THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

You get used to what you see. It’s a fact. Walk down the same five city blocks everyday, and they become invisible. Live for years in the same house, and you won’t see the architectural details that visitors will notice in 60 seconds.

It’s like that with virtual worlds. You get used to them. And so, you can drop into a cool new location in Second Life or HiPiHi, and say, “wow, this looks really good”–without also thinking, “given the limitations of the platform, of course.”

Let’s clear something up: this post is not about Second Life or HiPiHi bashing. Because both of those worlds are already in existence today, hosting lots of avatars today, and people are building things in them today. VastPark isn’t there yet.

But. Wow.

I was treated to a demo of VastPark by Bruce Joy, the founder and CEO of the company. And. Yeah. Wow.

It has shadows. It has physics that work, and look convincingly random and fractal. It has a sense of size and drama. It has avatars with a POV camera that is buttery-smooth and almost hyper-real. The textures are beautiful. And the scripting language seems to be efficient and easy to use (my tech credentials have long since faded into my past, so don’t hold me to this.) And did I mention it has shadows? Like, you know, those things that are cast when a light source is nearby.

Let’s get a little deeper. Apparently, VastPark is also modular. Their Creator application is in beta, which allows you to put together virtual worlds. There will be a Client application as well. The functionality of the Client and Creator applications can be remixed, so you can deploy a Client-only world (no building by those pesky residents, oh no, you know, they might want to make genitals or something), or you can add functionality from the Client to the Creator to give residents the ability to build whatever they want (because you are enlightened, and know that the more power you give your residents, the more successful your world will be.)

And . . . if MetaWSS works the way they say it will, this could be a game-changer. Imagine, instead of sending the prims (or the mesh) and the textures to the client, you send a description: “bottle123a49c” or something like that. The client can then decide to pick a super-high-res mesh of the bottle for display on a high-end PC, or a lower quality mesh to display on a 3D client that works within a web browser, or even a cartoon 2D model to display on a phone.

Are your socks still on? Mine aren’t. Vastpark has huge potential. Watch these guys in the future.*

*Some restrictions apply. Of course, I didn’t see this running with tens, hundreds, or thousands of avatars. I saw a limited range of demos. I saw only the Creator application. Not the Client. It only runs on PC (grr-gnarr-argh-&#W(&(&@^$@^#!!). All of this or none of this could happen. It may not play with the IBM-Linden-HiPiHi standards. It may be crushed by Google’s entry into virtual worlds. The pricing model they mentioned seemed designed to limit its uptake. And a meteor may land on Bruce’s head tomorrow. Or a meteor may strike the earth and make humanity extinct. I just report what I see, and this was pretty dang cool.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:52 am and is filed under Ruminations, Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.