The Emerging 3D Web and The Metaverse

What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? What happens is the Metaverse.

The Blog of Marc Wallace and friends, 3pointD.com reports on this emerging 3D connectivity — a phenomenon sometimes called the metaverse — in all its manifestations. From virtual worlds like Second Life to applications like Google Earth, from cool mapping hacks that link up real-world locations to new ways of creating virtual ones, from concepts like folksonomy to the culture of online worlds, find news and feature articles about all that and much more at 3pointD.com, every day.

A nice example of the emerging 3D Web is AjaxLife - an AJAX based SL client by Katharine Berry. It enables us to experience the 3D Second Life Grid in a web browser! Imagine this in a 3D Web browser and 3D display and you have a virtual window into another universe.