Interview: Terence Mak On Mirror Worlds with Virtual Worlds

We reported last month on a new company out of Singapore, Virtual Worlds, aimed at creating a mirror world for the travel industry. With giants like Microsoft and Google already involved in the space, and investing in new arms for their mapping companies that seem aimed at virtual worlds, it seems like a tight squeeze. Director of the Board Terence Mak, though, thinks he's found a niche. "We are quite different from Google Earth today," said Mak. "I see it as a mapping technology. They currently do not have avatars online. Whereas in our platform, besides the map, we have the ability to do social interaction and networking and play online games. You've seen Amazing Race? We could do that kind of scenario and entice people to learn about a country through quests. When people finish walking around a place and checking out the heritage sites they get a chance to win tickets sponsored by airlines or hotels."

Also, Mak has no interest in mapping the whole world. He wants to provide high-end content for specific locations. Instead of a map of the middle of Texas, he'd want educational quests centered on the Alamo.

"That's something we could do. We have it today," Mak continued. "This is not just looking at the sky or the map. You can walk around, interact, start quests and get information. We have a few quests, one about visiting exotic places. It will bring you through all the places you need to go to. You want to eat local food, extravagant food, whatever you want. We look at it as targeted marketing. We use gaming concepts to educate people."

How To Go About It

Mak doesn't wasn't to go the Second Life route of creating a platform and leaving content up to individual developers, but neither does he want to go it alone.

"Basically we are looking for partners in every country in the world to build this thing," he explained. "Even mapping only the tourism spots is too much. Just in Texas there are so many places we could map. In China there are about 28,000 places we could build for tourism. Adding all the details in is a massive job. Number 1, we're definitely looking for partners. Number 2, because we're building a mirror world, we need to be very, very firm about the quality of the contentWe want to step in and make sure one place and the other is as similar as possible. And we want the consumer to step in and have the experience in one country be as close to another country as possible. We want the UI to be homogeneous and something they're familiar with."

That content sounds like it should be very deep--down to the level of re-creating palm trees in their relative positions of featured hotels or tourist spots. Towards that end, Mak says the platform is able to integrate existing 3D content from other locations. He doesn't want to hype user-generated content, but instead relies on existing architectural models.

"We have an engine that supports commercial 3D drawings," he explained. "If you talk about it from an architectural view, most buildings have pre-drawn objects somewhere. We could look at the files they have to import the files they have with the exception of some ancient sites. But in most modern cities, like Singapore for example, most of them have drawings in 3D. We would be able to import them and do some minor touch ups and embed them in our system. That allows us to do a very rapid build up and as life like as possible. We don't have to start from scratch."

While he won't disclose details, Mak did say that the engine isn't entirely built from scratch and that  Virtual Worlds has engaged in partnerships for some elements. If those are commercially adopted already, it will make it easier for businesses and shops to incorporate their own interiors--the extent of user additions that Mak wants to allow for now.

If nothing else, he would add that the client should run on "any computer that's been around in the marketplace for the past three years" and currently supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista. Linux and Mac versions are already in the works.

The Business of Travel

"We are currently only interested in building a tourism platform," explained Mak. "This is already a very big project, and we want to make sure we do a good job on one thing and one thing only. As more companies come on board, we will add more capabilities."

He won't disclose details for the future of the company, but he does add that there are possibilities to expand past tourism. Right now, though, the capability of live updates is tied to the existing content goals.

"We can integrate to weather systems, so if a certain location is snowing, in the mirror world we can do snow," Mak explained. "We can also do live updates and snapshots of places. You can be visiting a place in Singapore and go to a sidewalk where there's a TV and see what's going on in the actual place. It could be a Web cam or pictures or sending a message to your family."

While the world will have social elements, the point, Mak says, is the content. The engine supports monetary transactions, and the current build supports the ability to buy and sell, but the first launch likely won't include the ability. Mak says the company needs to determine how to roll that out. In the mean time, he's hoping to partner with tourism businesses to add to the world.

"Tourism is just an additional interesting content," he said. "We felt like tourism sites have a lot of attraction because everyone travels. It gives them something to talk about. Most social worlds are just a place to chat and maybe make friends. We're trying to give a new element to the world 'social.' Now you're chatting or making friends in Singapore. And you can bring them down. It's another level of discussion."

Finding a Niche

Other worlds, like Second Life, have seen interest from the tourism industry in bringing their business to the existing audience. Various official governments and tourism boards have also opted for a space in the virtual world. However, Mak says that a dedicated environment is more attractive.

"We are talking to tourism boards in Second Life and they are thinking about moving across," he said. "We are having discussions with people. I hate to be speaking bad about anyone, but I think our strengths are in our realism. For tourism companies, you don't get confused as to who is real and who is not. And the interface is just a point and click interface. It's for the guy on the street."

Part of the strength, Mak says, is in the technical side. He says the platform can apparently support up to 15,000 users per cluster and that the world will have a toned-down UI that doesn't require users to use the arrow keys while clicking around or to run any scripts. Also, the world apparently won't render structures in primitive shapes, building a tower up from circles and squares, but as a whole, hopefully decreasing load times.

The other benefit is environmental.

"The primary reason we're focusing on mirror worlds, to be frank we've been looking at this for the past three years, is that what we feel is lacking in the current worlds like Second Life is that you find a mix of realism and fantasy," said Mak. "Go in to Second Life and find Mexico. You find a few hundred Mexicos or a few hundred New Yorks. Which is real and which is not? That's why I still believe we are the world's first mirror world. If I show you Mexico, you find Mexico. You can't find two. In other platforms, you find a mixture."

Mak says the company is working on a product in Asia  currently and that we can expect to see something later this year.

Comments

[Mistermr]

Cool, don't forget the pizza joints!

[joy]

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