Last week Second Life introduced HTML, allowing webpages to be displayed within the client on 3Dobjects, but It didn’t take long for the web to retaliate introducing ‘Virtual Environments on a Webpage’. Using Flash Papervision3D (No special plug-in required but Flashplayer 8.0, installed on 95% of the systems) Nike created the Virtual Hotel Suite XX3 - A tribute website to Basketball legend Michael Jordan.
Of course it doesn’t allow any of the key features of Second Life such as content creation - but it is able to copy one important aspect: Immersion. When you choose the full-screen option, you are walking in this virtual suite. Though the site consists mostly of clickable portraits displaying pictures you do get this feeling of presence, walking amongst ‘the stars’ (even though I didn’t recognise any of the other faces besides Jordan), a lot more than any 2D website could convey.
The interface feels remarkably smooth, click and drag to walk, easy full screen options, the site is browsable and has both link and 3D navigation, an the no download/plug-in/install required makes it extremely accessible. I have already seen a demo of a social application of Papervision using the earlier mentioned ‘paperworld‘ open source engine:
“If you can do it in Papervision, you can do it multiplayer over the network with PaperWorld.”
Posted on: March 11, 2008 | Share on:
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nelly on 
ciera on
A.T.
said on March 13th
but Flash… it is not web, it is non-searchable blob “content”…
Are client-based worlds being replaced? | Digado said on August 4th
[...] longer ‘flat’. They have added the third dimension with the help of Flash techniques (Papervision or Alternativa) and Java, creating 3D spaces inside the browser. The most recent update of Flash [...]