I had a look at the site, im not quite sure what this thing is supposed to do. Is it essentially like any other modeling/animation/lighting package but you can render in realtime?

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Good question- for those of you not familiar with real-time 3D authoring tools/engines, I will attempt to explain...

The closest thing to a 3D authoring app is a 3D game engine. What are the differences?

1- Specialization: A regular commercial 3D game engine is generally optimized for a particular genre, be it first person shooter or whatever. Tools, features and capabilities are specifically designed and implemented to meet those goals. While the underlying technology is basically the same, a real-time 3D authoring tool/engine is more of a generalist and therefore may not have specific features as well implemented as well as the game engine, but is more likely to have a broader range of features and possibilities, though it may take a bit of tinkering to get what you want. As per game engines, one usually creates most of the content in traditional DCC apps (like Max, Maya, SoftImage, etc.) as well as some of the animation.

2- Price/Licensing: Real-time authoring tools range from about $100 to about $30,000 (Game Studio, Creator, Quest 3D, Virtools, etc) depending on feature set. Most, however do no require licensing fees- per title or otherwise (Crytek's engine is approx a million dollars per title to license). This makes them extremely popular for creating proof of concept games, casual games, training simulations, and product configurators in real time 3D.

3- What would one use them for? Besides the afore mentioned casual games, training simulations, step-based instruction, architectural visualization and product configurators, one could do pretty much any of the things people use to create interactive Flash content. Does it *need* to be in real time 3D? Of course not. I don't know about you guys, but the things I create in 3D, I generally figure I could have produced in traditional media in at least a tenth the time. But we like the flexibility of 3D- change lighting, materials, reuse parts, etc. In real time, the viewer can investigate art work from all different directions- and then interact with it!

For the non-gamer artist members of this forum, think of it as the next generation of performance art or kinetic sculpture where the audience is invited to interact with the art instead of being forced into a linear or even static story or concept. It can be abstract or realistic- when you are not creating a huge environment, you can spend polygons with abandon! And today's shaders offer amazing real-time effects- the stuff that used to take hours of extra render time.

Does it need to be lofty gallery type creation & content? Not at all. It could be as mundane as a little game environment Valentine's "card." One e-mails it to one's significant other with instruction to run the application (and probably navigation instructions). The scene opens and the user/player wanders around clicking or colliding with objects, triggering heart shaped special effects, culminating in the usual mushy messages. Or maybe the player must complete Valentine themed tasks to win through to the message. It can be challenging or entertaining, but most of all, a visual delight for the player.

Anyway, hope that clarifies a bit. As you may have guessed, I am passionate about this stuff, so apologies for the length of this post

Sue
[interactive] 3D Junkie

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Sounds cool sue.

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yeah, sound really cool, especially that part where everyone can interact with a model

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein

I tried some of the demos, looks like it would be a handy tool.

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