NASA Creating a 3D Virtual World

3Dwalkthroughs.com picked up a story from the BBC describing the possibility of a 3D virtual world being created by NASA.

The virtual world would be aimed at students and would 'simulate real NASA engineering and science missions,'" the BBC wrote, adding that the space agency has put out requests for vendors interested in producing the virtual world.

The idea behind the so-called massively multiplayer online game would be to help train future scientists and foster a broader interest in space among students.

Already, NASA has a presence on an island in Second Life.

"We at NASA are working hard to create opportunities for what I might call participatory exploration," the BBC quoted the director of the project, Simon Worden, as saying. "We are looking at how this island can be a portal for all to fly along on space missions."

The interesting part of this news is NASA is showing a desire to build their own 3D Virtual World despite the fact they already have a presence in Second Life.

We predict an expolosion in the number of organizations that are going to announce plans to build private 3D virtual worlds. These 3D Virtual Worlds are going to be much more specific to an organizations needs than public sites such as Second Life.

We believe the development of specific applications and functionality within these private worlds, will drive the 3D virtual world industry as a whole. Developers will build on other developers innovations, similar to the way developers have improved websites over time...always building on other's ideas.