Embed virtual worlds

Metaplace, a service that lets you design your own virtual worlds, has now launched embedding, so that you can stick your world (or your friends' worlds) on your website.

* You can use it as a gathering space for your community -- on forums, for example, or as this user has done, as a way to foster community for her comics shop.

* You can make it the central gathering spot for a Ning community, as 3DSquared has done for the Digital Workforce Intensives in Louisiana.

* If you're a musician, you can hold your live shows right there on your site, complete with streaming audio and an audience, as Grace McDunnough plans to do.

* Over time, crazier uses will come about, such as this experiment in using virtual worlds to annotate the real world by embedding a Metaplace world on a geolocation in Google Maps.

Embed virtual worlds anywhere

(Disclosure: I am an advisor to Metaplace)

[#1 posted by bondjamesbond, June 30, 2009 12:18 PM]

slow, boring... no thanks...

[#2 posted by Anonymous, June 30, 2009 12:22 PM]

no, um, hug animations....

[#3 posted by Anonymous, June 30, 2009 12:28 PM]

Everything about a Metaplace world is customizable/changeable. It is a UGC platform for people to make their own worlds. All the art, all the behavior, all the look & feel, the avatars, everything. So a world is as boring as its creator made it, basically. :)

[#4 posted by Avram / Moderator, June 30, 2009 1:17 PM]

Yes, hug animations! Animated characters need love too!

[#5 posted by js7a, June 30, 2009 1:49 PM]

O3D (the open source remnants of Google's failed Lively) should make a more interesting platform than Adobe Flash.

FREE DMTRY SKLYAROV!!!

...ahem...

[#6 posted by Anonymous, June 30, 2009 1:52 PM]

Also in the 'embeddable world' front: http://www.whirled.com from the people who brought you puzzle pirates.

[#7 posted by merreborn, June 30, 2009 2:45 PM]

O3D (the open source remnants of Google's failed Lively) should make a more interesting platform than Adobe Flash.

The flash client is theoretically only the first of several.

If you want to start work on an 03D client, I'm sure they'd love it ;)

[#8 posted by Anonymous, June 30, 2009 10:15 PM]

Jeez, for a minute I thought they had an "embedded VR" setup, i.e., a way to insert VR items into real-world locations using GPS and VR goggles.

And it was called "Meatplace".

Pant, pant, pant, I'm better now, but I'm going to watch Energizer Bunneh for a while.

[#9 posted by Anonymous, June 30, 2009 11:28 PM]

Kinda like when LambdaMOO (operating out of Xerox PARC, natch) added a translation-layer so you could read it over this newfangled World Wide Web.

I was there, so I am old. {sigh}

[#10 posted by Anonymous, July 1, 2009 11:05 AM]

I added hugs, they are on the marketplace now. :)

[#11 posted by Aneurysm, July 1, 2009 2:53 PM]

I must say that when I saw the first post on MetaPlace @ BB, I immediately rushed to sign up for the Alpha, which grandfathered me into the Beta.

I was so anxious to get my hands on this. The way it was described, it sounded like a cross between a gaming design tool, and your own personal web-embedded Second Life. I kept thinking that this would be something akin to Gibsonian cyberspace, that this would be the first step toward McKenna's hope that VR would allow us to show each other the contents of our minds.

Then I played the Beta...and it was lame.

The graphics are akin to what someone would find on a late 90's shareware CD (not the 3D that was promised), the perspective is locked to 4 views (a la Sim City 2000). I forgave the controls and the character builder as it was a beta after all, but essentially it was like playing a really horrible version of The Sims.

In conclusion: MetaPlace = FAIL

[#12 posted by Anonymous, July 3, 2009 3:41 PM]

There is no plugin-free way of getting 3d onto the web at any decent caliber yet. And I'll cheerfully hold our 2d graphics up to anything in Flash out there.

Metaplace is client-agnostic with an open protocol, however, so if you want a higher fidelity renderer, well, someone can write one. :) You won't be able to embed it on the web in an accessible way, though. Not yet anyway...