OZ Virtual was a 3D world viewer created by OZ Interactive that enabled real-time collaboration communications in shared spaces on the Internet with a strong focus on creative content production.
The viewer supported the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML 2.0) a standard for creating and experiencing virtual reality worlds on the Internet. It came with an avatar editor that allowed the user to select from a set of pre-defined avatars with body movements and modify their appearance. Users could communicate using voice chat using low bandwidth codecs supplied by Voxware.
One of the features of this VRML browser was that anyone browsing a given URL could see and interact with any other users visiting the same URL at the same time, thus making it an instantaneous shared virtual space.
Timeline:
- The first version of the software was released in beta on July 24, 1996, with support for VRML 1.0, avatars, and social interaction.
- A subsequent release on December 11, 1996 added support for VRML 2.0 including support for VRML 2 scripting using Java.
- OZ Virtual 2.0, released March 12, 1997, enabled editing of avatars, and embedding of various components of OZ Virtual onto web pages using ActiveX technology
- The OZ Virtual technology was spun off from OZ Interactive into a separate company named SmartVR on November 24, 1999.
Partnerships: