Metastream and MTS3

Dateline: 4/5/00

Customized ring engraving, from Jewelry demo courtesy Metastream

One of the biggest most interesting E-commerce technologies to appear is the just released MetaStream3 (MTS3) suite of products and new tools. Metastream is a new company which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Metacreations. It's also 20% owned by Computer Associates.

On March 29th, 2000 with suitable fanfare, Metastream launched MTS3 and opened up a suite of new offices in downtown New York City. At the press conference, CEO Bob Rice justifiably hyped up the new technology. He also not so justifiably hyped up the business model, but more about that later. In addition to the formal product launch there was a truly impressive array of partner companies collaborating with Metastream both for the technology and for delivering 3D content.

Photo copyright Sandy Ressler

The partner companies included names such as Nike, Adobe, Autodesk, Cybelius, and for my mind, the big Kahuna itself AOL. The press releases are available online.

The new MetaStream Web site has about a half dozen high quality demos, including what I have to consider the best Web3D E-commerce demo I've ever seen. The interactive ring demo, presents you with an image such as the following:

Ring model on Metastream Web site, courtesy Metastream.

The quality of the ring, the reflections and simulated refractions and environment map make the ring look terrific. However the really cool thing is that via a form on the Web page, you can type the engraving you would like to see and you simply zoom in for a close up and see the customized engraving such as illustrated at the beginning of this article.

There are two major aspects to the new developments, the technological side and the business side. First let's look at the technology.

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