I had an
account in Cloud Party when it first started about two years ago. I remember
going over there and getting excited about learning to build mesh items on
Blender, and then importing these over. That joy was short-lived, however, as
it became evident that with the hardware at my disposal, mesh creation was out
of the question. At that beta stage, avatars in Cloud Party were also very
elementary, and although the navigation was not overly difficult, it still had
a learning curve. Things got rapidly better, and at its later stages, Cloud
Party was a serious contender for content delivery, quality 3-D graphics and
art, as well as becoming a platform for socializing in virtual worlds.
The
technology behind Cloud party was based on HTML 5 and JavaScript. HTML is of
course at the core of web browser code, which made it possible to incorporate
the point of view of the avatar to a shared virtual 3-D graphic world. The
point of view could be changed by simple mouse and arrow key navigation. Interaction
with objects was also possible through JavaScript extension, and a lot of
virtual physics could be employed for fun and games. Avatars could spiff up
their appearance by selecting clothing items that were all mesh-based, and
rigged to the avatar skeleton. For content creators, template avatars with this
skeleton were available, and mesh clothing would be built in a similar way to
how computer-game characters and avatars are built, rigging the clothing and
items to the appropriate parts of the avatar skeleton. Simple objects and
structures could be built in-world directly by rezzing blocks, assigning
textures to these, and expanding from there.
Each avatar
was automatically assigned a “home” – usually a small house similar to Linden
Homes in Second Life ©. The houses could be feely equipped and furnished, many
becoming elaborate designer collections of appliances and furniture. Poses
would be incorporated in the objects, but no “pose balls” were available. The
homes were part of communities that were placed on rocks that float in free
space, as islands in SL, but without the water – hence the name “Cloud Party”.
Islands could be bought, and in some stages of development, these were
available for creators at very low cost.
Logins were
possible with the unique avatar name and password, or directly through
Facebook, and sharing one’s experience in Facebook was made easier than on
Second Life, which is only now slowly getting there. This made, of course, the
degree of “nymity” several notches closer to equating the avatar with a real
person. This may or may not have influenced the signup popularity and
interaction manner of Cloud Party avatars.
Many artists such
as Patrick Moya took Cloud Party as their home platform and made showpiece
creations on their private “islands”. This is what he had to say: “I had great hopes with Cloud Party because
it allowed to enter the virtual world without plugin directly with a browser.
The possibility of introducing mesh very easily was also a great advantage and
the ability to make a limitless number of small islands encouraged me to work
hard. I thought that if a young webmaster using this ease of access and the low
price they could offer a website in 3D and it would be very successful but was
stopped before. Second Life's still the most extraordinary world to create the
universe, but if [the webmaster] manages to integrate the advantages of Cloud
Party (loading directly in the browser) then [SL] will be ignored.”
JoJa Dhara,
whom I first met at Cloud Party, also reminisces Cloud Party with fondness: “What I loved so much about Cloud Party was
that it was web-based, with easy access... Graphically looking perfect,
beautiful... Cloud Party gave you as a user a change to develop.
In beginning
it was hard as you needed to know 3-D programs to create but with the block way
of building it gave a change to a lot.” She used cloud Party as a portal to
showcase her work she had been doing for years, mainly in the 3-D printing
area. Her space was also a showcase for the MetaMeets virtual conference. Hers
was in a way a personal museum, where personal acquaintances could be quickly
transported with minimal account setup effort. She also refers to other Patrick
Moya’s island as a museum: “Patrick Moya
for instance really showed what museums could do and make to show art that is
not accessible for all... He created pre-showings of an exhibition… or that has
been there... just by clicking on the URL for easy access.”
She regrets
that SL has such a circuitous way to get to an in-world location. This, in her
opinion, alienated companies from SL and also made it difficult for lay public
to access. “With a world like Cloud Party
you could show the world of 3D web ... as I say a portal to all worlds that are
there.... I have still belief in that the 3D web is exiting to create buildings
objects that you can improve or discuss with the people around the globe...
To JoJa,
Cloud Party only lacked in the voice and media department, compared to Second
Life.
Regarding Cloud Party being bought,
she says: “Unfortunately the team was bought up by Yahoo. I am not going to
judge about that... understandable if it can bring you a great career. But I do
find it a pity that such a beautiful easy access world had to go for that...
and I hope dearly someone will pick it up... eyes on HIFI of course now. And if
they pick it up... I will scream again as I did to the CP team... create a
button for 3D printing!!! Make real to virtual to real! So yes, my conclusion
was really for [all the] many worlds that have been created… this one was
really easy to access for the masses that we hoped for in Second Life besides
being affordable etc... If we really want the world to adopt the 3D web this
was really one close enough to do so.”
With Yahoo’s
move to purchase the assets of Cloud Party and employing the coders, it is
difficult to say what will happen. In a way, it will be interesting to follow
the developments on Yahoo’s side, but unfortunately Cloud Party is out of
commission at the moment, and all creator assets seem to be at the mercy of the
creators themselves who admittedly did get a one-month grace period to retrieve
their stuff out of the platform. Using HTML5 is getting popular in creating
client-independent web solutions, which may be the reason for Yahoo’s acquisition
of Cloud party. The expertise of the designers of Cloud party virtual world can
be leveraged in many ways. Another point of view to this, which in my opinion
is less likely, is that Yahoo would be branching out to virtual platforms.
Recent developments in the hardware and viewer space suggest that virtual world
integration is getting the eye of big corporations again (cf. Facebook acquiring OculusVR). We may only hope for the best,
and fear the worst, in the case of Cloud Party and Yahoo.
Video clip of
the last night party of Cloud Party:
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