Mirror Worlds Archives - Digital Urban

Incoming Metaverses: Digital Mirrors for Urban Planning

Andy — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:24:33 +0000

The planning process has been, arguably, slow to adapt and adopt new technologies: It is perhaps only now that it is starting to move into a more digitally focused era. Yet, it is not the current thinking around the digital that is going to change planning; it is the emerging metaverse. It is a change on the near horizon that is there but is currently largely unseen in the urban planning profession. The metaverse is, at first sight, a mirror to the current world, a digital twin, but it is more than this: It is an inhabited mirror world where the physical dimensions and rules of time and space do not necessarily apply. Operating across scales, from the change of use of a building up to a local plan and onwards to the scale of future cities, these emerging metaverses will exist either directly within computational space or emerge into our physical space via augmented reality. With economic systems operating via blockchain technology and the ability to instigate aspects of planning law, interspaced with design fiction type scenarios, they represent a new tool kit for the urban planner, spatial, economic, and social. We explore these emerging spaces, taking a look at their origins and how the use of game engines have allowed participation and design to become part of the workflow of these 3D spaces. Via a series of examples, we look at the current state of the art, explore the short term future, and speculate on digital planning using these incoming metaverses 10 years from now.

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Mirror Worlds: Real World Virtual Cities, Twinty?

Andy — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:49:00 +0000

The term Mirror Worlds comes from David Gelernter’s seminal book ‘Mirror Worlds or: The Day Software puts the Universe in a Shoebox’. Essentially it is about software that mimics reality – the social, informational and visual space that is our environment.

Google Earth is an early example of a mirror world but it lacks the social space that give these representations of reality life and the all important street level, human environment. As such Twinty is worth keeping an eye on.

In their pre-release teaser the Twinty site states:

Imagine a virtual world that brings the dream of “virtual reality” back to life – a place bursting with real people and real experiences. Twinity is not an exercise in digital escapism. Instead, think of it as the virtual extension of your life. Even your avatar will look pretty familiar…

In the coming weeks a group of beta testers will begin exploring Twinity for the very first time. If you’d like to be one of them, fill out the form on the Twinty site and join the Beta.

Twinty is of note on two levels:

It is based on the real world and apparently real cities;
It will be possible to import objects via the Collada and thus from 3DMax, Blender etc

This opens up the possibility of importing city models into the city – a recursive city or a world within a world, we will be running a feature on Twinty as soon as its released.

Metaversed got a hands on with a earlier build , see Can Twinity Foster Creativity and Economy in Virtual Cities?

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