Discussing Unity, Realxtend, Opensim, Blue Mars and Second Life
This blog is all about discussing architecture and design in virtual worlds – so lets discuss it!
When worlds collide – MMO’s, game development platforms and the built environment
The barrier to entry just keeps getting lower for for architects, engineers and construction professionals to further employ MMO (massively, multi-player, online) environments in design collaboration, education, visualization and architectural discourse. Here are a few bits and pieces of the puzzle that I’m keeping an eye on.
Spherical worlds in the new realxtend viewer release
Realxtend continues to innovate, as reported by Jani Pirkola at maxping: “The virtual earth has been flat. Now that is about to change. Is it going to be a ball? Yes, but not as you would think! realXtend surprises us by defining a new model where the avatars...realXtend, VastPark, Unity3D
As we await the much anticipated launch of the new realXtend viewer, this teaser clip gives us a glimpse into what is to come. What’s cool about this is that realXtend features the capacity to importing Ogre .mesh format. With some know-how, just about any...Worlds merging: A video response from X3D
A few weeks ago, I posted a video showing how my Revit model was imported into realxtend by Visibuild. It generated lots of interest and traffic, suggesting to me that model interoperability is an important priority for lots of us. Shortly after posting that my...
Models from Revit Imported into a Multi-User, Realtime, Collaborative Virtual World
It happened exactly 1 year, to the day I first contacted Jani Pirkola former project manager of the Realxtend team. I heard rumors late in 2007 that they had goals to accelerate the development of the ‘opensim’ platform, and one of their priorities was 3D...AIArchitect Covers Architecture in Virtual Environments
The AIArchitect online resource for members of the American Institute of Architects recently published an excellent story about architecture in Second Life (read it here). In it, they talk about the work of Guillermo Vasquez de Velasco, Assoc. AIA, who is the dean of...Importing Sketchup Models from Google 3D Warehouse into realXtend
This looks very promising! I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet, but I had already imported models into realXtend using the Ogre mesh import, and this looks a whole lot easier than it was the last time I tried! Read the step by step tutorial on importing a...Casting Shadows
These past few months have brought about a rather exciting surge of announcements and renewed energy around the OpenSIM project, the open source virtual world platform. Though it is still alpha level code, the future potential is obvious, especially for those of us...