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A New 3D Game Engine That Means Business

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Today at AWE (Augmented World Expo) Online, Alan Smithson of Toronto-based MetaVRse launched Metaverse Engine, the company’s new 3D game engine for non-coders. “We envision this becoming as easy as building a slide deck” Said Smithson. “MetaVRse Engine is already being used by hundreds of organizations, universities and developers.” 

 “The MetaVRse Engine is an important new tool in the no code movement – it enables all of us to create high quality interactive 3D experiences.”  Terry Schussler, Sr. Director of Spatial Computing, Deutsche Telekom after getting a virtual demo at the show.

MetaVRse says responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Oracle’s XR LAB Leader Sikaar Keita built a storefront with handbags for A/B testing and even connected an IoT sensor to remotely control a 3D object on the web. "MetaVRse has massive potential.  Design and Publish 3D content in minutes, not weeks.” Here’s a link to their Shoe Configurator.

MetaVRse CCO, Jonathan Moss told us “Our goal is to offer ready-made templates and code snippets that developers can build using JavaScript and share or sell on our marketplace. Only about 1 in 300 people knows how to code so we built this engine with that in mind. I am one of the people that can’t code, but I can build experiences on our software.” Moss and Smithson showed use these examples of the engine in action: The Mercedes Configurator, Blood Testing Machine, and the Sofa Configurator

The engine automatically generates code for embedding the 3D/XR experiences into existing websites, iOS and Android apps. Those aren’t the only publishing options for your experience. They system generates a QR code, provides a unique URL and is even compatible with all VR and MR hardware. It works on all browsers, operating systems and devices.

The engine was four years in the making. “We built a lane-level navigation system that displayed real time 3D images on top of maps which forced us to make the rendering super efficient” said the company's Chief Product Officer Paul Konieczny.  “We realized the true potential of our technology so we pivoted to focus on building a platform to enable photorealistic 3D experiences on any device.” Their software is powered by an ultra optimized proprietary rendering core capable of displaying over 1 million polygons with 16k textures on a mobile device compared to <100k on some of the other tools in the market. 

They have a full stack of standard options to create fully immersive experiences such as multi-object support, animations, real time lighting with shadows, audio and video. It boasts synchronous communication allowing multiple people to create and consume experiences together on any device (e.g. computer, tablet, phone, VR, and MR headsets). It opens up the possibility of XR collaboration platforms and co-design tools to be built on top of their tech stack.

One of the most interesting things about the new MetaVRse Engine is it offers end-to-end cloud or on-premises hosting for large enterprise clients wanting to manage the infrastructure and customer data. 

Rather than develop their own tracking system, MetaVRse allows AR experiences to access the full power of ARKit (Apple) and ARCore (Android) directly from the web by connecting the web to device hardware through the MetaVRse app. This “download once and forget” app is a small utility app that runs in the background and never has to be engaged.

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