It keeps happening! The latest to jump into the fray is Meez, which is launching something called Meeznation.
This is on top of Gaia and Weeworld and Zwinky, of course…
ExitReality Launches With Carl’s Jr Deal, and it looks like another attempt to commercialize VRML, much like several of the other projects we have seen over the last couple of years.
The comment thread is interesting precisely because of its mix of reactions:
This is really nice! Really love to check it out. It can turn any web page into 3D space? How can this be done? Amazing stuff!
to
I’d like one double failburger to go.
One commenter makes the point that has to be made about any plug-in based approach to the problem: what about adoption of the plug-in? Most people simply say no to all plug-in install requests. This is a significant challenge across the web — it takes really compelling content to drive adoption.
In any case, ExitReality seems to have some nice features that seem to rapidly be becoming de rigueur: HTML on a polygon, video on a polygon, etc. Not sure how they did the Burger Time emulation — Flash on a poly? Most interesting is the “install and automatically make a 3d space from your webpage” thing that is hinted at. It’s not that hard to do, really — pass in the URL to the world, and have the world scrape the page for assets to use — but it potentially makes a page a bit more compelling.
Edit: Apparently there’s a MySpace app as well, which connects to the branded worlds.
Lest people think that Flash is the only game in town, there’s also a new release around Microsoft’s Silverlight, using Mono.
Mono offers open-source spin on Silverlight – CNET News.com
There is definitely a quiet little war on.
This happened days ago, and I don’t know how I missed it. It’s the Open Screen Project, which boils down to Adobe making a big move with Flash.
What did they do, and what does it mean?
Here’s a few ways to think about this:
is a 12-page paper that gives interesting insight into IBM’s moves in the virtual worlds space. It’s a mix of forward-thinking (they have people who do nothing but machinima?) and catch-up (I particularly liked the moment where a few IBM staffers decided on a definition of “virtual universe” in 2006 — fortunately, it matches the one all the rest of us use!).
It’s not very long, and it’s an interesting read.
