Microsoft Acquires Caligari for Virtual Earth Animation and 3D Web

Microsoft has acquired Caligari Corporation, developer of 3D modeling and animation tools, to work with Microsoft Virtual Earth. Some are looking at this is a counter to Google's inclusion of SketchUp in Google Earth, but I think it goes a little farther. Microsoft already added user-generated modeling from Dassault Systemes, textures from Allegorithmic, and easier integration with 3DVIA and Web-based interaction. The Microsoft announcement doesn't give much away, but Caligari CEO Roman Ormandy blogged that "we will be working with the Virtual Earth team which is in the process of building out an immersive 3D Web experience. [...]You know me and my ambitions for trueSpace and web-based 3D collaboration. Let me tell you right away that there were no compromises I had to make to accommodate our vision within the Virtual Earth platform, in fact I was challenged to increase the scope of our vision. I talked to many people at Virtual Earth group and I am convinced that the technical team behind Virtual Earth has a significant, long-term commitment to the 3D Web."

Comments

[len]

That's a significant acquisition. I've owned a copy of Caligari TrueSpace since the earliest days of VRML. I haven't looked at the latest versions, but the original was very powerful, in fact, more powerful than I could use easily at the time. TrueSpace is more on the high end of professional editing but the costs weren't. It was just hard to learn at that time more because editing in vertices is simply hard.

Good for Roman and his crew. I think it's a good match.