3D Platform and Consultancy Vendors

Here are links to vendors, consultants and others who are pioneering efforts in virtual immersive environments. If you know of more resources that should be added, please drop an email to karlkapp@gmail.com

VENDORS

2b3d
A full service virtual worlds company that provides development and consulting services for corporations and educational institutions. The company guides companies to leverage virtual worlds and social networks to provide internet based services.

ActiveWorlds
This platform has been around for a while and has the usual features such as customizing an avatar, online stores and the ability to own a home online. Businesses can license the Activeworlds technology to have their own looking for your own virtual world separate from the main Activeworld's Universe. For educational users, Activeworlds launched The Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU). The AWEDU is an educational community that makes the Active Worlds technology available to educational institutions, teachers, students, and individual programs in a focused setting. Via this community, educators are able to explore new concepts, learning theories, creative curriculum design, and discover new paradigms in social learning.

ProtonMedia
The company offers a virtual environment along with several social networking tools build right in. The flagship product, ProtoSphere is build from the ground up for learning. It contains SCORM compliant interfaces and the ability to have learners appear in virtual classrooms, buildings, airfields and other environments. One of the hallmarks of the product is its inclusion of a virtual doctor’s office and the seamless incorporation of 2D learning content directly into the virtual world and the ability find individuals with similar interests through the social networking application.

Forterra, Inc.
The company offers private, secure virtual worlds with tailored solutions based on industry and customer specific needs. The solutions are designed by Forterra to meet enterprise IT security and privacy needs. The flagship product of Forterra is OLIVE™ (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment). OLIVE is an open, distributed client-server platform for building private virtual worlds. The architecture scales from single user applications up to thousands of concurrent users. The SDK provides an API, licensable 3D content, 3rd party system integrations, and tools to create and edit 3D content and scenarios.

Icarus Studios
The company offers tools and products for createing Massively Multiplayer Oline environments and virtual worlds. The flagship Icarus Platform is actually a suite of products that feature a back end designed to drive a wide variety of front end experiences. The platform is built according to open standards, specifically to be extensible and easily integrated with partner systems. This includes compatibility with industry standard tools such as 3ds Max, Collada, and other 3D applications.

InXpo
InXpo has a virtual ASP show platform. The platform enables businesses to Generate leads, Sell product, Network, Conduct education and Enhance brand awareness via Private and Public virtual shows all in a 3D virtual world. You can have Private Shows focused on promotional selling where the show's host customers and suppliers are the attendees and exhibitors. This model is common in the Distribution market and applicable to selected virtual shows such as Association (members) and Corporate (employees & partners) sponsored virtual events accessed by invitation only. InXpo also hosts and produces Public Shows. Public shows are focused on Lead generation, Networking and Educational themes. These shows typically provide for an open market registration where the potential attendee participation is broad. This model is applicable for many business-to-business virtual shows for publishing and media as well as the consumer shows.

SL Enterprise
While best known for its consumer grid, Second Life now has an Enterprise solution that fits behind the firewall of an organization and can be housed on an organization’s own servers. This version of Second Life has extra layers of security and administrative control in a stand-alone product to allow organizations to explore virtual work as a collaboration and communication tool.unced that we were working on a behind-the-firewall solution in response to customer needs. Formerly known by our internal code name “Nebraska.” and now known as SL Enterprise. It is a secure, content-rich, and flexible enterprise-ready virtual workplace solution built on the 3D virtual world technology platform--Second Life. The SL Enterprise solution enables large organizations to bring distributed colleagues together into a persistent branded immersive space to collaborate, meet, learn, and prototype new offerings, while cutting travel costs and working green.

Teleplace
The company offers private, secure virtual workspace and meeting application. Teleplace provides an environment for distributed teams to communicate and collaborate on multiple applications and documents in real time. Teleplace’s vPresence™ technology securely combines VOIP, chat, and video with a virtual application command center, and can be deployed either behind the firewall or in the cloud. Teleplace enables an organization to create a virtual operations center in which sensitive and confidential information is developed, discussed, and used to make decisions and solve problems, create a space to manage projects, facilitate meetings, conduct corporate training or establish a virtual office.

