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GeoSim Systems’ virtual Philadelphia

An interesting article in today’s edition of Israeli business periodical GLOBES profiles a company called GeoSim Systems, which is creating navigable, interactable, markup-capable 3D virtual environments as a service to everyone from governments to entertainment companies, retailers, media and advertising firms and more. Watch a nice, if brief, clip of an aerial camera-flight through their virtual Philadelphia at this link. The virtual city, which cost about $1 million to build, according to CEO Dr. Victor Shenkar, “will be launched in a couple months and will be available for use free of charge on the website of the University of Pennsylvania.

The company’s Solutions page lists some of the services that would be enhanced by the use of the virtual world product they’re creating, including functions for Municipalities, Tourism/Travel, Real Estate, Security/Defense, Entertainment, and Media/Advertising.

Their model is fundamentally different from a world like Second Life in that GeoSims’ goal is to re-create real places in as much detail as possible (gathering and recording all the data themselves), then layer information top of them that can be utilized by the client or end-user. There’s an interesting technological difference as well. According to the company’s Web site, the basic city model resides on the client side, with only the dynamic information being updated on the server and delivered as needed. Seems to make good sense to me. It’ll be interesting to see what their virtual Philly is like when it finally goes live, and to hear about real commercial applications the company is able to sell. Intriguingly, Shenkar also mentions that Google “is interested in our technology,” though he’s not very revealing on whether this means the two companies have formally spoken or not.