Potentially a mind-blowing development, but it’s still vaporware

LivePlace.com has just released a video showing a new product they’re developing called “City Space”.  Wow!

City Space is a 3D world, somewhat similar to Second Life.  Users can create any content they want, and the world is persistent for others in the future (changes you make to the world will remain there).  The “wow” factor is two-fold:

1 – The graphics are absolutely mind-blowing. They look very, very realistic.   Not only that, but the entire world is alive.  If you see a big skyscraper, every window is the portal to an office, which is fully rendered, and can even be seen through the window (depending on light, curtains, etc).  You can drop a video clip on the wall for everyone to watch, or draw a sketch with people looking on.

2 – This amazing world will work on virtually any PC, and many mobile devices.  No downloads, no plug-ins.  All of the rendering will be done server-side using the OTOY engine, so your client simply needs to stream the graphics (just like streaming a video).  I’m not sure how they can pull that off without even using a plug-in, but that mantra was repeated a few times during the video.

At this point, there is no launch date, and really no information beyond the video.  The video is absolutely amazing, but I’m anxious to get a bit more hard evidence to see how this really works.

Watch the video below — it’s well worth your time.