Croquet SDK 1.0 Released

> Nonprofit ‘Croquet Consortium’ Releases Open-Source Software Tool Kit
> to Promote Collaborative 3-D Virtual Environments
>
> DURHAM, N.C. – March 27, 2007 – A nonprofit consortium of academic
> and corporate partners announced Tuesday the release of a free
> software tool kit for developers to use in creating 3-D "virtual
> environments."
>
> "We’re seeking to enable the creation of a rich series of
> interconnected ‘Croquet worlds’ where people can engage in productive
> collaborative interactions in support of learning and commerce --
> worlds that can be created, maintained and continually modified
> without the constraints of proprietary computer code," said Julian
> Lombardi, assistant vice president of Duke’s Office of Information
> Technology.
>
> The Croquet Consortium’s new "3-D Virtual Environments Software
> Developer’s Kit" (Croquet SDK 1.0) will promote collaboration among
> far-flung research teams working on everything from cancer cells to
> hurricanes, as well as active learning among students and their
> instructors. These networked 3-D teams from research, education and
> industry will be able to work together across a variety of computer
> platforms and devices, from laptops to cell phones.
>
> "This will change the way people think about software and
> computation, from today’s device-oriented perspective to a
> perspective of computation as a persistent, pervasive service," said
> Patrick Scaglia, vice president of research and development at HP Labs.
>
> Croquet 3-D virtual environments can support live discussion among
> worldwide collaborators who come together in "real time" within a 3-D
> virtual space. They may view, manipulate and revise documents,
> dynamic visualizations or large amounts of data from sources such as
> laboratories or supercomputing centers.
>
> Added Greg Nuyens, chief executive officer of Qwaq Inc., "We have
> found Croquet to be a compelling platform technology for developing
> very large scale, richly featured and interlinked virtual
> environments. With the release of the Croquet SDK, we are excited
> about the new possibilities for using Croquet in our products and see
> benefits for developers everywhere."
>
> For example, public health officials and epidemiologists across a
> country could use the Croquet environment to track the spread of an
> infectious disease by sharing a dynamically changing display of
> infection data. Similarly, architects and engineers could collaborate
> on a building design, or chemists and biologists could prototype
> different chemical compositions for a new drug.
>
> The kit provides developers with a flexible tool to create virtual
> spaces with built-in networked telephony and a "late-binding object-
> oriented" programming language that allows multiple users to jointly
> create, animate or modify 3-D objects and dynamic simulations.
> Developers can also import and share resources, such as 2-D web
> applications or multimedia content, from their own systems. Working
> together across multiple locations, they can change simulations while
> they are running and work together to create new applications -- all
> in real time.
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