Multiverse fires off a salvo of virtual world announcements
Multiverse has created a technology for creating virtual worlds that others can customize as they like. The company is announcing a series of deals at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in Los Angeles today.
Each deal is interesting in itself. The first is that Mountain View, Calif.-based Multiverse will develop a virtual world based on James Cameron’s “Titanic” movie. Dubbed “Places in Time: Titanic,” the world will educate its users about the historic Titanic voyage, allowing users to explore the ship’s construction, its voyage, and the undersea wreck. It will incorporate digital footage, computer models, and an encyclopedia of data collected by Cameron. It will be offered for free. Now we can all get a taste of what it was like to sail with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
The Titanic virtual world will be just one part of Multiverse’s collection of virtual worlds, dubbed Multiverse Places, which uses the underlying Multiverse Platform technology for creating and connecting multiple virtual worlds. Multiverse is also building an online game based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Multiverse Places is currently in beta testing. Anyone can access the 3-D virtual worls once they have installed a fairly lightweight Multiverse World Browser, available for free. Multiverse Places will be a connecting hub for a bunch of worlds and it will also have its own scenery: a virtual rendition of New York’s Times Square.
Multiverse has also created an application that runs on Facebook’s platform. Dubbed Multiverse Places, the Facebook app lets users explore the virtual world through the Facebook interface. Users can create their own avatars, or online characters, within Facebook. Friends who are connected to each other in an existing social network such as Facebook will automatically be recognized as friends in the 3-D virtual world. They can communicate through text as well as voice chat and leave messages in friends’ guest books.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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