Wimbledon in Second Life
IBM, amongst other things, runs the official Wimbledon website during the event. This has lots of exciting well designed tennis information, real time scores and we deal with a large volume of traffic. Most years I am onsite for a period of time, helping explain how we bring innovation to our customer as part of a large cross IBM team. In the lead up to the event, and with what I know about the data we have, I decided to take on a mini proof of concept to bring Wimbledon to Second Life.
The first point is that this is a proof of concept. The build is designed to show the various ideas rather than be a 1:1 representation of the actual place. That’s very possible, but would take more days to build.
Secondly, lots of people could attend, the shots show only one avatar.
The example security gate is there to show you can detect things about peoples avatars in this case it shows the name and if they are wearng anything that contains code.
The first item on the tour is the RSS weather feed globe. It updates now every hour from a weather service, but has a manual overide for some other cities to prove its not all smoke and virtual mirrors
Next is the highlight. The real world tracking data for actual tennis matches. We get a feed for the normal web scoreboard and the point tracker. Here we plot the ball in 3d space and can rotate around it for various angles. The net is actually in control, if it gets told another url to use it plays another rally. This can be done manually, by talking to it, or by another control box that cycles through the various games.
We could put players on this, with the extra data we have on which shot has been played and knowing when the ball changes direction, but I was working to a timeframe.
As you can see you can control the camera even when your avatar is sitting enjoying the game
This shows several concepts. The main one is the 2 spheres, these are ambient devices that change size depending on who is winning the match, it shows the ambient device concept.
The picture on the right is of the IBM special keyboard used to record the matches, with keys for forehand smash, volley etc.
This shows one of the special products at work. The flying wimbledon towel. When anyone clicks the towel it act like a normal banner ad and directs them to the real wimbledon shop for the real towel. This banner add though can be flown as a vehicle. So I can fly around, advertising in places without leaving the ad lying around on private property. Avatar based marketing.
These images show a mixture of photo panels of things at Wimbledon and 3d objects such as the park benches. Just to add a bit of character. The go away rain sign is a legacy of many championships.
This is the most recent addition. advert watching posts. Stand in front of each of the screens and a streaming video of the IBM adverts with people from the AELTC and the BBC talking about Wimbledon, IBM and innovation
Whilst the trigger for the video is standing in front of a particular one (and hitting the movie play button in SL) the video will play on all the screens at once. It does not have to do this, I just liked the effect.
This is sort of Henman hill. Again to show a hint and nod to the real place. The video wall in this case is showing one of last years flash scoreboards, to show the analogy with the full size court and the previous web incarnations for tracking the ball.
Again this is a flavour of mixing 2d pictures with 3d objects the line of benches coming out of the space, giving depth.
More example pictures, with fencing and plants to show the potential
These pictures show an object raining multiple tennis balls down. No real reason its just fun, It actually the same code as the full court but the balls are physical, and hence fall rather than the one on the court demo that hang around, to help show the path of the ball.
The Fred Perry statue can be touched, and it will get the RSS feed from wimbledon.org
The chat history window shows us what Fred said, and formats its nicely.
Further up in the air, to use the small real estate, is a hovering Wimbledon shop.
The products in the shop include a Tshirt, using the actual tshirt as source to build a SL Tshirt that can be worn (see last photo). This shows the flow of money and product placement.
We also have some pose balls. These allow us to put an avatar in a pose when they are attached to it. In this case two backdrops with different poses. People then are able to take snapshots of them ‘in action’ like in new citizens plaza, but tennis branded.
The avatar I am wearing is available for sale from a poster of the avatar. Again shows the flow of money and the potential to look like real people.
We have a pagoda in the sky, its also a video wall showing one of the IBM vignette adverts.
So you can fly in and be immersed in the video.
And there we have it. Back to a normal(ish) look, but wearing my Wimbledon 06 tshirt.
If I leave the private Hursley island everyone will be able to see this shirt
We could do a whole lot more with the browser as a texture gecko engine, but for now the httprequest has made much of this much easier
For more on what IBM does at Wimbledon it really is a fantastic effort and a great partnership.
