TechCrunch writes that Metaversum has received another 4.5m Euros to further develop Twinity, a “virtual world which re-creates the world’s cities for real-looking avatars to wander around.”
Twinity’s owner Metaversum, which has taken a totally different tack to the likes of Second Life, won the backing from existing investors Grazia Equity and Balderton Capital, which joined BFB BeteiligungsFonds Brandenburg from InvestitionsBank des Landes Brandenburg, which is managed by BC Brandenburg Capital and KfW. As you can tell the startup is based in Germany. The funding will be used for development and expanding internationally.
… In Twinity, members use real profiles and realistic-looking avatars. A virtual Berlin is in public beta right now, but a virtual Singapore is set to follow this summer, and London is under construction (much like the real London if you are familiar with its roads).
As someone working in developing true-3d digital cities and interested in this concept from a modeling & simulation standpoint, I bit the bullet, made an account, created an avatar and dropped into virtual Berlin. Having never been to Berlin, I don’t know how the buildings and overall layout compare with the actual city, but a pop-up map tells you where you are. After getting used to the mouse+keyboard interface, I walked around what is essentially a first-person “shooter,” teleported into an address inside a building (no interaction with entrances and egresses – a limitation of this “real” city) and took a peek around. The insides of buildings, even individual users’ apartments, have a high level of detail built in, but not to the point where you can interact with furniture or look out a window and see the building or street across the way.
Granted that much like Second Life, Twitter, Facebook or any social client, this medium is ripe for marketing (I was immediately inundated with travel adverts, movie posters & MySpace-quality music) and making hundreds of “friends” you’ll never meet in real life. Yet, it is a great way to get a feel for an existing city without traveling there and has implications for defense (a Twinity-like Baghdad or Kabul with simulated human interaction could provide our troops with advance situational awareness), urban planning (virtually put up and take down infrastructure) and the various navigation and intelligence needs addressed by interactive-at-any-scale digital cities. The only thing that can make these virtual worlds more interesting is dynamic buildings and conditions, i.e. the introduction of thunderstorms, tornadoes, rising sea levels, flooding, terrorist attacks, demolitions or Godzilla and their effects on Greater Metropolitan Virtual Singapore or Digital London. Of course, this requires accurate, multiphysics modeling acting on material properties built into solid models, but that is where “virtual” ought to be headed.
Geek moment: As a huge fan of Snowcrash, which popularized the term “avatar,” I can’t help but notice the company is called Metaversum. Perhaps this will be a better environment than Second Life in which to create my virtual study filled with electronic books.
TechCrunch | Twinity scoops a further €4.5m to develop 3D cities
Update: This post brought up the difference between a virtual world and a digital city. I would refer to Twinity Berlin as a virtual world made to look like the real world, while every aspect of a digital city (all the way from the flyover cityscape to a window) is properly georeferenced and fully interactive to the extent that street-building entrances are navigable, accurate views from windows are rendered and the entire city (and its buildings) can be stored in an information model. Right now, virtual worlds look amazing, while digital cities are more representationally accurate. The merger of the two would be ideal.
Twinity is not a mirror world. Users can create fake apartments, pubs, etc all over all the suposed real places they have. If you ask me they are no different from 2nd life who has more interesting content.
I visited both their virtual berlin and Singapore and found a lot of elements which are not real. I have apartments in their shopping area which people can come visit and they are in no way a representation of the real places . Explore at your own peril.
I dont have a good understanding of their business and application.
I tried to log into Twinity but no success. Maybe the next time. In the meantime I continue in Second Life where there is a sense of community and not a feeling of Ghost town. There are six new sims : Green Park, City of Westminster, City of London, Regents Park, Fulham, and Notting Hill. For address information of these new places, spaces on sale, and free online training for people who has never being into Second Life, please click on the following link http://vLondon.SL and send a request message.
The concept of Twinity sounds interesting and I will try again soon.
Yah…. When I first read this, it was damn cool.
But upon exporing it , it still has much room to be consider real.
I believe the technology is far from real.. Buildings still look cartoonish and user interface still crappy..
Worse of all its a Ghost town. How real is that?
@MVD Actually, when I played around with it some more, I was able to get into buildings with views of actual geography outside. Still, I wish you could walk from a building up stairs and into people’s apartments instead of being “teleported” there (and wait while the system reloads).
Odd that you couldn’t see accurate city view from the windows — you mention it twice. My ‘virtual’ Berlin apartment has lovely views across the Pariser Platz to the Brandenburg Gate. It’s my favorite part of the platform, actually!