Nortel Licenses Unreal Engine for Web.alive; Opening Up To Development Community

Nortel announced today that it had licensed the Unreal Engine 2.5 from Epic Games for its Web-based virtual world platform, web.alive. Using Epic's great-looking gaming engine for a browser-based, business-oriented virtual world platform is an interesting choice that could set web.alive apart from other technologies, both from an aesthetics standpoint and, as Arn Hyndman, web.alive chief architect, points out in a podcast with Epic VP Mark Rein, development options.

"We're planning on opening up to a wider development community," said Hyndman. "We're hoping that the huge community of people who know and love Epic's games and have developed for them will bring those skills over to develop things for web.alive as well."

Just from a business standpoint, the graphics may prove appealing for companies looking to use web.alive as a consumer-facing tool. While the platform was initially discussed as a largely enterprise-focused collaboration and training tool, today Lenovo announced that it was piloting an e-commerce program in web.alive.

In general, it may spur innovation on the platform. Rein noted that Unreal already has a widely accepted set of tools and assets available for developers.

"When they sit down to build an environment for web.alive, they can pull in resources from other companies, from individuals on the Web," said Rein. "They can get people who may previously have thought, 'Gee, I can't figure this out,' to use these tools. And customers could potentially create their own environments just spending a few hours learning these tools."

When Nortel debuted web.alive this summer, it announced that it had also acquired DiamondWare for integrated voice, which had also previously made strong in-roads into the gaming industry.

Comments

[Joe Rigby]

Now we need to integrate "realistic" environments to commence WEB 3D
http://mellanium13.blogspot.com/