Interreality Corporation Peter Amstutz tetron@interreality.biz http://interreality.biz -- * Is online 3D the next big thing? * For a lot of people, it already is * Online 3D -> billion dollar industry * Extension of the MMOG craze into social spaces * Multiuser 3D offers * immersion * collaboration * chance to re-think the web * Current market is characterized by: * Platform lock-in, at the mercy of one company, fragmented * Compare with online communities (Compuserve, Prodigy, BBSs) prior to the WWW * High barriers to entry: expensive to build your own platform * Can license existing proprietary platforms, but are either severely restricted, or are SDKs that require experienced developers * So far only used for entertainment * Business, corporate, educational applications relatively unexplored -- * Need an open platform * Define: network protocols, data models, computational models * Provide a spiffy implementation * Standards should not be threatening: 90% of the work of an online 3D world is still "content" * The 3D equivalent of the web browser * Streaming data * Application is extensible (i.e., current presentation) * Provides the platform that enables entirely new business models * Need open source * Present market forces are anti-standards * open source is neutral * Will attract early adopters (academics, open source hackers) * Free software wins -- * Create a company to support development * Apply professional discipline, attention to detail * Create a self-sustaining organization that will stick around * Compare Mozilla Corporation * Profit motive helps keep us focused * Free software is our competitive advantage * Contributions from community (bug reports, code) * Constantly in touch with users * Can leverage huge base of code to aid development * Build relationships with other projects * Revenue from services * Hosting * Support, contracting, consulting * Transactions -- * User community * Word-of-mouth, network effects * Apache has 60% of web server market, and an advertising budget of zero * Web forums, blogs, tech sites (slashdot) * Most tend to be sympathetic to open source efforts * See out communities of interest and engage them * Technical conferences * Meet people physically * Tell people what we're doing * Submit papers and give talks -- * Second Life * Open client, no open server yet * Prickly relations with open source community so far (proprietary voice chat, for example) * Still a "walled garden" * Croquet * Neat, pretty advanced, getting some press * Written in Smalltalk, obscure * VRML/X3D * Real ISO standard * No multiuser features in the standards at all. * Verse * Focused on 3D modeling * Ignores pretty much everything outside the 3D rendering pipeline -- * Peter Amstutz, Reed Hedges * Have worked together developing VOS for 8 years * Peter * Masters Degree in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst * 2 years professional software development experience in the area of multi-agent simulation * Reed * Bachelors in Communications, minor in Computer Science University of Massachusetts, Amherst * 3 Years professional software development on robotics * Have put together a community of developers through our web site and mailing list * Regularly receive bug reports and code contributions * Being able to dedicate full time to VOS also means the contributer community can be leveraged more efficiently -- * Now a timeline showing what we hope to achive over the next three years. * We've gone through multiple prototypes and learned a lot about the advantages and pitfalls of different designs. * Most of the design work has already been done * Will be able to hit the ground running and immediately start writing code towards the actual product. Not a prototype, a product. * First look at six months, a product that people can use at twelve. * Point of reference: what you're looking at took about three years to complete, working evening and weekends. Just imagine how much we could do if we're focused on it full time? -- * Money: We don't need much, although this is conservative. * Much more significant growth than predicted could come as soon as the second year * We expect things to take off in the third year * So really this is an incredibly conservative growth estimate * Minimal resources required also means the break-even point is relatively easy to reach * Services like hosting have a huge potential multiplier factor: a few developers/admins, a rack of servers, and thousands of paying users... * For example 5000 users paying $15/month times 12 months is $900,000. That's covers the initial investment right there. * Or: 5 people billing at $100/hr for an entire year is $1,000,000 * Once we've created the market, we'll own it for a while before people notice. We can stay one step ahead. -- * We can do it! But we need your investment to enable us to focus on solving these hard technical problems, and create new markets.