Your2ndPlace

I got an offer to beta test with Vastpark, so I installed its 'Creator' today to have a peek. Unfortunately, it seems that the publishing tools aren't out yet, so it is rather difficult to say what will be possible. At a glance, though, it does look interesting.

You can take a look at the Vastpark features overview, amongst other things - and these do give a good feeling for people interesting in developing their own virtual worlds that already connect - and while Linden Lab and IBM are working together for open standards, Vastpark's architecture is supposed to have built in standards which allow data to go from one Vastpark world to the next. The video is from the screenshot page, and it looks very promising. The physics, as you can see in the video, is rather good.

But the cream of the whole thing for me has been the team blog - particularly The 9 new rules of the virtual web (the only entry so far):

...The vision of an organised single world (or even a world of worlds) where the rules apply throughout might fall nicely into the Second Life fan club’s imaginations, but we don’t think it is going to happen. We all owe SL a debt of gratitude for putting virtual worlds on the agenda. On the other hand, gamers generally look at SL and think it’s a lame place for middle aged furries and academics. Corporations want to run their own meeting places without fear of flying penises. Media companies such as MTV want to enable their audience to get deeper involved in a variety of media properties and they will generally run their universe of virtual worlds quite separately from external influences. There’s no need for a Metaverse...

Worth a read. And worth a look, if you are interested in creating your own virtual world. I'll keep playing with it...

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