is to build the world progressively starting small (like every real world business), not meant to cram an entire universe of knowledge at once, that would not only be absurd but insane to do because it’ll become a never ending task because of the huge amount of educational material.

Having some experience as a 3D animator, character modeler and building maps for multiplayer game use, I don’t think building a virtual world to be an insane amount of effort.
I understand that some people who have not met the medium might feel its such an extraordinary task.
Maybe if there where the need to build an engine from scratch i could agree with you, but as I said in response to number 1, there are free engines already available.

I think the idea was as simple as it could get since the most problematic aspect of game engines is balancing the power of the player vs other players (PVP) and the monsters it has to kill (PVE), also what items can they get after they kill a monster, the experience gained, levelling up, skills, the monster’s Artificial Intelligence, quests, inventory weight, weapon damage, momentary skill atributes, miss and hit ratio, etc., etc., etc., etc.

But all of that isn’t needed for this particular idea since there are no monsters to kill, no weapons, no levelling characters, no player vs player battles, no AI, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the only way to go was Hero Engine.

Ogre itself has no physics, networking, community management, etc. I've used it, and would suggest staying away from it as a choice for a massive-multiuser environment like you are describing, unless you want to write a lot of code. Networking is particularly weak with Ogre. It can be pretty painful. That being said, you probably don't need the robustness of something like Hero Engine of Bigworld, I was just using them as an example.

I have not had a chance to tear appart Multiverse yet, but I am wary of their 10% revshare, that can make the difference between a marginally profitable niche and bankruptcy. What you really need to take a look at isn't the game engine, but the networking stack and the whole package. To be honest, game engines are the easy part, there are dozens of cheap to free options, but the networking stack and syncronization for an MMO is ghastly.

Based on the description you have here, and the scale you seem to be talking about, you are going to need some pretty robust software. Whether you are pulling a team together to build it, or finding a turn-key solution, you are going to have some hefty costs. A home-brew or built out Ogre system is going to cost you on the low end of the price range I mentioned, $250k.

In terms of how free-to-play MMOs work, it really depends on how you are defining your scope. For instance, a web based MMO community like NeoPets makes money on advertising and merch. Something like Puzzle Pirates, a free to play, pay for stuff system, makes money on selling virtual goods and services. There are also options for monetization through advertizing in the game/world itself. It's an area I have a lot of research on, and I'd be happy to share it in a more indepth manner. I've gone through one failed startup that tried to build an MMO community, so I know a lot of the costs, problems, and hidden traps.

PM me and I'll give you a brain dump if you like, I'm coming at this from a project management and administration side, not just the art asset and code side. Maybe we can hook up and share some info. I know how hard it is to cram a game or virtual world concept into the 1000 words they give you here.

:)

I think virtual museums and learning tools are the bee's knees, and would love to help out any way I can.

Thank you very much for the information.

I’ve been considering creating the virtual world as a "single player" experience rather than online, it will loose the interaction with other people around the world, but it’ll ease the whole server and management side.

Well if you are looking for single player or minorly multiplayer ( up to 32 people in one instance ) check out Unity 3D. It is a nice all around casual game dev environment.

Thanks, im going to try the trial of unity to see if it suits my needs, i was trying Reality Factory, but the engine is a bit too old.

if you know of another program with ease of scripting let me know ^^

Its funny, while i was reading the forums of unity i found this topic:
http://forum.unity3d...iewtopic.php?t=11240

Its about the Nasa's interest in a mmo game for educational purposes.

Excellent idea. Its funny I was thinking, wouldn't be great if you could virtually visit a national park or a museum and actually believe you are at YellowStone or the Smithsonian. In fact, an idea I plan on submitting. If you go to recent posts, you will see the heading on the right that says "A new idea before I submit it", which is mine and I mentioned in my pitch about Creating a 3D atmosphere where players can virtually visit our national parks and museums and make it feel as if they are actually there.

I thought of something like this to incorporate into sec life, one where you can actually interact with Einstein or interact with George washington, or Thomas Jefferson or any of the greats kind of like that movie a long time ago Bill and Teds excellent adventure. Here you are bill and ted in second life.

Bill and Teds second life adventure!

Headofideas - or the Grand Canyon? ;)

the moon!!!

I'd like to explore the moon, from the street level! then mars!

ok, with MMORPG you have a lot of resources dedicated to interaction between the visitors (players) to the site.

1. To visit a museum, you don't need to interact with visitors, in fact you want them to be "out of the way" when you look at the exhibits.

2. The only 'people' that you want to interact with would be staff at the exhibits. You may be able to send a message to other visitors by clicking on them, and typing something, but this is quite trivial from a coding point of view. In fact you'd probably interact with the "staff" the same way.

3. You will never go on quests or collect inventory items. You may collect 'links' as brochures, but this again is trivial compared to the stuff you don't have to do.

