Following our First Steps in Second Life post we have created a similar movie documenting our entry into the Virtual World system known as ‘There‘

In the same way as Second Life, ‘There’ now has free registration so you can log into the environment without having to type in your credit card details. ‘There’ is described as ‘an online getaway where you can hang out with your friends and meet new ones–all in a lush 3D environment that’s yours to explore!’ As the movie illustrates ‘There’ has a more cartoony look than Second Life and is all the better for it. There is also the option of ‘Premium Membership’ for $9.95 which includes Voice Chat and various other upgrades, although the free account is quite adequate for first steps and getting to know the world.

As ever with these worlds we are interested in importing our own objects, we are looking into this and if we manage it will of course post details along with another movie. ‘There’ is free and if you look beyond the ‘fun’ element and into the possibilities for collaborative visualisation and architecture then it offers a number of interesting options.

The interesting part of the game City Life is its rendering engine and the ability to import your own buildings direct from 3D Max.

We had to mention that first as loading a game up during office hours has been greeted with calls of ‘he gets paid to play games’ and ‘I thought only 10 year olds used video games’. You would of thought researchers, especially in this field, would know better but sometimes you just have to shrug and realise that your on to something that others can’t see.

If we can load some of Virtual London models into City Life and use the game engine to automatically populate it and allow real-time flythroughs then the ‘game’ suddenly becomes interesting. The movie above illustrates our first steps in City Life and should provide an insight into the visualisation possibilities.

Now if this render engine linked with Google Earth? This is how we would like to zoom into cities with the locations populated with avatars – a mix of Google Earth/City Life and Second Life.. thats the killer application for city visualisation.