Web-Based 3Di Cloud Beta Testing Its Unity-Powered Virtual World Platform This Weekend

Click here to sign up as a public beta tester this weekend for "3Di Cloud for Unity", an upcoming new service from 3Di, a Japanese developer that's done some innovative work in OpenSim and Second Life. The new service, as its name suggests, is a web-based, Unity-powered virtual world platform.

"The goal of the new product is to vastly simplify the development of avatar-based 3D social environments on the web," 3Di senior manager Norman Lin tells me. Their plan is for non-programmers to easily add real-time 3D social interaction to their blog or web site, "through simple drag-and-drop operations". So maybe a bit like being able to host your own virtual world space, with lots and lots of users: "On the client side we believe we can handle a thousand or so avatars in the same space," says Lin. "We are currently testing and optimizing this aspect."

More from Lin, answering my questions on iPhone/iPad usage, content creation, and virtual currency:

Can you run 3Di on iPad and iPhone?

"It is planned. By using the Unity 3D engine as a client, we foresee no obstacles to iPad and iPhone support."

Can users create content in 3Di, similar to Second Life?

"Second-Life-style fully dynamic run-time content creation is not supported, mainly because (as you can guess) supporting that kind of dynamic world makes it really hard to scale the server. Also we feel that one of our main target audiences, casual non-programmers who just want to quickly and easily enhance their web page with a shared 3D space, don't need fully dynamic run-time content creation. For free users we will offer pre-defined templates and contents for avatar and room customization; for professional or enterprise customers, we will provide source code licenses, which they can then use to create any 3D content within Unity."

Is there a currency system?

"Professional or enterprise customers with a source code license can customize the Unity client or server code to interface with external currency APIs as needed."

Worth a look, seems like. Go here to sign up for the beta.

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Comments

[Masami Kuramoto]

It's browser-based, not web-based.

browser-based = running in a browser plugin

web-based = built on web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WebGL, WebSockets...)

[Valiant Westland]

Yet another canned Asian Anime "Virtual World," with virtually (pun intended) no customization available. WOW! (also pun intended)

Cute game... will attract lots of kiddies and people who like to like to engage in Anime "Line Dancing" (be an indistinguishable part of a herd)

Still waiting for the next true worthy successor to Second Life...