A Brief Tour of WebFlock

It's certainly "interesting times" in the Metaverse. As the anti-hype (mostly against Second Life) ends, a flood of tools is appearing on the market, most of them trying to "avoid the mistakes Second Life made" in the opinion of their developers. Three or four weeks ago, with only a few days between the announcements, Vivaty, Lively and WebFlock hit the market, for example, three platforms which all try to integrate a virtual 3D environment into web pages.

Maybe the most interesting of the three newcomers is WebFlock. (More about the reasons below. ) But WebFlock isn't openly available. So I pestered an old friend at the Electric Sheep from SL days long enough, that he felt obliged to give me a short test drive. After that session, I have to say: yes, WebFlock actually is a very interesting competitor in this market.

First, because it was developed by the Electric Sheep, the largest virtual worlds agency of them all. Second, because WebFlock promises to create 3D rooms into web pages without an (additional) plugin. WebFlock is based on Flash, which comes pre-installed with most web browsers these days, while Vivaty and Lively (as well as most other competitors) need an additional PlugIn, which must be installed - something that many users are very reluctant to do. Using Flash places some severe limits on what can be achieved in a 3D world, though. Thats, why I was so eager to explore WebFlock myself.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, webflock, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d