Will Improbable Transform Virtual Worlds? With $20M in New Funding & DayZ Creator on Team... Probably?

Improbable is a new UK-based startup led by some extremely bright alum from Cambridge, and even if you haven't heard of it now, you likely will very soon. Here's their mission:

Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities. Spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine.

That's a bold statement, about as bold as anything Philip Rosedale has said about High Fidelity. But some very smart people are backing them, including venture capitalist Chris Dixon, who just led his firm to invest $20 million in Improbable:

Developers who use Improbable can write code as if it will run on only one machine (using whatever simulation software they prefer, including popular gaming/physics engines like Unity and Unreal), without having to think about parallelization. Improbable automatically distributes their code across hundreds or even thousands of machines, which then work together to create a seamlessly integrated, simulated world.

This actually sounds a lot like Philip's plan to deploy High Fidelity via distributed network, but leave that to one side. Point is $20 million is a lot of money, and Chris Dixon led his firm's investment in Oculus VR before Facebook bought it. And as compared to High Fidelity, Improbable has the lead on content creators so far. Take this endorsement by DayZ creator Dean Hall, who's now creating his game with Improbable:

Last year I met a company called Improbable. My first meeting with Herman Narula, the CEO from Improbable, was one of the most surreal I ever had. The technology I had always wanted and tried to make was finally here. DayZ was born out of my aborted attempts to make a database architecture to support my wild mass multiplayer ideas. But now, I didn’t need a ten year plan to make my grand visions of multiplayer come true. I could do it now.

The last 6 months I have been developing my game on @Improbableio tech have profoundly changed the future of video game dev for me

— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) March 24, 2015

So they've got that going for them. They also got Dave Hillier, who was a senior engineer at Linden Lab (among any other bright minds).

Via Mitch Wagner, who seems to be quite curious too"

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Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

Looked at these guys a few weeks back, it looks extremely interesting indeed, it would be nice if someone could get an interview with them to get some more information.

[Indigo Mertel]

Credits should also go to Ciaran Laval, who was the first to bring Improbable to the attention of the SL community: http://sl.governormarley.com/?p=4752 . I shared several articles on Improbable after Ciaran's post. Very interesting company, must keep an eye on it.

[Wagner James Au]

I first read about it on Dean Hall's blog, myself!

[Fire&Rain]

Just tried High Fidelity.understandable its alpha stage but think it can never be for mainstream user mass.

Example they removed 'text messaging' from the system so because i was born hearing impairment
i am not able to communicate with anyone.

What happens when two users only speak separate non English.

It will never be a place for second life or blockworlds users to go and due to the complexity not even most opensim users who love being in full control will like it.

As for Improbable they should take note for the average human being as a customer..allowing easy simple gratification for each individual is the key to winning as king of the mountain

I'll Wait for the linden next generation world and even then i will still be waiting on the "world builder" video to become reality.

[Metacam Oh]

I too just got my first taste of HiFi. Not willing to write it off or make any long lasting judgements right now ,it is obviously in a very crude alpha stage. Seems like there could be some potential, but also a bit like "WTF?" reaction to it.

[Eddi Haskell]

One thing that I have noticed with all of these new Virtual World and MMO attempts, including alpha High Fidelity, is how cartoonish avatars look compared to Second Life, and how primitive landscapes look. The only Virtual World attempt that looks as good as SL is the now essentially defunct Blue Mars, which is still up if anyone wants to check it out. I have no desire to interact emotionally with facial and body movement communications with anything less than non-mesh Second Life avatars, and certainly not horrendous cartoons. I photograph gorgeous landscapes and builds on Second Life. I do not see anything near what we have in SL in terms of realism, fine texture detail, and realistic looking residents. MMO games can have amazing special effects, but as places to visually hold my interest, they simply are not there. I am not a gamer -- I am sure their sense of what is cool graphically is different than mine. I am also going to guess that Second Life 2.0 (which it will not be called) will not be as fine a visual and graphic product as Second Life, but will be more like High Fidelity to gain investor and acquisition interest. This is why as far as I am concerned, I do not see anything as graphically engaging as Second Life for people like myself with more of a classic arts background for quite some time, even with super duper graphics engines that are now being developed.