Second Life vs. Unreal 2004
MellaniuM is a small company that’s representative of a few hundred unsung hero companies of the metaverse, in my opinion. They fill a niche with virtual worlds technology in a way that can have a serious return on investment.
In their case, they create renderings of real-world constructions. You can walk around them, see how they work, and get a feel for what it would be like in physical space. I don’t have to tell you what the implications of that are for engineers, architects, designers, and a host of other professional sectors. They caused a big stir awhile back with a rendering of a furnace - engineers in the metallurgy sector were extremely grateful to be able to see from the inside how everything was supposed to fit together!
Right now they’re actively pursuing virtual renderings of classic architecture, which perhaps isn’t anything new. What I found interesting today, however, is the latest video that featured renderings first in Second Life, and then in the old 2004 Unreal engine. Check it out:
MELLANIUM:ARCHAEOLOGY - Flythroughs of the Theatre of Pompey and the Titanic Environments as created in Second Life and Mellanium’s “Bridge from CAD to UNREAL”
You know, for fans of Second Life this has to be a bit depressing. With the constant push for updates to the Second Life system, years later the whole thing still can’t handle any kind of draw distance and isn’t nearly as smooth as something from way back in 2004. I asked Joe Rigby of MellaniuM about it, and he said that the Unreal installation was rendering that way because it was all on the hard drive.
Technical details aside, something becomes clear here: Second Life has limits to what you can do with it. Second Life’s fanbase does it a massive disservice by trying to push it as the be-all end-all of platforms, and when it fails (because how can one platform really do everything?) the press has a field day.
I guess I was a bit misleading with the title: it’s not about this vs. that, it’s about using the right tools for the right application.
Of course, you already knew that. That’s partially why we’re holding the vBusiness Expo in Forterra’s OLIVE this time around, and why as a company Clever Zebra is officially platform agnostic. MellaniuM’s video, however, is a really clear illustration of why that is, and what the possibilities are elsewhere.
Hmm. I like mine better, but then again, I’m partial to the Futura font. Maybe this 70s/80s funk feel logo is really fitting for a cutting-edge technology show, considering how well technology seems to be dissolving our sense of history as something from “long ago”.
