Daden creates world selection tool

Press Release: Daden creates World Finder, a virtual world selection tool

Birmingham, U.K. – A simple virtual world selection tool, World Finder, has been created by virtual world specialist’s Daden Limited to help businesses and organisations choose between competing platforms for their projects.

World Finder is based around 12 key virtual world features which have been chosen as they highlight the biggest differences between available virtual world platforms. The rating of each world against these features are based on Daden’s extensive experience of nearly a hundred virtual projects over the past five years.

“Although we’ve seen some platforms fall by the wayside those that remain are getting steadily more powerful, so it’s actually harder to make the right choice,” said David Burden, Daden’s managing director. “World Finder was designed to capture our feelings as to the relative strengths of each platform and to make it easier to show clients the pros and cons of each in any given situation. Having created the tool as an app, it seemed sensible to share it with the wider community.”

The 12 features assessed by the tool are:

  • Whether users can build and customise in-world
  • Quality of graphics
  • Size of area modeled
  • Ability to customize the client
  • Whether the user is represented by an avatar
  • Whether its for solo or group use
  • Whether it runs in a browser, mobile or just as a PC application
  • Whether it can be deployed on servers behind a firewall
  • The robustness and security of the code
  • Whether you can import existing 3D models
  • Whether the vendor is stable, and the user community well developed
  • and of course cost!

“We were keen to make sure the criteria were an even balance of user, technical and commercial features,” Burden added. “All too often, the debate about virtual worlds is solely about technical issues like visual quality and bandwidth”.

The initial version of World Finder focuses on the four platforms supported by Daden in its work with clients: Second Life, OpenSim, Vastpark and Unity. Later versions of World Finder may be extended to include other virtual worlds and game engines.

You can use the Finder at: http://www.daden.co.uk/pages/virtual_world_finder.html