Open Source Platform

for interconnected virtual worlds

What is the goal of realXtend?
realXtend speeds up the development of the global standardized 3D internet of virtual worlds by making the best technology available to everyone, and entirely free of charge. The true value of the interconnected 3D worlds is in the applications, not the platform.

What is the realXtend vision?
realXtend wants to extend reality. We see that virtual worlds are a new medium that can converge many of the communication technologies together. 2D graphical user interface has reached its potential and it is time to move on and conquer the 3D.

Why open source?
Making a platform is an enormous undertaking that requires a nearly finished product before it becomes usable. Platforms are almost never a real profit center, because they do not directly provide value to an end-user - they only enable applications which do.

Open Source provides a framework for fair and transparent cooperation between parties who require a platform before they can deliver their value-added applications to the market. Small firms, or small groups within large firms, are able to leverage the shared platform to quickly ramp up delivery of their application.

Who is doing realXtend? Why Finland and Oulu?
Oulu has a lot of talent in the area of software development. Nokia has a strong R&D presence in Oulu, which has grown a network of highly skilled and international experts. It is natural that projects starting from Oulu aim for global markets.

Oulu Innovation is the administrative company for realXtend. realXtend has been mostly done by the founding companies, LudoCraft and Admino technologies. The role of the international open source community is growing all the time. Although both founding companies are from Oulu area, realXtend is a truly global project.

What is realXtend going to do?
realXtend is a cooperative venture among partner companies that wish to spear-head the creation of an open 3D virtual world platform. realXtend brings like-minded companies together cooperatively to share the cost of developing the platform, and to hasten the time-to-market of their private, value-added applications. Time to market is a critical factor, even for an open source project. With more funding, we are confident that we can speed up the project.

Why should a company use realXtend?
It is important to start testing the new 3D internet and virtual worlds in general to be ready for the next generation technologies and applications. First users get the benefit for their business and the last ones need to adopt to stay alive.

Where is the money?
The money is not in the software platform, it is extremely hard to turn it into a profit center. The money is in the content and applications.

What is the big picture? What is going to happen in the future?
The commercial history of the internet is not about inventing a complicated new protocol or pioneering an innovative new technology. It is about taking simple and scalable technologies and bringing them together in novel ways that improve peoples' lives.

There are many competing 3D internet protocols and virtual world models in the market, and it is difficult at this stage to say who is on the winning track.

What we can say confidently is that customers do not care about protocols and models, they care about applications. The realXtend strategy is to take all the technologies of a modern 3D virtual world and present them to application developers in a form that lets them build the applications that will drive their business.

We can also confidently predict that the 3D internet will remain a very heterogeneous place, and the agility to cross and bridge boundaries will be a competitive requirement.

At realXtend we are creating a client-side stack that will scale from small devices like the iPhone, up to powerful PCs or consoles; from 2D web-based presentation, to Flash, to full immersive 3D worlds. We are building web services that enable distributed management of identity and assets. We are building a framework for flexible messaging and streaming media.

Our goal is to provide an ever-expanding suite of servers, viewers, and tools necessary to drive a competitive, next-generation 3D internet business -- whatever shape it may take as the industry evolves.

How can I test it?
Download the software from the Download section. It is free and can be used for business purposes; there are no hidden fees anywhere.

Where can I buy support/hosting/whatever for realXtend?
In theory, from any software company. In practice, the best knowledge is in the companies that are developing realXtend.