Jarod Godel

I am so pissed off right now, because I'm not a Mac user.

Unity3D is the tool I've wanted Second Life to be for three years now, and I'm barred from playing with it because I use a PC. Aurgh!!!



Anyway, I'm posting this here, because Unity3D really does look like the kind of tool that one could use to design their own virtual world with. Has anyone else heard of it? Has anyone else used it?

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Kristian

Not yet but I'm suddenly glad I dropped all that money on my new mac.

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Ben Hoark

I downloaded the trial and had a play with it a while back. It seems very good, very easy to get into, but I didn't have enough time to find out about the networking side of it. The web-browser plug-in is completely cool. Have you seen the Island demo?

UNITY: Tropical Paradise Demo

I am seriously tempted to shell out the money for the full thing and see what can be done.

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Khamon

But Jardon, how will you connect this to Second Life?

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Jarod Godel

Insert boot up ass.

Cristiano

Cory Edo pointed this out to me the other day - any word on a Windows version? It seems odd that they would preclude such a large audience, when in turn Mac users have the ability to run a Windows version.

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Ben Hoark

I'm not quite sure what you mean by audience. Unity is basically a game-development platform which can produce executables for multiple platforms (including Windows). It just so happens that the networking facilities have prompted some people to see Unity as a possible way of creating a Second Life equivalent. Whether it is actually feasible is quite another question (on the Unity forums I've noticed a couple of questions that seem to be leading this way, and the Unity tech guys were actually rather sceptical).

Windows itself is already well-served with plenty of decent game-development systems -- it's nice to have a Mac-based one for a change.

Cristiano

I mean developer audience, not general audience.

Persephone Milk

Jarod, I am curious what you feel this product offers that would make it suitable for virtual worlds development. I read through the information on the web site and it does appear to be a powerful and easy-to-use development tool for games, and multiplayer games development. It has creative support for a lot of things that I wish Second Life did, such as meshes, text and audio. But thinking specifically about the problems that Linden Labs has now with Second Life, in terms of networking and scalability, I really don't see that this product even trys to provide a solution. Perhaps I am not looking deep enough. What gets you so excited?

EDIT: I tried the web demo of the tropical island and I will say that was very impressive. Took mere seconds to load and it was a very lush presentation.

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Joannah Cramer

UNITY: Features – Advanced Physics

eat your heart out, LL

Jarod Godel

From a few minutes in their IRC channel, and a quick look at their open job position, I get the impression they're working on a Windows version.

Jarod Godel

You answered your own question...

I'm not interested in building a fifty sim grid of my own, I just want a sim I can run on my desktop that has to support, maybe, half a dozen friends at any given time. Unity3D, from what I can tell, isn't trying to sell a world, it's trying to sell a tool for building worlds. Sometimes you have to run before you can walk, but more often you have to take baby steps. When it comes to virtual environments, I want a company that offers me the ability to take baby steps. Let me setup my world first, and then I'll worry about it becoming popular.