Sneak Peek At 3Di Open Viewer, Billed As In-Browser Second Life Viewer With PS3 Graphics

Here's a video demo of a project to keep your eye on: the 3Di OpenViewer, which purportedly runs both Second Life and OpenSim in a web browser, incorporating "the graphics engine used also for PS3, and works by the ActiveX technology on Internet Explorer."  Note the dynamic shadows, and rich textures.  Following up on this video, I got in touch with Taku Kamata, CTO of Tokyo-based 3Di, Inc. 

"Unfortunately," he messaged me, "this viewer is internal demo version for 3Di OpenSim.  (3Di OpenSim is commercial server package like Redhat Linux.)"  Which, according to 3Di's homepage, is expected to launch October 1st.  My second follow-up yielded no reply, so a lot of questions, such as when OpenViewer will be available, or how it uses PS3 technology, remain unanswered thus far.  Stand by.  Via Heidi Ballinger through Mal Burns' metaverse video feed.

Comments

[Yesterday Demain]

Cheers Hamlet...

Just a quick reminder for all of your readers interested in alternative viewers...

We'll be hosting a discussion about Lightweight / Alternative clients on Orange Island tomorrow at 12:00 PM SLT, featuring Jacek Antonelli (Imprudence viewer), Zaki (from 3Di) and Reta Shan (winner of the UI contest run by Dusan Writer).

This discussion, moderated by Dusan Writer, is one of the many events of Orange Island's Innovation Week, which kicks off today.

For a detailed schedule, head over to http://www.orange-island.com/?p=901

Hope to see you there :))

[Osiris Indigo]

Maybe you should invite Kirstenlee Cinquetti also, since she builds viewer for 3 different platforms?

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

It probably uses PS3 technology in the manner of running on a Cell based server of some kind, perhaps even a PS3 itself. IBM's got some kind of Cell based server that they're promoting for running MMORPG server software on. And you can buy HPC clusters from Terrasoft that consist of a bunch of PS3's with Yellow Dog Linux installed.

[Yesterday Demain]

@Osiris: Thanks for the suggestion, we'll get in touch with her :)

[Zaki]

@CronoCloud Creeggan: The demo is not using PS3 hardware, it runs on a normal PC. "The graphics engine used also for PS3" only means that it is an already mature and proven software with very high rendering quality - and cross-platform support ;).