Linden Lab Debuts, Company Dedicated to 3D Entertainment
Linden Lab Kicks Off DEMO 2002 Conference With Exclusive Preview Of New Entertainment Service Driven By 3D Streaming Technology
PHOENIX, ARIZONA -- Monday February 11, 2002 — Linden Lab, a company founded to create a new form of interactive entertainment, opened the DEMO 2002 conference with an exclusive preview of its "LindenWorld" entertainment service. LindenWorld is an organic online world lived in and built by its participants - a new medium for creative self-expression, social interaction, and fun.
"Linden Lab has created sophisticated technology to enable an amazing vision - a shared 3D entertainment service where users can create content, not just consume it," said Chris Shipley, DEMO conference executive producer.
Early Creator Program
Creators, designers and enthusiasts who will build the first homes, found the first cities and pioneer new interactive entertainment experiences are encouraged to apply at www.lindenlab.com for the Early Creator program, which will begin in the coming weeks and expand over the next several months as the world itself grows.
New Entertainment Service
The company presented a look at what will become "LindenWorld." Residing on a distributed network of inexpensive machines, this persistent simulation of an expanding world delivers startling organic reality, complete with weather, plants, animals, and objects that obey the laws of physics.
LindenWorld harnesses the user-driven power of the Internet. Participants create collaboratively in real time, building sophisticated 3D objects and behaviors from simple parts. These parts can be shared, copied and edited to create increasingly elaborate creations. Examples include elaborate homes, kinetic sculptures, flying vehicles, themed rollercoasters, or entire cities.
People interact with each other in the environment using lifelike, high fidelity representations of themselves. These "characters" enable a richly detailed palette of expressive capability and social participation. No two characters are alike. Users can customize every aspect of their appearance and behavior, from the color of their eyes to replicas of their favorite tattoos.
Available later this year via a broadband-connected PC, Linden Lab offers an interactive real-time 3D world merging the power of user-created content with the immersive aspects of video games.
"The magic of LindenWorld is that it's never the same twice. The environment constantly evolves, driven by what users make and do," said Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO.
Technology
Linden Lab has developed two breakthrough technologies to enable a revolutionary new type of 3D online interactivity:
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Streaming 3D
Linden Lab has developed interactive, editable 3D streaming technology delivering a 100x improvement in the compression of dynamic geometry and texture data. The barrier to 3D streaming has been finally been crossed, enabling incredibly rich environments with responsive interactivity. - Scalable Distributed Simulation
A technology breakthrough which allows the simulation of a complex, dynamic world to be seamlessly divided across a network of computers. LindenWorld will employ this technology in a massively parallel distributed array of thousands of inexpensive PCs.
Additionally, Linden Lab's proprietary technology leverages three important technology trends: inexpensive GHz PC's, high performance consumer graphics cards and broadband Internet access.
About Linden Lab
Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale to create a revolutionary new form of shared 3D entertainment. The former CTO of RealNetworks, Philip pioneered the development of many of today's streaming media technologies, including RealVideo. Linden Lab is funded by prominent private investors including Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development, and Catamount Ventures led by Managing Partner Jed Smith, founder of drugstore.com.
Based in San Francisco, Linden Lab employs a senior development team bringing together deep expertise in physics, 3D graphics and networking. Team members have previously worked for market leading companies such as Electronic Arts, Disney, THQ, Acclaim, Hasbro, Mattel and RealNetworks.
About DEMO 2002
The annual DEMO and DEMOmobile conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected by executive producers Chris Shipley and Jim Forbes from across the spectrum of the personal technology marketplace. Top executives from the leading hardware and software technology companies, venture capitalists, journalists from key industry publications and industry analysts attend the DEMO and DEMOmobile conferences to preview the most promising products and technologies for the coming year. DEMO is held in February each year and features approximately 60 new companies, products and technologies. DEMOmobile is held each fall and features approximately 35 new mobile technologies. For more information, visit http://www.idgef.com/.
