Amongst the 3D spaces recently gone into beta, Just Leap In - ‘a 3D world of your own’ - finds itself more closely to Vivaty and Google Lively than Second Life: It is browser based - plugin needed - and it focuses on creating your own, private space, where other user may or not may edit objects. Rooms can be connected with ‘portals’, but each room you have to enter will have to load separately. Yet, as there is already some customising your spaces that you can do - and opposed to Lively does not crash my precious Firefox - it’s definitely interesting to take a look. Petition for a beta account at JustLeapIn.com and quickly receive back a friendly email that says you can join, and explains the functionality already available for beta testing:

Just Leap In (beta): Functionaly (Sept 2008)

1. Drag-and-drop Portals to other beta testers’ spaces
2. 3D space creation from a “test” selection of visual templates and styles
3. Drag-and-drop addition of 3D objects and multimedia frames
4. Upload photos and videos (audio coming soon)
5. Personalize media frames with your photos and videos
6. Resurface 3D objects with your photos and videos
7. Drag-and-drop streaming sound
8. Space Chat by text

That also includes a physics preview and the ability to comment on rooms - and get support through those comments, in my case. A sneak peak of the sample 3D characters - soon to be avatars? - is available by rezzing them in your space. There are two ways of sharing your space with others: mail them the URL or copy a snippet of HTML code to embed your 3D space inside your blog or website.

All this functionality makes that there is already quite some stuff to play around with in your Just Leap In space:

1. We have physics and characters, you say? Right! Let’s toss them over! Press X or C and click the character. Now, keep pressing X or C and your mouse button and drag the mouse around until you’re pretty sure he’ll fall over and then let loose. I have tried to get the ‘martial arts’ character kick over one of the basketball players. Sadly enough, functionality did not reach that far.
2. Texturing! Upload your own texture - I took my Plurk background - and drag that on anything you think you can re-texture. I know it’s possible from my own experience: the walls, most objects or parts of them (see the bed in the preview photograph) and the character’s clothes (not their skin & hair).
3. Upload your videos & photos and hang them on your wall/show them on virtual TV.

* This is not an exact Just Leap In screenshot. You only see one of the tabs visible in this one when playing, but I assumed people would like an overview of the navigation controls & object/texture/video/… functions. Go take a look on Flickr for a bigger size.

Vint in Just Leap In

And some personal remarks/questions/FAIL thingies:

1. Smallest ’shareable’ size of the iframe that holds it is ‘Small (504×496)’, thus to wide for this blog.
2. It saves texture modifications all right, but does not remember object location when re-entering or publishing my room. So they all end up on a huge pile of virtual objects. (Which is funny as it throws in the rezzed characters too, but not very practical.)
3. Object editing: being used to Second Life’s coordinate system (for location as well as rotating) getting things like I want it using the mouse to position & rotate is a pain.
4. I get nauseous when ‘playing’ Just Leap In for to long. I don’t know if it’s because of the way my camera moves or the enclosed space. I do know I have the same ‘car sickness’ feel of nausea when I play Twinity & Kaneva - or used to play Heretic & Doom - but do not suffer from it inSL. Strange, no?
5. RSS feed to easily keep track of comments on your room would be handy

Try to leap in yourself

If you want to try out Just Leap In yourself, request a beta account at justleapin.com. Or want to take a look at the space ‘Vintville’ I already created? No problem, it’s right here (URL with just name of the space would be more handy in stead of all those numbers). For updates, keep an eye on their blog.

Just Leap In Minimal System Requirements

Windows PC

• OS: Windows XP or Vista
• Memory: 1 GIG RAM or higher
• Browser: Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 and 3
• DirectX 9.0c (the more cores, the better)
• Graphics: nVidia GeForce 5500/equivalent or higher (pixel shader 2.0 capable)

Macintosh

• CPU: Intels are best, but G5+ PowerPCs work
• OS: Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
• Graphics: ATI Radeon 9500 series or higher
• Memory: 1 GIG RAM or higher
• Browser: Firefox 2 and 3

JLI official sales talk (ctrl c+v)

How are you different? Typically, 3D worlds have been only for those willing to trade in their lives for a digital version, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We will help you build rich, immersive 3D worlds to express yourself casually, socially, professionally, artistically, playfully – any way you want. And have fun doing it. (Serious *grmbl* about the bold part!)

Why should I try it? Imagine crafting your online profile in an outdoor paradise, nightclub, or your own museum while linking to thousands of others. A two dimensional webpage simply can’t compete with the real world when it comes to expressing identity & sharing creativity. JLI (Just Leap In) is pushing the envelope by making the social web more like the real world - visual, experiential, playful. A place to create, share, connect, explore – just be.

Just Leap in & User Generated Content

From the official Just Leap In blog: In the near future, we will be releasing a set of tools to a small beta group that will allow 3D content creators to add new assets into the JLI world, and we’ll do it in a way so that we’re not building a walled garden. Our direction is to leverage open standards and existing professional tools and skillsets—not to create yet another set of modeling tools and techniques for people to learn. By using industry-standard tools for data transport and shader visualization, we can enable creators to be quickly productive at a high level of quality and use their familiar, mature commercial 3D authoring products or free/OSS packages. Following this path also allows content created in other contexts to be easily adapted and imported in to the JLI world.

Ultimately, as we roll out our pipeline over time, it allows us to focus on the creative new features for users in the JLI world, and not writing expansive 3D tools and reinventing wheels. Our published toolset will be a twin of the tools our internal artists use, which means content creators will have the same ability to create content that we do. Since we are all using the same tools, we will be more responsive to fine tuning and expanding our users’ productivity and keeping them up-to-date as the tools they use evolve.

For the technically inclined, our first release of UGC 3D tools will include a set of XSI properties, RT shaders, a custom fbx exporter that adds some JLI ‘sauce’ and a Mac/PC JLI viewer, with full documentation. Users of Maya/Max/Blender/etc. can tap into our fbx pathway to create JLI-compatible data as well. In subsequent releases, we’ll be considering adding Collada support, which in combination with fbx will further broaden the number of 3D packages that can be supported. We are also open to collaborating with third party tool creators to broaden further the abilities for our users to create.

Just Leap In Demo Videos

Tags: 3D, just leap in, virtual worlds

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