Singapore Company Builds Virtual Tourism Platform

A Singapore company called Virtual Worlds has announced a platform for virtual tourism to the industry in its home country. The environment, which it calls Mirror World, claims to reproduce key tourism destinations and historical sites in full-scale 3D, geared for the tourism and hospitality industries to allow them to show their facilities to global markets. Currently the software is in beta, and the company says it's already able to show certain parts of the world. According to Virtual Worlds, its technology can support up to a million objects per view area as well as sound, music and weather effects. It's also able to import existing 3D drawings of infrastructure and buildings. The company adds it's discussing projects with tourism authorities and facilities operators to ultimately build virtual replicas of their sites. The long-term goal is to "completely map the globe in phases." It will launch worldwide at some point during 2008. Targeted for a world wide launch in end 2008, consumers will be able to explore parts of the world in 3D, meet and chat with friends from all over the world all from their desktop over a internet connection and most importantly win prizes to travel around the world. Virtual Worlds Asia director Terence Mak said, “This is an important and necessary step in the development of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds [have] always been depicted [as] a fantasy - it's about time we changed that thinking and use of the same technology to make the world a smaller place. Air travel and tourism is booming with the availability of budget airlines, consumers are beginning to be more world conscious. What is missing is a technology and a platform to showcase the world in 3D to a global audience. We hope to partner with many of the world's interesting places and help them showcase what they are doing to make the world a more interesting place.”