Metaverse One

Charting unknown territory is definitely nothing new for the Danes. Danish companies such as Vestas , Lego , and Unity3D are conquering their industries in a way that would make their viking ancestors proud. Now entering this group is Playingmondo , a platform for creating and interacting with location based experiences. For those not familiar with location-based services , the Playingmondo app, available for iPhone and Android, uses the built-in GPS in the mobile phones to allow users to interact with digital content created around real world locations. This content can be viewed in a variety of ways including augmented reality. Already there are numerous Playingmondo playgrounds all over Denmark and in other countries, and even though a majority of the experiences are games, there are also experiences focused on health, education, tourism, and cultural heritage. The Playingmondo website is where you can join a community to find virtual playgrounds near you, meet up with your team m...

The Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica . Originating in the Yucatán around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras. Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations, the Maya developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing. The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. This ancient civilization has captured the imagination of millions and one web3D builder named Ladin who decided to recreate elements of this culture to share with the 3D web. Ladin has built an incredible website The World of Ancient Maya in Virtual Reality . This site is a great mixture of 2D and 3D information and the way more websites should be. One can navigate the 2D site like any other with the option to explore...

I came across these two examples on how Humanities, Art, and Natural Sciences are adopting 3D web open standard technology for preserving and sharing cultural heritage in Rome. 1. Rome Reborn - Rome Reborn is an international initiative whose goal is the creation of 3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the depopulation of the city in the early Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 550). Starting on June 11, 2007, when the model of ancient Rome was first shown publicly at a ceremony in Rome, a number of video fly- thru and static images of the model were posted for free public viewing online. In August, 2008, the alpha version of Rome Reborn 2.0 was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. In November, 2008, the latest version of Rome Reborn 1.0 was published to the Internet in Google Earth. On 12 November 2008, Michael Jones ( CTO of Google Earth) in partnership with Joel...