For a few years now I’ve been occasionally peeking in on the work of Kerry Bonin and his effort to create an upgraded version of the X3D modeling standard. You might remember my mentioning him in a couple of earlier posts (reLink 1, reLink 2). Well, last night I noticed some traffic coming my way having something to do with his VScape project (Link) – the umbrella under which, as I understand it, the model format was being developed – and made my way over to see what was happening. Turns out that the site is in the process of getting a major upgrade. Here’s what the first news item, “Welcome”, has to say:

You have reached the home of the VScape platform, which is:

* A user created massively multiplayer online virtual universe.
* A game development platform, open to everyone.
* Own what you create, control how it is seen, shared, even sold!
* Cross platform, scalable, and secure!

This isn’t quite what I understood the original effort to be when we traded emails way back when, but I’m happy to see another developer officially enter the virtual world fray. If this is still browser-based, VScape could solve a problem that is starting to get some attention. So needless to say I’ll be keeping closer tabs on how VScape matures.