Shortly after all the buzz surrounding rumors concerning Google Earth, I posted a Twitter telling people to watch for news on the Microsoft Virtual Earth front. Sure enough, things started popping up on my screen. And now add what I consider the most interesting news courtesy of C|Net, “Microsoft Virtual Earth offers 3D building capability” (Link).

Virtual Earth-3DVIA will let people create 3D structures with textures and colors and share them with one other online.* The models can also be tagged with real-life address or town information so that they can be viewed in Virtual Earth as they would be on a map.**

Couple of days ago I caught a post on the A Media Circus blog (Link) that reminded me of my earlier prediction (reLink). Things appear to me to be more or less on track.

And what’s Dassault been up to in the meantime? Oh, just acquiring Seemage (“product information everyware“) to help bolster their PLM capabilities (Link). Which, by the way, will also be hooking up into the 3DVIA website (remember that “3D Flickr” announcement? – reLink).

Looks like I won’t be asked to explain the link between virtual worlds and PLM to people for much longer. I hope the designers out there are paying attention; both tangible product and virtual world designers.

{* – I’ve been collecting links covering the intellectual property side of this equation and will post something soon with them included.}

{** – I suspect this will become what I’m thinking Google Earth with Jaiku might turn into: a kind of 3D Analytics system… which I both Twittered and mentioned on BW’s Blogspotting (Link).}