A few minutes ago Johnny Bistrom pointed out to me that the new version of Unity 3D has been released – and that it is free. Unity 3D is a game engine and development platform that can be used to build games & worlds online, on iPhones and on the Nintendo Wii. It has been around for several years and we have both noticed its existence, but done very little more.

The fact that Second Life continues to make it impossible to import or export models limits its usefulness, by locking everything down. I have been here before with various kinds of web content, and I don’t want to be there any more if I can help it. Over the last year we have completely rebuilt our Second Life island, and we did it the only way possible: we destroyed the previous version after making sure we took lots of screenshots. Anything we forgot to document is now lost forever.

At the beginning of 2010 we will be embarking on a major project we are currently calling WaterCooler. This will last eighteen months, and we will start the process by testing a number of ideas in Second Life. Indeed we are already doing preliminary work there. Whether the final project/product will be based in Second Life depends on a number of factors, including the rate and scale of Linden Labs’ development; the rate and scale of development in the RealXtend project; and the emergence (or not) of other usable platforms.

One of these could well be Unity.