Main Street MMO: Virtual World Kickstarter by Jon "Keystone" Brouchoud to Dynamically Simulate Cities in 3D

Main Street MMO is a new Kickstarter project seeking $20,000 from Jon "Keystone" Brouchoud, an architect whose innovations using Second Life and OpenSim as a design and protyotyping tool have won industry recognition and virtual world awards. The main idea with Main Street MMO is to create 3D, annotaed and interactive simulations of real cities that are dynamic and customizable and displayed on the web and tablets in Unity 3D. Watch the pitch:

Read more about it here, and donate if you're so inclined. When Jon told me about this idea a few weeks ago, I wondered if it wasn't too similar to other "3D virtual city" projects that have come and gone. What can the Main Street MMO do that they didn't?

Unlike previous projects, Jon told me, "[O]ur goal is to be as open and extensible as the real cities themselves. Instead of investing huge amounts of time and money building entire cities, or getting others to upload buildings to a warehouse, we're proving the concept, but letting the community determine the course of the virtual city's development." I like that idea, and I can also see it working better in many cases than, say, Google Street View. Go here to read more.

Hat tip: Longtime metaverse evangelist Ian Hughes, who's backing the project, and explains why on his blog here.

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Comments

[jjccc coronet (@JJcccART)]

great idea now roll it out in my nieghbourhood

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Twinity got sued for replicating rl cities. They best hire an army of lawyers or go back to creating ideal "green" ergonomic and efficient city designs that do not yet exist.

[Jon Brouchoud]

Twinity didn't get sued for replicating rl cities.

The speculation I'm aware of suggests it had more to do with their licensing agreement (or lack thereof) with Google.

[rikomatic]

We welcomed Jon Brouchard to talk about his team's work to create these new kinds of virtual cities at a recent Nonprofit Commons meetup. You can read a summary and full transcript of his talk on our site here.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Its all just pretty pictures until I and a few hundred other people can walk around together in it at the same time.

[Jon Brouchoud]

Yep Pussycat, that's pretty much the idea. ;-)

fwiw, the technical challenge of getting a few hundred people in at the same time isn't nearly as great as the challenge of creating something truly engaging for them to do when they arrive.

[shockwave yareach]

The only use for this virtual city that I can foresee is virtual Tourism. Create cities that accurately model the real place, and let folks pay 20$ for 3 days of exploration. They can see all the sites and enjoy various activities there all without leaving home. Bring the whole family -- explore as a group or strike out on your own. Beware the seedier areas... or not. After all, nothing can hurt you here.

And when your tourist dollar is up, you can pay to visit some OTHER city as well. How about Rome? Wanna crawl through the colliseum? Follow some pirate map to a buried treasure? (Three free city trips would be easy and cheap to provide). Explore places that you know you'll never spend the money to go and see for real?

That may work. That's a potential wide acceptance application. But you have to have lots and lots of destinations already photographed and modeled first.

[virtual life online]

That's really a great idea Pussycat...I hope we can do it very early.