Metaplace
Is a Flash-based virtual world platform that allows players to buy and sell items, own property and play online games. Because it is Flash-based there is no download required. Another particularly interesting aspect of Metaplace is that it can be embedded into a webpage. This means that a user created "portal" into a virtual world can be accessed from web location. You can add content from other web locations like Amazon or videos as well. Formerly Meteplace was known Areae.

Tandem Learning
Tandem Learning is focused on helping organizations incorporate new technology to make their learning and training solutions more effective. Tandem Learning has the expertise to design creative and practical learning solutions to not only build the knowledge base within a company, but also change behavior to improve organizational performance. Tandem Learning has experience with companies large and small, delivering solutions ranging from traditional e-learning, workshops and print modules to social media, serious games, and immersive learning environments.

ThinkBalm
The mission of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community is to advance adoption of work-related use of the Immersive Internet. The community is focused exclusively on work-related use of the Immersive Internet — virtual worlds and campuses, immersive learning environments and 3D business applications. The company is interested in use cases like learning and training, meetings and conferences, business activity rehearsal, collaborative design and prototyping, collaborative 3D data visualization, remote system and facility management, and human resources management. ThinkBalm has over 280 community members in the ThinkBalm Innovation Community group on LinkedIn. The company encourages anyone with an interest in work-related use of immersive technology to request membership in the group.

Twinity
This is a "mirror-world" so it mirrors real places. So far it is mirroring Berlin and Singapore and London is on the horizon. The world allows for creating an avatar and exploring historical as well as modern day locations. One interesting thing is how the world can contrast things like Berlin today and Berlin during the cold war. This has a number of interesting educational applications when you consider the historical value of exploring what cities and locations looked like in the past and what they look like today. Currently it is in Beta which you can join for free.

Unisfair
The company offers “virtual events” and “virtual environments” for marketing, recruiting and augmenting physical conferences. The flagship product is the virtual event experience. The company offers a number of tools such as microsites—a customizable branded web site tied to the event, virtual venues—a main hall, conference hall, exhibition hall and a resource center, and attendee tools—briefcase to store information, personal profile, and search capabilities.

Venugen
Is an on-demand enterprise web 3D conferencing solution that can be integrated into any web-based offering. The company deploys as a SaaS based web service to consumers and business customers that currently serve the distance learning, social networking, web conferencing, content publishing and live event markets. Founded in 2007, the Company offers a practical application of web 3D technology that can be seamlessly integrated into its customers’ web offerings integrating their 2D content and delivered as an on-demand service. The software is optimized to equip virtual presenters with powerful and intuitive communication capabilities that radically lower event costs and extend market reach.

Virtual Heroes
The company offers creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for Federal Systems, Healthcare and Corporate Training markets. The applications offered facilitate highly interactive, self-paced learning and instructor-led, distributed team training. The flagship product is the Virtual Heroes Advanced Learning Technology (A.L.T.) platform. Major components of this platform include the Unreal® Engine 3 by Epic Games and Dynamic Virtual Human Technology (DVHT) created by Virtual Heroes. DVHT combines electronic computer game technology with a digital human physiology engine, digital pharmacokinetic drug models, accurate biomechanical parameters and artificial intelligence subroutines for realistic virtual humans and environment.

web.alive
This is Nortel's entry into the 3D space. web.alive is an enterprise ready, network secured virtual world platform designed to solve business problems of working together over distances in real time and the costs associated with travel and training on complex equipment or in hazardous areas. The project was formerly known under the codename of "Project Chainsaw" and was built specifically for integrating into business applications already existing within the enterprise. Look for it to break out in the near future. Also check out the MellaniuM web.alive environment at http://ec3v3.projectchainsaw.com or if you would like a balloon ride go the the Tipontia site (sponsored by Ronald Mcdonald House) at http://rmh.projectchainsaw.com.