When Google announced their virtual 3D environment Lively, there was much media hoopla about how it was a response/competitor for Second Life. After a brief stint of hype and a rapid fall into obscurity, Google is pulling the plug on Lively.

Frankly, I’m not surprised. Lively was pretty horrible – especially if you were looking for a freeform, user generated experience like SL. I wouldn’t be surprised to see many new Virtual World startups fail. It’s not easy to create an engaging, dynamic virtual world. I know there are other spaces that are doing well, especially those aimed at younger users, but folks looking to jump in and populate a world as intriguing and open-ended as SL have a lot of catching up to do. If any place has a chance at the moment, I think it’s an alternative grids like OpenLife or Legend City Online that can use SL’s open source software to get a leg up.

From the “I’ll believe it when I see it” file: CItySpace.

Video was removed, but TechCrunch has a copy

Sounds like a sweet idea. Take all the heavy graphics rendering and do it on the server side, pushing the results to the user – so even low end computers can display amazingly detailed graphics. I’m skeptical about the Virtual World aspects of this project, though. It’s one thing to be flying around a 3D space, and another to make it interactive, dynamic, and engaging.

It looks like CitySpace hasn’t really even been officially announced, more like stumbled upon by the crew over at TechChrunch. They’ve covered this technology before when they wrote about the company behind the tech, OTOY.

After watching the video it seems to me like this would be more like Sony’s (still not launched) Home. Sounds like users may only have control over the textures and objects in their own virtual rooms. At any rate, I’m sure anyone picking up this story will mention how it’s the next Second Life killer. :)