Open Source Platform

for interconnected virtual worlds

New releases from realXtend

Greetings from the realXtend team! Today we will release new versions of realXtend software, including a new world server (0.5) based on ModreX technology and the first taste of the new viewer and server technologies we have been working on since the beginning of this year. The local development teams will be on (well deserved) vacation for most of July, but we will be back in action in August.

The latest versions can be found on our website at www.realxtend.org. You can also check out the videos of our experimental technology in action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwUdRiR6HS0&feature=related

This is what Mr. Ryan McDougall, the project's lead Architect, has to say about the new technology:

"realXtend project is proud to announce a Developer Preview Release for it's new project Corus (previously "realXtend - Next Generation"), an effort to redesign the realXtend platform to handle future, "next generation" applications as they develop.

Included is the new Virtual World Viewer, codenamed Naali; and a suite of customized Virtual World Servers codenamed, Taiga.

Naali is Finnish for "Arctic Fox", and Taiga is the boreal forest and tundra where Naali may be found.

Naali is designed and written entirely from scratch to be a multi-use 3D world viewer; enabling everything from games, conferences, education and collaboration spaces, industrial modelling and beyond. With it's modular plug-in architecture, Naali is intended to be extensible by plug-in developers to suit any Virtual World Application. It is written in C++ and Python, and uses the Ogre3D graphics rendering engine to provide its modern visual experience.

Taiga is comprised of ModreX running on OpenSimulator for real-time 3D application hosting, and CableBeach for federated authorization and content distribution.

The Developer Preview Release is the culmination of the past 6 months of work at realXtend, and is only suitable for experienced developers. It is not recommended for regular use.

Project Corus, version 0.0.1, is considered "Pre-Alpha" software, meaning it is quite new, and there are many missing features and untidy areas of intensive development. We would like to use this announcement to invite interested software developers to check out our work, give us feedback, and maybe even join our community. To follow development of the project at any time, please visit the development website at http://dev.realxtend.org/gf/project/.

Naali is released under the Apache 2.0 license, and Taiga is released under their respective BSD-based licenses."

The preview releases and more information can be found here: http://wiki.realxtend.org/index.php/Main_Page#Project_Corus