Interested in Xulu, a New 3D Virtual World Game Platform?

Xulu is a new 3D virtual world game development platform that's in early Alpha, which I first heard about late last year, because a fellow Linden Lab colleague who helped develop Second Life during its own launch was now a developer for Xulu, and told me about it. The goal, he said then, was to create a world with higher fidelity than SL (both graphically and physically). I haven't heard much about it since, but Joystiq just ran a fairly intriguing article about Xulu by Beau Hindman, the site's resident Second Life fan, and he's fairly impressed:

Many of the creations I visited were erected by players relatively quickly, but the innovation shown was pretty awesome. As many developers know, players will almost always find some new use for a set of tools, uses the devs might not have predicted. Eventually, the toolset will grow beyond loops, ramps and objects. With the eventual addition of a virtual marketplace, 3-D modelers, artists, and amateur animators might be able to make money from creations.

Curiously, the startup has a Kickstarter to help fund the launch of Xulu, which includes a video with pretty cool footage of the world as it stands now -- take a look below:

I'm pretty sure I'll be writing much more about Xulu soon, but meantime share your thoughts about the place in Comments (especially if you've already given it a try).

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Comments

[shockwave yareach]

Why can't this be funded in traditional ways? I can see a kickstarter for getting a rubber baby bumper business going. But Kickstarter is not a replacement for venture capital systems.

[Shug Maitland]

On the other hand shockwave, the longer they can keep the venture capitalists (with their short sighted profit motivation) out of play the more time they have to do it right instead of focusing on the bottom line. Ideally virtual worlds would benefit from being non-profit.

[Hamlet Au]

"But Kickstarter is not a replacement for venture capital systems."

Actually, it is starting to be used that way by gaming startups. The advantage here is the company can get visible and material buy-in from an actual userbase up front -- instead of burning lots and lots of money in the (usually incorrect) gamble that there's a market out there for what they're making.

[Emperor Norton]

Shcokwave @ "Why can't this be funded in traditional ways?"

Because investors want to make money and there is the bloated, stinking corpse of Knights of the old Republic on top of all the other dead and dying MORGs.

[Bavid Dailey]

I see the "standard" limitations apply

All you need is a PC running Windows 7 or Vista with a DirectX10-compatible graphics card, and for now, be located in North America.

That rules me out on two counts.

After watching the video, I can't see much competition for SL in the two main activities of most SL residents - shopping and hanging out.

Who wants to to fashion photo shoots of a plastic stick-person? Perhaps that will evolve in the beta, but no mention of it in the video

(I didn't mention the cybersex angle!)

[Vextra Messing]

These physics games remind me a lot of a video I recall of early SL when it was called Linden World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX465BKfq6Q), seems like Xulu could take some of the same directions SL did. Though it is probably too early to say, I thought I'd share :)

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Looks like they are trying to control content creation in a similar way to Blue Mars, but give it a gaming focus - and use pre-built components as in Cloud Party. Will be another one to watch.

Doesn't look like they will meet their Kickstarter goal so hope they have other funding available to them.

[Xulu Community]

Thanks for the shout out NWN! ~BTW In addition to our Kickstarter campaign, we do have some angels backing us, but fear not our hearts are with the fans and users as our world revolves around them and what they do with it. Kickstarter is a great way to tap into our user base and find out what they want to contribute to the world.

Being apart of Alpha means you get to check it out and give us feedback and suggestions. You can be a part of how Xulu evolves! We spent a lot of time on the core system, physics and technology and now we're planning to boost the front end as quickly as possible.

[Detailing auto]

Xulu looks awsome and i hope will be on top 3d video projects

[Henri Beauchamp]

"All you need is a PC running Windows 7 or Vista with a DirectX10-compatible graphics card, and for now, be located in North America."

Running Linux ==> No go
Residing in Europe ==> No go

Bye bye Xulu !... Good luck !

[GoSpeed Racer]

I'm not getting my confirmation Email when I register. I wonder if they've shut down registration over the weekend?

[Xulu Community]

@GoSpeed Racer: We did not shut down registration over the weekend. Please check your spam folder for the confirmation email. If you still can't find it, please send a quick email to [email protected] (using the email you registered with) asking them to re-send you the confirmation email and we will gladly do so! Sorry for the inconvenience, we're still working out the kinks!

[Renmiri Writer]

Backed.. Hope those angels help, the kickstarter project is woefully underfunded :(

[Renmiri Writer]

Just FYI, Norton is blocking the install of the downloader.

WS.Reputation.1 is a detection for files that have a low reputation score based on analyzing data from Symantec’s community of users and therefore are likely to be security risks. Detections of this type are based on Symantec’s reputation-based security technology.

[Xulu Community]

Thanks Renmiri Writer! We really appreciate. Also we are well aware of the Norton issue and working actively for a way around/through it. Were you able to install anyways? If not, here's an FAQ entry under "Installation/Setup" that should help you:
http://xulu.com/support/faq/