Presenting KataSpace, an Open Source, WebGL-Based Virtual World From Linden/Stanford Alum Henrik Bennetsen

KataSpace is a new web-based MMO architecture just launching today, a project from Linden Lab alum Henrik Bennetsen, which I wrote about last March. It's a WebGL/HTML5-powered 3D space using Sirikata, a BSD open source-licensed virtual world Henrik helped develop when he was at Stanford's Humanities Lab. You can enter KataSpace now: First, download Firefox 4 Beta, which comes with WebGL, then log in here: kataspace.sirikata.com.

As you can see above, KataSpace is just a rudimentary space with a couple male and female starter avatars (“I like to joke that they’re Adam and Eve”, Henrik tells me), but it should be enough to see the giant potential Henrik and his team at Katalabs have just unleashed:

Unlike other web-based 3D graphics which typically require a Unity 3D plugin, it's using WebGL, which will soon be integrated in all of the major web browsers, and already available in the latest beta builds of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.

As Henrik writes in the announcement post, Katalabs is releasing all the code that makes this possible, in the hopes that a community of developers will flourish around it, creating as he calls it, “[A] large interconnected ecology” that's integrated with the rest of the Internet. In this he echoes Tim O’Reilly’s idea that the ability to be relevant is to connect your content to other online content. Doing this with virtual worlds, the argument goes, will require them to be part of the web. KataSpace, Henrik tells me, can easily be embedded in Facebook, or on a blog page, and eventually, that'll be as easy as embedding a YouTube video. (When that happens, I may just embed a New World Notes-branded space here.)

KataSpace comes on the heels of several major web deployments, first with Blue Mars on the cloud, Second Life demos running in Gaikai's cloud, and only yesterday, Canvas, a Unity 3D powered version of Second Life and OpenSim on the Web. By Henrik's reckoning, the cloud option will be most ideal for major, well-funded projects, but that will still leave a lot of room for web-based applications like his and Canvas. And while he praises Canvas, from fellow Linden vet Chris Collins, he thinks it's important to launch a whole new web-based virtual world. “My personal view is we need to see deeper changes," he tells me, as opposed to taking an existing virtual world and shoving it into a browser. He thinks the 3D experience will change as it goes into the browser, something he calls "small 3D”. In the previous paradigm, he argues, you needed a whole world, but the web has a way of shrinking content, and so maybe worlds will shrink to app size, where a world can exist in a zip file. “I honestly think that’s what the next paradigm will look like.”

Judge for yourself -- go here for all the details to get started, and after you've installed Firefox 4, look for Henrik and his colleagues in KataSpace. (He tells me they'll be hanging out there most of today.)

Comments

[Claus Uriza]

Congrats Henrik. Just tested it and works smoothe. Ofcourse it's rather limited by now. Can't wait to see what HTML5 WebGL turns out to be in the coming years.

[Adeon Writer]

Oh man, too many new toys all at once! It's Christmas early. :)

[IntLibber]

Very nice. Took me quite a while to load it from my east coast location, but its a great proof of concept. I look forward to seeing how this develops.

[Metacam Oh]

No one wants small 3D in my humble opinion to be the future of the web. The point of being in a 3d world in most cases is to be immersed. Just because you can be embedded in Facebook doesn't mean anyone is going to find sub par aesthetics and clunky avatars appealing. If you want to argue about some of these Facebook games like Farmville are immensely popular with 2.5D graphics, but these are actual games, not a virtual world.

[Opensource Obscure]

What no one actually wants is other people stating "no one wants ".

The point of being in a 3D world is different for each user tipology - and SL shows there are so many different kinds of users, with different needs. Gamers, creators, consumers, artists, party people, fashion people, chat people.

Just because I'm virtual world user, I don't think that all other people would use virtual worlds the same way I do.

So, this Sirikata idea definitively makes sense - while arguing against web browsers supporting virtual worlds because "they're just games" doesn't.

Multiple tools, for multiple and different uses, for different people with different needs.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The rise of YoVille demonstrates that people who wouldn't normally consider visiting a virtual world will do so if it's embedded and effortless.

The decline of YoVille demonstrates that they won't stick around if the content of that virtual world sucks.

Here's hoping that enterprising developers latch on to KataSpace and build content that doesn't suck.

And "small 3D" suits me fine, as long as you can somehow chain together enough small worlds to make a very big world.