4. You won't need to run, jump, spin, duck, wield items or participate in combat.
Forwards and turn only requires a normal mouse, or three keys to operate.

These reduce your coding requirements (costs and lead time) by heaps.

If you sell the service to a museum, rather than trying to own the copyright yourself, then there is no conflict of interest if you sell the service to other museums. They could still have 'pay to view' exhibits, and free exhibits, just put them online as well as in the building.

Most museums have heaps more stuff than they have room to display, this way the virtual museum could be 50 times larger than the real building, and show off everything.

and art galleries? use low-ish resolution pictures to stop serious copyright infringement... The louvre has a virtual tour, but it's not 3D, so not too immersive.

Best of luck with this.

gzep, thanks, all very valid points.
I thought of it a bit as "multiiplayer" experience since people can chat with others inside the world, though thinking about it it could turn into a chatting/meeting media than originally intended.
But beeing all alone doesnt feel interesting and might become boring, but this can be aliviated by having a few npc's walking around freelly.

BTW, ive been testing engines, found one called Kaneva but it seems too slow and a bit cumbersome to set, and i found Torque which seems to be quite easyer for building a virtual world.

Im going to see if i can build something in the demo version of torque.

Hard bunch to pitch too, yet gave you good info, set me back for more.
Good Idiea!

As for sculptures and 3d models this has been done in part a lot of museums current have a few of there collection online in 3d. There also have been DVD 3d works made more deliberately for the general public like the discovery channel. Hours of 3d footage with guided audio meant for tv broadcast.
Example:
http://shopping.disc...?rel_productId=64824
http://shopping.disc...l?jzid=40588004-66-0

"Having some experience as a 3D animator, character modeler and building maps for multiplayer game use, I don’t think building a virtual world to be an insane amount of effort."
Easier, said then done. So, build a prototype 3d world it would effectively prove your point. Provide a bare one museum room example and as your proof of concept. Have a room a dinosaur, some sculptures and some art.

This will effectively provide a time scale of how long it will take. As well as provide a method to test your concepts out on all of the other levels. Prototyping is key.

6 Stars on this one. I started writing a lot about this one and then realized I was just repeating others' comments. My primary advice is definitely don't limit it to museums and natural history: natural wonders, man-made wonders (the Taj Mahal), astronomical wonders, molecular level wonders. Adding interactive, gaming layers as options would be great options. A class of kids could be given a scavenger hunt game by their teacher.

Ownership isn't much of a problem, as you point out.

Mostly, I just want to say, if you build it, I will come.

Are you planning to set some authority behind the information you provide (and if so, how?) or are you going to crowdsource content production and aim for a more Wikipedia-like approach? The former widens the applications and usefulness of the finished project but the latter might be the only way to go for cost and timescale reasons.

Hmm... could you allow companies etc to sponsor their own area of the museum, thereby generating content and income at the same time? You'd have to choose your sponsors carefully and limit the number in order to avoid cluttering the museum space with rubbish, but it might be possible.

1. I seriously worried by how a few of you guys some how believe this is going to be a slice of cake. Have you ever seen production costs and time it takes to make high poly models especially without any 3d scans. As far as the sculptures and objects I am so not sold.
2. Where is the money. How much do you honestly think users will much pay for this on a subscription basis.
3. The digital format viewed on a computer screen is a poor format choice over the other mediums at hand.
4. Why not go to museums in the vertual world when real ones are so much better and are not all that expensive.

Prior work:
http://www.lastplace.com/
http://3dmuseum.geology.ucdavis.edu/

a very noble idea... you could source this into different areas... trade shows, stores... some way easier to monitise it... working with governments takes for ever.

landsky:
Good ideas but i think it’ll become a bit too much and way complicated as a starting point, the idea about a museum is not meant only as a structure, it could be like a 3D virtual book covering from space to microbiology, but being able to look at the objects or themes the same way you would in a 3D game. (Something like exhibits)

PhilipH:
First there should be a definition of what should the exhibits be about, for example it could start with an exhibit about the solar system.
The knowledge is found on books and through the internet, but cramming all that information wouldn’t be quite the right way, so there should be people being able to write short resumed information on each topic. Using Wikipedia alone wouldn’t be quite right for both the project and for the people who wrote the articles, and writing a whole lot of information can bore, so it should have to be written in an interesting fashion.

Sponsors; depends on what the sponsor wants but anything is possible since the virtual world is quite limitless in space, if the sponsor has its own team of people to help build their exhibit all the better.

Kevin_Cox:
I must clarify, one thing is a three dimensional virtual world where you can explore at your own pace and another is watching a video of 3D creatures where you have no control at all. The problem with the 3D scanned data you can find on museum's websites doesn’t give you a feel about the size of the real object and they consist of photographs you rotate and are quite small.

