Vivaty on the mac

Viveka, thanks for your post - this is EXACTLY how I feel and an excellent view of the market and situation. (there is one other promising competitor, JustLeapIn.com, running on Mac and Win: once they get their custom avatars running we finally have a virtual world we all can share)
Vivaty could have been THE web-based virtual space where everybody meets, could have even beaten Lively (they are far worse and also don't support Mac) but they blew it by ignoring the most fundamental foundation a social space needs: compatibility. Too bad.

Viveka and Consiliera, thanks for the insights. Your anecdote about inviting friends to a party is well put. We made the decision to launch in beta as soon as we could – meaning we launched before key features like Mac support were ready. Our alternative was to wait months and months to launch when we were closer to “perfection”- but in the meantime, the virtual world space is changing rapidly and we wanted to be part of that movement.

What we gained by launching early-- is consumer feedback on the core experience and it's been invaluable. Unlike most web companies, we really meant “beta” to mean “beta”... we probably won’t lift that label until we’re on more platforms and have a lot more features.

Your thoughts have already been passed around and debated again and again inside our walls so seeing these sentiments again just makes us itch. We hope that people don’t judge any of these web-based virtual worlds on their first out-the-door experience. No matter how big or small, no one has truly figured this out in a web browser yet.

Think about how long it took photo sharing, video sharing or browser experiences to evolve. It was 5+ years between Netscape’s arrival and Firefox. If you are looking to make a quick decision on the winner, we hope we can convince you to hang in there with us (and other companies) a bit longer.

Getting a Mac port in 3D virtual worlds that have several layers- platform, player, and application – is not easy. One thing we have done is made a commitment to releasing features every 2 weeks. This will benefit Mac users once we have a port out the door. We hope we’re not talking 1 year from now, believe us!

Why don't you just license the Unity3D engine like Just Leap In and Hangout? This will get you Mac support right away...plus, let's be honest here, Unity's player is far and away better than Vivaty's.

zilber has point here - but zilber, I hink that train has passed for Vivaty. And JustLeapIn just started introducing Avatars, customization not yet included (but coming soon!)...looking good. I don't think Vivaty can get ahead in this game anymore

thanks for the opinions... we know there are a lot of technologies out there and ours has been in development for a while, just like Unity's. We don't think it's going to be the technology that predicts the winner here... it's going to be the user experience. So we have probably erred on the side of releasing new consumer features every 2 weeks (gifting, dancing, more gestures, more social scenes to explore, more avatar clothing/hair, new navigation UI, etc) and we're about to do a "clean up" release where we focus again on the stability. i just hope everyone realizes that there is no "perfect" answer in web-based virtual worlds yet. no one has the killer app yet... and many of the services that you mention, while they are on Mac, they are not as far along in other areas yet.

why is it that MAC'ers are always left out of the loop? Hope to see it working for us soon!

I'm curious. What features of the Vivaty Player are not available in other X3D browsers? What needs adding to FreeWRL so that I can view Vivaty Scenes for example? They both support the X3D Interchange Profile.

The main reason Vivaty Scenes stands out for me compared with other Online Virtual Worlds is that it uses ISO standards instead of just another proprietary system. Right now I'm not seeing the advantages of that approach that I'd expect. There's little point in using an open standard like X3D to provide a service if it can only be accessed using one viewer from one company anyway.

Will I one day be able to use Vivaty Scenes in a client other than Vivaty Player? Or is this a case of "embrace and extend"? If it is, then I may as well walk away now. If the problem is simply that Vivaty is waiting for other browsers to catch up, then tell us what needs implementing and we'll see whether we can realise the real potential of an open 3D web.

Right now if I view Vivaty Scenes in Safari on a Mac or Firefox on Linux I'm told I need Windows. "Works best in Internet Explorer 4" was something I thought we'd left behind. I wouldn't expect to see it on a modern web site using XHTML, so why should it appear on a 3D scene using X3D?

Maybe I'm being impatient, or maybe Vivaty Inc. is missing the biggest selling point of their cutting edge technology. Openness.

Update, please. It's been 9 months since we've had word on this from Heidi. Heck, you can make an entire human being in 9 months!

Indeed, I think it is essential for any society seeking universality to include all operating systems - otherwise, it's pretty much discrimination if it persists.

To Stever Nelson: Lol, yes, I couldn't agree more. And [applause] that was a perfect way to state it, nice reference choice!

I found this virtual universe through Face Book, and was shocked and annoyed to find out that I couldn't use it because I'm on a Mac. When you observe the statistics, the actual graphics quality potential on a Mac is astronomically better than that of a PC - 3D always works better on a Mac computer, especially as technology progresses. So one would think that a 3D society would be more likely to be only mac than only PC, but hopefully it will be up and running on all system types soon. I can see so many potential business opportunities that are left in the shadows without that compatibility. Best of luck, and I've got hords of ideas if anyone wants to hire me ;)

We do offer Vivaty on a MAC using Boot camp:

http://help.vivaty.com/Vivaty-on-a-Mac

Boot Camp isn't really "on a Mac". Running under Mac OS X is "on a Mac". Imagine if you told me I had to run out and buy another operating system and reboot my computer every time I wanted to visit your web site. How many Mac users do you think would visit your web site?

I agree with you viveka and Steve. If Vivaty was a game that ran on the desktop then I could understand a business decision to implement a Windows version first and worry about porting to other platforms later. But Vivaty is a web application provided as a service that currently only works with one plugin on one platform. Imagine if you had to download install a different operating system and install a different browser plugin for every web site you visited.

Vivaty is built on X3D. X3D is a standard with multiple implementations. Why not support them!

That's exactly the problem - saying that boot camp makes something Mac Compatible is like saying that a scuba suit lets you breath water.
All analogies aside, I really think that this sort of virtual world is a logical media for product placement, and a lot of money could be made from it. So from a financial standpoint, you're losing customers, not just players. When people see an ad in a game it's the same as on TV, but they're likely to see it more often since there's no fast-forward button when you're walking around chatting in a game.

I have OSX 10.5.8, and I'm not likely to rush out and buy basically what could be called a 'windows emulator' (and therefor, it's no longer a Mac at all at that point, now is it?) for any reason, because I have no important programs that only run on a PC and not a mac. I think this virtual universe holds great potential in all manner of areas, including business networking if things are set up accordingly. It's competing with Second Life and various other virtual universes, so why not be just as courteous to people who aren't among the Microsoft flock?

Hi guys!
We have some great news for you.

We now have a lightweight flash based version of Vivaty for all our Mac, Google Chrome, Safari and other browser players, or maybe you'd just rather not install the Vivaty player.

http://www.vivaty.com/lite

Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

Thanks!

This is not a solution.
Neither is it great news.

Why not work on a player/plugin that can show X3D on the other platforms or even cross-platform?
Being the first to offer such a player would put Vivaty in a much stronger position, than to only come up with a simple workaround. Flash is not for 3D content.

Why not help in the efforts to bring X3D as a standard to the browsers and work on built-in X3D support? See W3C and Web3D efforts...

Or you could even have it as a self contained program, like Onverse is. For that matter, you could simply convert the windows program to other operating systems instead of going to further lengths to create whole new ways of playing the game.