ONE SMALL STEP FOR MELLANIUM: ONE TITANIC LEAP FOR VIRTUAL WORLDS

NORTEL's web.alive is now hosting a MellaniuM environment which not only contains models with well over one million polygons but also supports anti-aliasing for superbly rendered immersive quality and can accomodate 300 concurrent avatars. With just one click on http://ec3v3.projectchainsaw.com/ you can be walking around this trial domed environment. There have been innumerable calls for and announcements about virtual worlds to support the importation of meshes, which allows for development of truly realistic and architecturally accurate environments. NORTEL's web.alive is a web-browser embedded client which is based on the UNREAL 2.5 platform and is capable of dealing with models generated with static meshes in the millions of polygons. So the ultimate question which must be addressed now is not whether a virtual world platform can import meshes but is it capable of dealing with large numbers of high polygon models needed to create a rich, detailed space.

The MellaniuM Infohub environment now available contains almost 2 million polygons and the Titanic model (especially when viewed with the anti-aliasing feature) can be examined by zooming using the mouse wheel in the finest of details.

The Titanic in the MellaniuM Infohub viewed with the anti-aliasing enabled

Please try and grasp the implications of the fact that any high polygon model can be compiled in a file format compatible with importing into the UNREAL engine and hence, delivered through the NORTEL web.alive client as a "one-click-and-you-are-in" environment.

As you may well imagine in the not-so-distant future MellaniuM is poised to add more domes containing various areas of interest to architects, engineers and museum curators with models of the most detailed nature. The potential to use unobtrusive icons exists which, when approached will deliver metadata of the modelled items delivering on the possibility to develop education and training of the highest quality.