Google has just released their virtual world project Lively. Product Manager Niniane Wang says the project came out of the personal 20% time.

At first look, Google seems to be competing with ExitReality, SceneCaster and Vivaty. There is certain friction in terms of a plugin download/install and it only works on Windows XP/Vista with Internet Explorer and Firefox (Out of the four products, SceneCaster is the only one that is Flash-based, all the rest require a download/install).

Google seems to be targeting the self-expression market like the other competitors. You create rooms, decorate the rooms and invite your friends one by one to your room to chat with them. They also have plans to have tighter integration with social networks.

When you launch Lively, you sign in one more time even if you are already logged into your Google account. Then you pick a username and Lively creates an empty room for you.

Then you are presented with options to fill your room with sounds and ’shop’ for room shells or use one of the existing ‘free’ shells (Obviously they plan to make money by creating a market for virtual goods, be it shells or other items you can put in your room).

Looking at the installed files, one can easily see that Lively is using DirectX9, Microsoft Visual Studio 7 runtime (2 versions behind the current one), their models are in Gamebryo format and their UI is built with Flash (swf).

Lively currently has the early VRML 1.0 look, and is not going for the high-quality rendering approach. Avatars are almost flat-shaded with a cartoon-filter.

Overall, this is a very exciting development given the size and reach of Google. I am sure Lively will bring more people into the realm of virtual worlds and validates Unype’s approach that people are looking to connect with each other in real-time on the web, be it on a map or in a cartoon room.