Every 3D space is a url, and it all runs using standard web technology. Because of that, it's scalable and plays well with other web environments. You can put anything into a 3D scene which you can access on the web -- Flickr pages, Facebook friends, video screens on Youtube, speaker systems linking to an mp3 file -- it's a 3d representation of any content you can find.

On top of the platform, Vivaty is launching its own application called Vivaty Scenes. It's like a Facebook page, providing the end user with a personal page which that has all the things the user care about. It's the same analogy converted into a 3D format.

How easy will it be for users to install Vivaty Scenes?

It's the same on Facebook or MySpace. It's basically an application, but wrapped inside it is the plugin. We're really into making it very easy and quick to get into it so that it downloads in seconds as opposed to Second Life, which can take 30 minutes or more to download.

Your buddy list is populated with friends from Facebook, and there are viral features like inviting friends. It's fully integrated with the messaging systems.

How long has Vivaty/MediaMachines been working on this technology?

We raised money meeting friends last August. We had been working on it for about two years before that, almost 3 years now. As you can imagine, it's not a trivial piece of software, not like a widget.

The founders have been working on it our whole careers. I've been working on things like this for 20 years. One of the other founders created a very large payment system for Verifone, so he has been building large connections. Tony Parisi, another founder, co-invented VRML on the web.

We started on Vivaty Scenes last August to show investors the platform is working.

How will the spaces in Vivaty Scenes be presented? Will they be user-customizable living rooms?

Some of them are like a living room, others are much bigger -- one of them is a giant yacht. They're usually multiple rooms, like an apartment. One of them is like a rooftop garden on a building in New York City. Another is a big warehouse where a band may practice. There's plenty of space to decorate it the way users want. They can be like houses in The Sims.

How many of these different scenes are available?

There will be 15 scenes on launch, The content is separate from the application, so we just upload more of these templates to give people more choices.

You can change it anytime you want, just like you can change the avatar any time you want. We're assuming people will want to change. It's like a screensaver or something on your cellphone. Over time, people are going to want to change them, so we've made it easy to change and will be offering many of them.

What advantages do you see Vivaty's 3D space having over 2D virtual worlds?

My belief is that, if all things are equal, consumers will always gravitate more towards the richer, more visual, and more entertaining experience.

What we saw in the 90s while the industry moved from 2d to 3d was that 3D was more for the hardcore gamer and the semi-technical person.

Once console games for the PlayStation and the others followed with 3D games, we saw the industry as a whole move towards 3D games. Electronic Arts doesn't sell any 2D games at all anymore. The entire industry is 90% 3D. If our platform and our products can lower that barrier to the point where its not daunting to get access to a richer experience, they will be more likely to gravitate towards something that looks like a Pixar experience.

People don't have the tolerance for any difficulty or work with setting it up. We're trying to give that amount of ease to the audience. There's one hit 2D top-twenty game in the industry. It's Brain Age, the Nintendo game, which was originally designed for older people. It's funny that the one super successful game that's not 3D was actually designed for older people.

I have young kids; they watch 3D animation, Pixar movies, and play on 3D web sites. They are comfortable with it. It just makes sense to them to see the world that way. If it's just as easy to access a 3D virtual world and it's quick, they will gravitate more towards it.

What has changed in the past 5-10 years that has made a browser-based 3d world more viable?

There's basically a couple trends that have happened in the industry in the past two to five years. All PCs come with 3d acceleration, now. You can go out and buy an $800 laptop that comes with an Nvidia card that's really powerful. You really can't buy a pc that doesn't do 3D pretty darn well.

Broadband is now ubiquitous, too. It wasn't four to five years ago. People don't have dial-up anymore. Broadband and connected applications are the average now, not the outlier.

Two other consumer behavioral patterns have emerged. One of them is social networking. MySpace is all about self-expression and social networking. Facebook is all about communication and media sharing. There's a lot of photo sharing. Just in general, the web has turned into a medium rich photos and videos.

Those are great things to share in a virtual environmant. Now it's part of the internet user culture. Taking all those things together and the ability for some of these earlier experiences with MMOGs and Second Life, people are comfortable with it now.

Now it makes sense. You saw Facebook come out the other day with instant messaging. People want to connect and socialize with each other, and we provide a richer experience.