Blue Mars Looks To OTOY?s Clouds To Take 3D Worlds Mainstream

3D online virtual worlds are nothing new. From World of Warcraft to Second Life, people have been wandering across polygonal terrain for years, chatting with other users, selling their virtual wares, and making their avatars wave at each other for no apparent reason. But Avatar Reality, the startup behind a 3D platform called Blue Mars, thinks that there's still a lot of untapped potential from 3D. And now it may have a way to turn their dream into something a lot of people are actually using.

Blue Mars is a platform for building 3D worlds, but it isn't a game or a single online world. Rather, each 3D realm is separated and built by other companies and individuals ?�for example, a baseball team could recreate their stadium in 3D and let players and fans interact in a virtual world. Blue Mars manages the heavy lifting on the backend, including support for many simultaneous users and the purchase and exchange of virtual currencies. But up until this point, actually getting people into these worlds has been a challenge. Now Blue Mars is turning to OTOY's powerful streaming technology to help, and it will be launching support for streaming gameplay in Q1 2011.

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