That is just the start of IBMers in the Metaverse.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Cool SL Apps in a Virtual Wimbledon
Ian Hughes at eightbar (a blog co-authored by four people “working in and around IBMs Hursley Park Lab in the UK”) has a fascinating bunch of screenshots and explanations up detailing a proof-of-concept build for some really nice functi…
June 30th, 2006 at 8:52 am
[...] I was at Wimbledon yesterday for work, demoing Ian’s Second Life project to people in corporate hospitality. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to Wimbledon so I did have a quick look around while I was there. It was different to what I had expected. It didn’t really feel like a sports event, more like a small version of a Disney park. I hadn’t realised that a lot of people go with a picnic for a day out, much like they would to a park. It doesn’t seem to matter which (if any) tennis games they get to see. [...]
July 5th, 2006 at 10:07 am
[...] I am currently onsite at the Wimbledon Championships. This involves sitting in the basement of the media centre with my collegues from Hursley, Atlanta and Raleigh. Being couped up delivering wimbledon.org always brings an interesting group dynamic. We have a strange 14 hour day, with a mixture of customer visits (a.k.a. tech tours), checkpoints, testing out new things and the day job. With my Wimbledon second life demo as part of the tech tour it was natural that a few of the guys in the room would get into it too. Yesterday was a prime example and trigger. It was July 4th. There was a shuttle launch. We have lots of bandwidth. So streaming media of the launch both for the Uk and the US guys in the room was a must. The difference this year was that some of us had Second Life running, and were at the excellent spaceport alpha. It turned out that of the 70 or so people at the event in the prime location 5 of us were IBMers from eightbar in Second Life, including a husband and wife team. The event was the first one I have seen that had overflow areas as more areas of land were turned over to streaming the video. The nature of the event and the buzz we had in RL and SL in an enclosed space made it all very exciting and enabled a few more people to ‘get’ why metaverse technologies really do work. [...]
July 8th, 2006 at 11:14 am
[...] Over at Electric sheep they are announcing major league baseball as an event This of particular interest given my current Wimbledon tennis proof of concept that we have been demoing the past two weeks here at Wimbledon along side the official site championships site This has been getting some very good reactions from my collegues and my customers, and it feels like we are riding the start of a very large wave. [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 10:57 am
[...] Read the original Eightbar post on Wimbledon demo for more. [...]
September 28th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
[...] IBM has been very active in virtual worlds, and doing some incredible innovation in Second Life (check out the eightbar blog, like Wimbledon in Second Life). And IBM has been a close collaborator of NMC (Jacob Hall is named for former NMC Board member from IBM, Jean Paul Jacob). So we were excited when they asked to hold one of several SL events they ran as part of the “JAM” right here in NMC Campus. [...]
October 25th, 2006 at 12:14 am
[...] Read more about this proof-of-concept [...]
October 25th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
[...] I have put a video on you tube of a quick walk through some of the Wimbledon demo from back in June. It was not a major machinima production but just to preserve the “old” ideas before we use the space for anything new and improved. [...]
