Just Leap In: new browser-embedded 3d world
Just Leap In is yet another browser-embedded 3d environment using a plugin. This space is certainly getting crowded.
Part of the reason we are seeing so many of these, I suppose, is that getting the basics of a virtual world client running inside a browser plugin is really trivial (though it’s hard to get it working fully cross-browser and OS). You can pretty much embed any app with a simple download like OSAKit. So seeing high-end 3d engines popping up in browsers shouldn’t be surprising — it’s how most of the Asian games were delivered for a long time.
It’s interesting to me, though, how high a bar is set for user-created-content by so many of these projects.
“For the technically inclined, our first release of UGC 3D tools will include a set of XSI properties, RT shaders, a custom fbx exporter that adds some JLI ‘sauce’ and a Mac/PC JLI viewer, with full documentation,” explained the Director of Visual Development on the company blog. “Users of Maya/Max/Blender/etc. can tap into our fbx pathway to create JLI-compatible data as well. In subsequent releases, we’ll be considering adding Collada support, which in combination with fbx will further broaden the number of 3D packages that can be supported. We are also open to collaborating with third party tool creators to broaden further the abilities for our users to create.”
Raise your hand if you could read that. 🙂
The tradeoff, of course, comes from having that high-end a client, which automatically creates high barriers to content creation.
But boy, it sure does look pretty!
9 Responses to “Just Leap In: new browser-embedded 3d world”
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It would be nice to get as tech for developing new projects. That paragraph you quote is more like dev speak info than consumer, that’s for sure.
VRML returns! 😉
How much of this can Flash do today? That plugin already has an enormous userbase.
“This space is certainly getting crowded.”
Wait, you can’t complain that a space is getting crowded.
Isn’t Metaplace’s mission to commoditize browser based games and get all spaces crowded? 🙂
The dirty little secret of browser flash worlds that tell you they’ve bypassed the download for you, however, is that you constantly get a LOADING…. bar as the world, objects and avatars load. In Lively, the graphics that go with that LOADING…stuff drive you nuts, they look like radioactive symbols. Otherworld are LOADING…and then your screen is freezing. Every single thing you do — take something from inventory, travel to another room, add something — there you are LOADING….
So, it’s a bit fake. Give me one of these chunkier downloadable worlds that have lag in them, but at least not that incessant darkness and loading lines.
I guess Raph means the virtual world platform space is getting crowded, which might hurt Metaplace as a product, which AFAIK aims to make the virtual world space very crowded.
Had to blog about this too (http://www.sulka.net/) – what I found interesting, is that the demo video seems to have absolutely no social interaction, aside from a couple avatars popping on the screen for a few seconds…
Raph, is it a difficult thing (beyond the obvious entry barriers) to use these platforms together in one “virtual reality”? These are tools, and I’m wondering if the future doesn’t include combining these tools.
VRML never died. 🙂
It’s a becoming a competition on the libraries, numbers of simultaneous in-worlders, and ease of drag and drop. Embedding the scenes in social networks is a smart move. Embedding them in browsers is just a way to get it done.
What is a game if not just a social network with a shared sport?
@Amaranthar: it can be done but the market and the social network resist it. Walled gardens are how humans control nature’s sources of chaos including their own. My guess is the first really large connected worlds will come about as a result of industrial uses. Just a guess though.
In terms of the multiuser functionality, the UGC, the media integration? All of it. In terms of the rendering? It’s getting there, but not yet.
Kind of like Second Life? 😉
Seriously — anything that lets content stream in over time, which is anything that has user-created content — is going to have something of the sort. The question is what do they wait for and what do they let you see fading in, and how do they indicate something is fading in.
This problem will be with us for quite some time, I think.
I am not that worried about their relevance to Metaplace precisely because we aim more mass market and more end user UGC. That said, the Flash space is getting a bit more crowded too. 🙂
So speaking of web embedded games. Check out what SmartFoxServer put out today…
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/labs/API/
Note Unity3D.