{"id":5000,"date":"2015-05-29T18:22:02","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T17:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5000"},"modified":"2015-05-29T18:22:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T17:22:02","slug":"from-second-life-merchant-to-improbable-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5000","title":{"rendered":"From Second Life Merchant To Improbable Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve talked about Improbable<\/a> before, Improbable is an exciting looking technology, still shrouded in a degree of mystery that could offer a solution for virtual worlds and MMORPG’s as well as much more.<\/p>\n

When I blogged before I mentioned that one of their employees was Dave Hillier, once worked for Second Life. However now I’ve discovered another link with Second Life, albeit from a merchant angle.<\/p>\n

Pammy Olson has published an article on Improbable over at Forbes :\u00a0Meet Improbable, The Startup Building The World’s Most Powerful Simulations<\/a>. This article expands more on the progress Improbable<\/a> are making. Improbable’s founders, Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead feature in the article, they met at the University of Cambridge and the article provides some interesting background on the pair :<\/p>\n

Narula wanted to code, teaching himself to write in C++ at 12. While studying computer science at Cambridge he met Rob Whitehead, a Liverpudlian who had paid his way through college by selling weapons on the virtual-world site Second Life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll be honest, I didn’t realise there was that much of a market for weapons in Second Life! There’s also the fact that both of them, initially at least, were very interested in creating a virtual world :<\/p>\n

They began working on an ambitious virtual-world videogame in which you could drop an object, then log back in the next day and find it still there. When they couldn\u2019t find software to help them scale up, they built the tools themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEventually we realized the tech we were working on was bigger than the game,\u201d says Whitehead.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not an unusual development, quite a few products have started life aiming to be one thing and ending up being another. However it’s interesting that the technology they’ve created is being welcomed by those who want to build MMORPG’s and it also appears, on the face of it at least, that it’s a technology that could be used for virtual worlds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Improbable is attracting attention beyond MMORPG’s. \u00a0The article explains :<\/p>\n

Samsung has talked to the company about running simulations for its Internet of Things devices, and economists from Oxford are using it to run models of the U.K. housing market.<\/em><\/p>\n

Improbable is also \u201ctalking heavily\u201d to Britain\u2019s Ministry of Defense, says Narula, the startup\u2019s high-octane CEO. He\u2019s tight-lipped about most projects because of contractual obligations but says Improbable has booked revenue in the single-digit millions of pounds since launching.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Improbable received $20m of funding<\/a> from\u00a0Andreessen Horowitz<\/a> in March, which in itself is quite impressive as it’s rare for\u00a0Andreessen Horowitz funding to go to a London startup, but the article does give an insight into why this has happened :<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such a new and original idea,\u201d says Chris Dixon, who led Andreessen\u2019s investment. \u201dWe see a lot of stuff, and we\u2019d never seen anything like this.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like the look and sound of Improbable, but the details regarding exactly how it works and a proof of concept are still very vague. However when it comes to the latter, we should not have to wait too long. Bossa Studios Worlds Adrift<\/a> is set for an Autumn release and will be the first public application of Improbable technology.<\/p>\n

The reasons Improbable was attractive to Bossa are partially explained in the article, cost being a glaring one as using Improbable allowed them to do things that would have cost a hell of a lot more without the technology :<\/p>\n

A project on the scale of Worlds Adrift would typically take years and millions of dollars for a studio of Bossa\u2019s size to build, but they did it in roughly a year and with just a core team of front-end developers.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll be interested to see how this turns out, although the technology is very much in its early stages still, the potential looks massive.<\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a>
\n