Forterra Announces OLIVE 2.2, Lotus Sametime Integration

Forterra announced yesterday that it will begin shipping version 2.2 of its virtual worlds platform, OLIVE, sometime this month. While the company's recent announcements have been heavily in the government and military camp, the new features offer benefits for enterprises looking to bring distributed workforces together. The largest addition is integration with Lotus Sametime, which itself came out of a project aimed at bringing the intelligence community together.   According to Forterra, though, customers and analysts are already finding that OLIVE offers a better experience and is cheaper than either audio or Web conferencing. Hit the jump for a video demo and feature list.

IBM, which has previously demoed Sametime 3D with OpenSim, is interested as well.

"Our customers are asking how their communications and collaboration strategy can combine real-time presence, voice and data sharing capabilities with the richness of virtual worlds,"  Bruce Morse, vice president of unified communications and collaboration, IBM Lotus, said in a statement. "We believe Forterra's plug-in to  Sametime will provide important functionality for our customers, and be an easy means for users to start experiencing a virtual world."

New features in the release include (from the release):

• A Virtual Meeting Reservation System that allows a meeting organizer to reserve a 3D room type (example: auditorium, board room, classroom), room equipment (example: projector screen size, chairs, and podiums), and to invite mandatory and optional attendees. Invitations are sent out through the user’s native email system (example: Lotus Notes, MS Exchange), and if accepted display in their native calendaring system. 
• Presenting on 3D screens and viewing by all participants a spectrum of media including MS PowerPoint files, streaming videos (Windows Media Player®-based), any software application running on a Windows desktop, and collaborative whiteboards. 
• A Lotus Sametime plug-in so users can achieve single sign-on to OLIVE from Lotus Sametime, instantly invite colleagues to join a 3D meeting directly from their Lotus Sametime client, or schedule a future meeting through the Virtual Meeting Reservation System.
• Presence awareness of other OLIVE or Sametime users logged in. Users can quickly join a colleague in a virtual environment by teleporting to their location.  
• Avatar profiles through integration with any social networking system like LinkedIn, Facebook, Lotus Connections, or a Learning Management System or enterprise HR system so users can view the profile of another meeting attendee by right clicking on their avatar. 
• Simplified firewall port configuration and compatibility so IT departments can set the communications for OLIVE to work through two firewall ports. OLIVE has always supported being

able to deploy entirely behind a firewall.
-Support for 3D model import into OLIVE for Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, Google Sketchup,
Blender, Poser Pro, FaceGen, and Softimage, and other content authoring tools which provide
COLLADA file export options.

Comments

[Mike]

Interesting demo. Is the voice quality in the video representative of the live system, I wonder?

Technical schematics strike me as a fairly bad example of something you might want to display on a virtual screen in a virtual conference room. I'd want the full detail of the blueprint right in front of me, with the 'laser pointer' trading hands as needed.

[Realtime Arts]

I'm familiar with the OLIVE system and can vouch for the voice quality. It's not only clear and discernible, but also spatialized in 3D.

As I understand, for these demos all their virtual world video, along with audio, are captured live in real-time, so this is fairly representative.

Keeping in mind that YouTube does compress everything some, so in reality it actually sounds a little better.

[electronic white board]

well yes i have check the OLIVE system and i got the same probleum with the sound thing , sony is better then this .