October 28th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
[...] Wirtualny ?wiat to co?, czego przecie? nie ma. Jest zmy?lone, wykreowane wewn?trz maszyn, pomi?dzy komputerami, zaprogramowane przez programistów. Tworz? go ludzie, ale przecie? wej?cie w wirtualno?? oznacza tylko tyle, ?e wnosimy tam jaki? fragment swojej psychiki, sposobu odbierania ?wiata. Sami przetwarzamy to wszystko, co chcemy wnie?? w wirtualno??. Second Life. Dzie?o ameryka?skiej firmy LindenLab. Od trzech lat na serwerach istnieje ?wiat, którego nie ma realnie. Gra sieciowa, zbudowana w konwencji MMORPG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) obecnie rozros?a si? do rozmiarów, które z pewno?ci? przeros?y oczekiwania jej twórców. I my?l?, ?e dzi? nie mo?na tego zjawiska jakim jest niew?tpliwie Second Life nazwa? nadal gr?. To interesuj?ce odwzorowanie rzeczywisto?ci, spo?ecznych relacji, spo?ecze?stwa. Ten w?a?nie wirtualny ?wiat coraz bardziej interesuje te? realno??, jaka zosta?a po tej stronie wy?wietlacza i klawiatury. Jest tam wirtualny bank, Ginko Financial, który ma realn? stron? internetow?. Jest biuro agencji Reuters. Odbywa si? wirtualny turniej tenisowy, którym opiekuje si? IBM. SUN Microsystem organizuje tam konferencj? prasow? i zapowiada start projektu zwi?zanego z internetowymi grami. Mo?na kupi? wirtualne buty Adidas, samochód Toyota, czy zaopatrzy? si? w ubrania najnowszej kolekcji American Apparel. Obejrze? koncert, reklamy koncernu Coca-Cola. Pos?ucha? najnowszego albumu Reginy Spektor. Zamieszka? w pi?ciogwiazdkowym hotelu Aloft sieci Starwood Hotels, który w realnym ?wiecie mo?na b?dzie odwiedzi? dopiero w 2008 roku. I w?a?nie ta ostatnia mo?liwo??, sprzeda?y, prezentacji produktu przed jego realn? premier? przyci?gn?? mo?e ca?e rzesze powa?nych inwestorów do takiego wirtualnego ?wiata jakim jest Second Life. Spo?eczno??, która ma obecnie milion zarejestrowanych uczestników, która wydaje dziennie pó? miliona dolarów staje si? ?wiatem wirtualnym, ale o powa?nej warto?ci realnej. Ka?dy z tych uczestników gry, ka?dy avatar, to w sumie klient, konsument, odbiorca z jakim nale?y si? liczy?. Ju? za samo wej?cie do gry trzeba zap?aci? kilka dolarów. Potem pozyska? mo?na wirtualn? walut?, lindeny, wymieniaj?c je za pomoc? ca?kiem realnej karty kredytowej, lub konta PayPal. Aktualny kurs, który podlega wahaniom jak klasyczna waluta, to 272,3 lindenów za dolara. Z pewno?ci? ?wiat Second Life wart jest du?o. Nie wiadomo, czy i ile chcia?by wyda? na ten ?wiat potencjalny inwestor, ale my?l?, ?e wi?ksz? warto?? Second Life ma jako obraz dynamicznego ?rodowiska spo?ecznego, które mo?e by? doskona?ym poligonem do?wiadczalnym. Nie b?d? tam prowadzone bynajmniej eksperymenty z psychologii spo?ecznej, socjologii, chocia? z pewno?ci? fenomen tego wirtualnego ?wiata prze?o?y? si? na tego typu badania, czy prace doktorskie. Ten wirtualny ?wiat jest istotny dla rynku, dla zysku, dla osi?ganiu przychodu. To przyk?ad jeszcze jednego pomys?u, który tworzy now? gospodark?. Gospodark? na styku wirtualno?ci z realno?ci?. [...]
November 11th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
[...] Check out Ian’s blog to learn more. [...]
November 14th, 2006 at 5:19 am
[...] So far in Second Life, IBM has set up a simulation of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, using data that tracks the position of the ball to re-enact points several seconds after they happen. It has also held virtual events such as an IBM alumni reunion. [...]