1.- its not a slice of cake, but it isn’t quantum mechanics either. Either way you really can’t use 3D scan data in a virtual world because they consist of millions of polygons. Instead a modeler can create models quite accurate in less time than it takes to scan the real object and build it totally suitable for a virtual world with only a few hundred or a couple of thousands of polygons instead, besides the texture in games and virtual worlds do almost all the illusion of detail.

2.- If i had the money i would be producing it with the proper team already.
And it was specified in the beginning that it should be free of cost for the end users and could be supported trough sponsorship from companies, museums or institutions.

3.- apparently you have never seen a virtual world before, be it a mmorpg or a 3D meeting place like second life. It opens quite a great possibility of interaction that books, videos and museums don’t have.

4.-it is quite difficult for everyone to just go to a museum and is even worst if its not in your own country. In any case, if you want to know about egipt you just can’t go to egipt... can you?, even less if you want to see it now and/or every other day or week, not once a couple or more years later.
Also a virtual world can be used to show about things you cant just see in museums or it would take an enormous amount of time and money to physically build that a museum just wont ever do and in a virtual world is as easy as to build the model in 3D.

I’m currently trying game engines and I’m also building a test exhibit in my free time, though it has taken me more time doing engine research and testing than actually building something. The exhibit is already walkable but I might have something to show in about a month if my daily job and side projects allow it.

@ "Instead a modeler can create models quite accurate in less time than it takes to scan the real object and build it totally suitable for a virtual world with only a few hundred or a couple of thousands of polygons instead, besides the texture in games and virtual worlds do almost all the illusion of detail."
Have you ever used a 3d scanner? Its much fast to scan a real world object then to manually create a model. You might have to do some simple reconstruction. But, other then that you can down scale ploy count pretty easy in most modeling programs. There are algorithms to remove vertices's at a set tolerance.

@ "Apparently you have never seen a virtual world before, be it a mmorpg or a 3D meeting place like second life. It opens quite a great possibility of interaction that books, videos and museums don’t have."
I have played games, like second life. I have even designed a few simple worlds in 3d. What kind or interaction are you going to have? It seems pretty static, sure you can rotate around. But, might as well just use panoramic photography. The screen is still a poor format to display, its typically small, does not display colors as accurately as other mediums, and hard on the eyes from all the excess light.

@ True, but other mediums can do a better job most of the time at the task.

@ "The exhibit is already walkable" Well, post it if you have any work done.

There are already virtual museums and stuff like that, but if you go for the 'real' big work, this will be a great idea!

The main competition will come from Second Life. They already have the platform and users. It would be cheaper to roll-out on Second Life.

I beleive this is exactly what I onve wanted a couple of years. I made a website, but just couldnt get it any further than that. Then Second Life was born, and I was keeping my ideas for later. But now that Second Life is a buit behind the hype, maybe it is time to launch the idea again, here on this website. So, maybe this is a bit what you mean, and if it is, I would LOVE to help, because I love 3D. Have a look at my presentation, from 2004:

http://maartenm.nl/p...ecten/VirtualFuture/

Maarten

It would make more sense to use panoramic 360 photography.

JelmerBV:
yes, there are "virtual" museums, but they are mostly pre-rendered visualizations, so you dont have any real freedom to walk around and most of the time those museums are painting galleries.

maarten:
I think you are on the right idea, what's the status of the engine?

Kevin_Cox:
unless you are thinking on something like MYST then no, the idea is to walk freely on a three dimensional place.

there is no engine (yet). It stopped by making this website, and then I couldnt find the people to help me further, so no engine, no tests, nothing.

And wether it is made by 360 photgraphy, pre rendered worlds, low-poly life render worlds, thats is all the second step. First the idea, then the making of it. 3D technology constantly changes, so this idea would have to adapt to the latest technolical posabillitys.

My thoughts are going towards URU, the 3d-life version of Myst (5 I think). It is a low poly 3D world, but very high quality.

Maarten

Well, you could do it like Myst or at least somewhat like Myst with sets of panoramic 360 photography, with a user interface over top, then in the background make it linked so you have the options forwards, backwards, left, right, etc... So, it would have the same feel of Myst or games with a similar interface like it like The Dig.

But, if you are thinking of doing this in true 3d at somewhat good quality you are kidding yourself about production costs.

maarten:
Oh, the presentation gave the impression there was an engine in the works.

Kevin_Cox:
What I don’t like about panoramic 360 photography is that it becomes a guided tour since you are limited and can’t use •D geometry (unless it’s rendered).

It is possible to create it in 3D, a huge amount of people already do mods of great quality and most of the time its done by only one guy.
Since this idea doesn’t necessarily need moving characters, weapons, AI, etc, I think it can be done.

I’m not implying that is easy and can be done over night, but with a small group of people and the right engine it can be done.

One thing I must point out, the look of the objects doesn’t necessarily need to be hyper real, for instance you can make a dinosaur to look somewhat cartoony but your giving the same information as if it was hyper realistic.