Applications and Tools, Virtual World Platforms

Realistically Rendered 3D World Amazing and a Mystery

The following video was picked up at TechCrunch and has generated as much mystery as awe.

The video was lifted from a company called LivePlace which is nothing more than a text placeholder site promising a “virtually live” experience. And judging by the video, it may well be.

What’s astonishing about the video is the claim that it renders in real time and runs on OTOY, a 3D graphics engine that renders using “cloud computing” (otherwise known as really fancy servers). The promise of OTOY is that not only can 3D spaces be realistically rendered, in real time, but that they can be delivered to ANY Internet-enabled device: your iPhone, say, or browser.

What’s at question here, however, isn’t that the technology is powerful and almost eerily realistic for a virtual world, but whether LivePlace is, well, for real.

The domain itself is registered to Brad Greenspan, one of the founders of mySpace – so it’s not too far fetched to imagine that he’s funding a virtual world initiative as real as, well, the real one. What’s unclear is how much of the above video is from test renders of that platform, how much from a 3D artist, and exactly what it all means.

The discussion at TechCrunch gives a pretty good idea of the debate, but regardless this is a pretty slick piece of video and hints at the promise of real-time Web-enabled 3D environments.

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