November 27th, 2006 at 10:44 am
[...] La TV: e poi? Published by Francesco Maria Gallo November 27th, 2006 in ICT News. Mentre la TV sta rapidamente diventando pervasiva e si apre accogliendo individui, aziende e istituzioni quali protagonisti, in rete sta emergendo con altrettanta forza una nuova dimensione: quella della virtualitą, che mostra di avere una grande forza di attrazione e di coinvolgimento. La dimensione virtuale immersiva non č una novitą assoluta, posto che i MUD testuali esistevano gią molto prima dello stesso web, ma l’evoluzione tecnologica rende oggi possibile realizzare contesti virtuali immersivi di grande coinvolgimento. Tanto da attrarre fortemente non solo milioni di persone, ma anche - come ovvia conseguenza - l’attenzione del business e degli stessi media tradizionali, come testimoniano i casi di IBM e MTV. E’ questa la post-televisione? E dopo la business TV avremo la business virtual reality? La realtą dei mondi virtuali paralleli č gią estremamente importante. Second Life č il servizio pił celebre e frequentato, con quasi 1,5 milioni di abitanti: una vera e propria realtą parallela con una sua economia, che ha cominciato ad attrarre anche l’economia del mondo “reale”. IBM č tra i primi e principali investitori in Second Life: e l’aspetto interessante č che “investire” nella realtą visrtuale non significa per IBM inserire della propria pubblicitą, ma “entrare” nella realtą con dipendenti che vanno a viverla e a creare business. Qualche esempio: IBM ha creato in Second Life il torneo di Wimbledon virtuale, ed eventi di presentazione pił business oriented (vedi questo articolo di Reuters per un approfondimento). Un secondo caso interessante č quello di MTV che č entrata nella dimensione virtuale con Virtual Laguna Beach, primo di tre produzioni di questo tipo che MTV sta lanciando. La capacitą attrattiva e di coinvolgimento della nuova dimensione virtuale del resto č ormai ben nota e sperimentata se pensiamo al mondo dei videogames off-line e on-line (vedi ad esempio il successo di The Sims e The Sims Online). Con il maturare delle generazioni cresciute con l’abitudine alla dimensione virtuale (Nintendo, Playstation & Co.) č plausibile pensare che la dimensione virtuale possa prendere sempre pił piede come forma di intrattenimento, ma anche formazione, comunicazione, lavoro a distanza. Insomma la televisione ha un “dopo” ormai abbastanza chiaro e dopo essere passati per il successo della “realtą in TV” ci attende probabilmente il fascino del moltiplicarsi delle realtą parallele da vivere come esperienza attiva e diretta. [...]
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:13 pm
[...] Wimbledon in Second Life Real-time data from the Wimbledon matches gets fed into Second Life in interesting ways. Another case of media and metaphysical convergence. Keywords: sports, secondlife [...]
December 21st, 2006 at 10:41 am
[...] Les īles permettent d’expérimenter de nouveaux concepts comme une Simulation du tournois de Wimbledon, une Virtual Block Party. IBM dit réflechir a construire un SL version intranet pour les besoins internes. [...]
January 12th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
[...] If you’ve been reading eightbar for a while, you may know that last year, some of the group put together a nice demo for Wimbledon (video available). The build was a proof-of-concept for taking a live feed of the balls from the Hawkeye system, and replaying the action in-world. [...]
March 11th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Hi, nice all this.
Second life is bigger than i thought. I play tennis in my sparetime and i am a computer fanatic, i heard about second life, but never realized the potential.
Very nice
March 11th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hi, nice all this.
Second life is bigger than i thought. I play tennis in my sparetime and i am a computer fanatic, i heard about second life, but never realized the potential.
Very nice
http://improveyourtennis.blogspot.com
Sorry wrong website in the first comment!!
March 12th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
[...] So far in Second Life, IBM has set up a simulation of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, using data that tracks the position of the ball to re-enact points several seconds after they happen. It has also held virtual events such as an IBM alumni reunion. [...]
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:44 am
nice virtruol world
May 15th, 2007 at 5:45 am
[...] Virtual Reality: Lately, enterprises started to leverage virtual reality applications such as SecondLife.com not only as a location for meetings, conferences, training and recruitment, but also as a playground for new technologies and a potential marketplace for their products. IBM, who runs the official Wimbledon tennis tournament website even launched a parallel Wimbledon tournament in Second Life! [...]
May 16th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
[...] It was very exciting to have this opportunity to meet one of the pioneers of the merger of virtual and real worlds. Ian Hughes brought Wimbledon to Second Life and this project is an outstanding proof of concept demonstrating how real data can be gathered pumped to the web and to Second Life, and also to Real Life to produce a mixed reality event. [...]
