Australian company launches 3D Internet tool
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An Australian company on Thursday launched a free tool it says offers web browsers a world-first opportunity to view the Internet in three dimensions.
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Melbourne-based ExitReality said its application allows users to turn any regular website into a 3D virtual environment, where an avatar representing them can walk around and meet other browsers viewing the same website.
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Founder Danny Stefanic said that previously only specialized websites such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allowed users to enter a 3D environment.
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“ExitReality goes far beyond that,” he said. “It allows you to view not just one website but the entire World Wide Web in 3D.”
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Browsers can use the tool to turn their social networking pages on sites such as Facebook and MySpace into a virtual apartment, where photographs are displayed on the wall and links to friends are “doors” leading to other apartments.
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Users can customize their flats by “decorating” with 3D versions of couches from stores such as Ikea or downloading an e-jukebox to play music clips stored on their personal page.
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Similarly, using ExitReality on video-sharing website YouTube creates a virtual cinema, where the browser’s avatar sits next to other users also logged on to watch the clip they have selected.
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Stefanic said the tool transformed the web from a solo experience into one that could be shared with friends and other users interested in the same content.
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“The user can see and share experiences with their friends while chatting with them and other people at either their own website or another billion web pages,” he said.
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Stefanic said there was a wealth of 3D content on the Internet that conventional web search engines ignored.
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He said ExitReality made use of this content to render regular websites into 3D.
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A regular two-dimensional news site appears as a 3D streetscape, with stories and photographs highlighted as billboards, while sections such as sport and business are virtual lanes that the user can navigate their avatar to.
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The banner advertisements that normally sit atop the top of websites appear in the virtual sky, trailing from digital aeroplanes.
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Stefanic said such effects made the website more interesting for users, meaning they were more likely to spend more time browsing the page.
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“Users would normally spend no longer than a couple of minutes on a 2D website,” he said. “In a 3D environment, this time can extend to half an hour, creating a huge potential for the website owner to maximize user engagement.”
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The tool, a 3.5 megabyte Internet plug-in that takes about 20 seconds to download, is available for free.
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Stefanic said ExitReality would make money in a similar manner to Google, by generating a mixture of “sponsored” links paid for by advertisers and “organic” non-commercial results when browsers use the search engine.
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