Hawk's Announcement at Honors Ceremony Jason_RC provided this log to CVN
"Thank you very much for coming today. Aside from offering my congratulations to all of you who are moving up the social status ranks of higher community achievement, which I do, I also wanted to take this opportunity to answer some of the questions I've been receiving from members about the Silhouette live video avatar technology. The main questions are of course, where is Silhouette and when are we going to get it?
Recently I got with the CEO and asked him what I could tell you about where it's at.
So, to give you some background, last year the main challenges were to raise the necessary (and extremely large amounts of) money to pay the launch fees to pay our suppliers for the licenses for the voice engine for Silhouette as well as the 3D browser. Those fees have now in large part been paid. All that remains now is minor troubleshooting to ensure the best and most stable Silhouette experience for CT members, especially when many are using it at the same time.
The CEO wanted you to know that IVN is not a large company that has tons of money and has been pretty much self-funded to this point so the development cycle of bringing it to market is slower than one might otherwise expect. Cybertown covers its own costs but the money to create and launch Silhouette has to come from elsewhere so the development has been slow.
At the same time Silhouette is working and currently being successfully demo'd to some rather major companies and is arousing a great deal of interest as people begin to realize the vastness of the potential applications.
The CEO also mentioned that for those who hadn't seen the current incarnation of the Nexos, you can see it at http://www.thenexos.com/
Work is also underway to considerably enhance the realism of the environment. Silhouette is not currently enabled in this Nexos demo (except for the beta-testers) and nor are avatars but you will be able to take a look around in 3D. If you have any trouble accessing it with your current 3D browser, you can get the latest one (6.2) from http://www.bitmanagement.com/
Be aware that this will have a floating BitManagement logo on the screen so you will probably want to ensure that you can re-install your current earlier version afterwards.
Charter subscribers who have signed up for the Nexos will have first dibs on their initial locations in the Nexos whether for meeting places or businesses. And the Nexos will be expanded outwards in all directions (CT will be a part of the Nexos) to include homesteading, natural parks etc.
The CEO also wanted to mention once again that since Silhouette is a very powerful technology it needs powerful hardware to work effectively - 2Ghz Pentium, USB 2.0 webcam etc. The CEO wanted to thank you for your patience and asks you to bear with us as we are bringing a very new and unique technological feasibility to the web and giving birth to new technology is not always an easy road. IVN is hoping to bring Silhouette to CT members in the first quarter of this year.
I'd love to stay and answer questions but I have to leave for another meeting. if you do have questions (that are not already answered in the FAQ on the home page), ask your CL to forward them to me and I'll answer them or get them answered.
Thank you for listening and once again, congratulations and thank you for your committment to the CT community.