May 29th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
[...] We have gone live with our mini build of for the French Open tennis on the “IBM 7″ sim. We have previously had the builds for last years Wimbledon (video here) , and the previous Australian Open, but they were all private. This is out in the the public areas. The team, Laronzo Fitzgerald, Andy Remblai and I have taken Pipe Hesse and Gizzy ElectricTeeth’s australian open and adjusted it for the Roland Garros event. We have all discovered on the way lots of interesting gotchas on collaborative building, with sharing of permissions and how to make things portable. The area itself is branded and in the style of the actual event with a central clay court. We get data from the same feeds as we use for the website with current matches and complete matches represented on a main board. The court itself is central, it houses the match replay gadget. The replay shows the play of the ball from a rally and updates the main scoreboard. People can pose at each end of the court for a players view. We are going to keep adjusting the experience as we have realized a few usability quirks that may not be obvious to people. 1. The rally is played after the real rally has finished, that is when the data is sent in Real/Web life. So the main scoreboard and court will always be behind the live one (at the moment) 2. When players change ends, or there is a break in play it looks like the court is not doing anything, so that may be confusing as a spectator 3. Rain delays, its started with one yesterday and we have not represented one as the Autralian Open has a roof. Anyway we welcome your comments on it, as we try and bring the experience of the tennis event to the metaverse. The main website extends the experience with news and photos aswell as scores. In Second Life we can obvioulsy extend that experience to one that can be shared. Here is a mini youtube with a famous metaverse personality playing tennis at the end with a golf club [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 2:10 am
[...] The Wimbledon streaming action starts from the first day of the championships, 25th June. IBM’s interest in bringing Wimbledon to SL started last year with a private demo detailed in pictures and words here, and in video here. The most recent live tests were with data from the French Open this year - see a video. [...]
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 pm
great work! like in our medical sims a safe no injury environment!
see you in the metaverse.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:01 am
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Wimbledon in Second Life. Thanks for informative article
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
[...] Los directivos de la compaƱĆa reconocen que estas oficinas tienen un caracter experimental, pero que tienen una gran confianza en las posibildiades de este medio. Hay que decir que este no es el primer proyecto de IBM dentro de Second Life; anteriormente, el gigante Azul ya habĆa recreado el torneo de tenis de Winbledon dentro de este mundo virtual, y este Octubre pasado la firma convoco su primer Alumni party virtual, tambiĆ©n dentro de Second Life. [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
[...] I spoke to deeper customer relationships in the intro. What more powerful incentive is there than joint success? But to really help with customer engagement models and design for B2C firms IBM also needs to be in the game. Not to compete with consumer-focused firms, but to underpin their success. IBM’s marketing around Second Life and Wimbledon is one model for success in profile building. [...]
June 7th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Great Read well written
http://www.mytennissecrets.com
July 1st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
What exactly is Second Life? I just google Wimbledon Tennis :E
July 1st, 2008 at 10:56 pm
second life is a 3d virtual world or metaverse. Specifically one that is not a game but has the ability for people to build and interact in whatever way they choose. It is at secondlife.com
Virtual worlds are the future of the internet as they allow dynamic and live interaction between people in ways that current technology does not.
They are going to evolve and serious businesses like IBM and Cisco recognize the power of the platforms.
We use Second Life to reahc people online with IBM and Wimbledon in a way we dont yet with the web.
August 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
[...] reading Ian Hughes’ eightbar blog on the SL Wimbledon site, I decided to make this my next stop.Ā Wimbledon now over, there were no [...]
September 1st, 2008 at 3:07 am
Good day!,
September 1st, 2008 at 3:07 am
Hi!,
September 1st, 2008 at 3:08 am
Hello!,
September 8th, 2008 at 11:52 am
[...] instruction. For a limited time only US Open Tennis Tickets are reduced. 1996/97/99 ā Australian Player of the Year 3 times Australian Singles Champion 6 times Australian Doubles Champion 4 times [...]