What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came?
What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came? That seems to be the question facing the makers of a 3D virtual world that I recently discovered.
I was tinkering around with evolver.com a 3D avatar maker that hopes to create a common avatar for multiple web based 3D worlds. I was using it to create a new avatar for facebook, and I saw one of the “transport” options was something called
The name sounds atrociously lame. Sounds like a chat website for lonely emo teenagers. Who would want to go to a website like that? Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. The website was as lame as I thought it would be, featuring lots of pics of good looking college kids with dumb smiles on their face, and a video of some blonde chick reading marketing dribble from a teleprompter.
My first reaction was “I want no part of this”, my second was to see just how lame of a 3D chat this was going to be, like slowing down to look at an auto accident, or smelling expired milk before throwing it away.
So I create an account, go to the 3D chat page and pick a beach setting. My expectation dropped even further when I saw the 3D Chat runs in a web browser (remember Google Lively?). I was ready for the worst, and then…
OMG!!!
This was completely unexpected! A beautiful fully developed 3D world with awesome graphics, easy to use navigation, decent evolver avatars, that runs in a freaking web browser!
There are also vehicles to ride, and about a half dozen environments to explore. The only thing I didn’t try out was the chat feature as I could never find anyone else online. I pretty much had the place to myself, which was kind of sad.
This is a quality 3D Virtual World that impressed me way more than Blue Mars, and it is too bad it is buried behind crappy marketing.
Further reasearch indicates that the virtual world is based on the Unity game engine. The friends hangout “Island Paradise” is identical to the demo “Tropical Paradise” as seen on unity3d.com. Apparently some of the other places at friends hangout consist of other demos, or worlds created from arteria3d.com.
A little whois research indicates that friendshangout.com was registered over five years ago by a company that has a bunch of similarly designed websites, which tells me it is some off the shelf web template they are using.
So someone has managed to combined cheap avatars from evolver.com, with a cheap web based 3D gaming engine from unity3d.com (was $200, now available for free), and put up a cheap website with a domain they already owned.
If they were to actually get some professional web designer with a decent social network web system, and buy a decent domain name, and promoted it, they may have something really cool. 
There is not enough content here for long term interest, but in the mean time, I am enjoying what is here.
It is a nice place to visit on the remote outskirts of the Metaverse.
Thanks for the info, and getting the jump on exploring this world (or world combo) for us. It definitely seems like a nice place. I wonder what virtual world users are actually looking for these days? good graphics, low lag, or practicality in every day use?
I explored Friends Hangout some time back and you definitely nailed it on your review. For a while I had one of their portals on my blogsite but to be honest I got tired of hearing that woman talk every time I went to my site so I ended up taking it off. I never thought about putting it on my self named site and going further with it. Great idea! Also, thanks for the update on Unity3d. The last time I checked on them they were still charging. I’m adding their download to my list of things to do!
Nice article, I felt the same when I checked out the world.
“I wonder what virtual world users are actually looking for these days? good graphics, low lag, or practicality in every day use?”
Graphics alone I think won’t do it, users have to have something fun or creative to do apart from sightseeing?
I’m looking for a real life place to wander in…a place to make friends and use, perhaps, as a low-cost dating service.. ha ha. Seven years in there.com and for it to suddenly come to its’ demise, was a tragic state for all. The head CEO, in his desire for yet more wealth is a tragic waste of a persons life. He’s already wealthy and never has to ever work again so , if not in pure greed, what more did he need? The answer is he is a very sick and disalusioned personality.
I totally agree with Leslie. I’m another THERE persona that was cast out to sea with hardly a moments notice… what a bummer!! I’ve been to about 4 – 8 other SIMs and none has the fluid movement and fun that THERE had…….. not even the higher tech Second Life. Friends Hangout seems like it might have potential…. it just seems like… people are just washing up on the shore… trying to find other living souls to rebuild and gather again. This is VERY interesting. If Friends Hangout turned out to be as fun and fluid as THERE it would obliterate ALL the other “dynamic movement” SIMs.