VIRTUAL WORLD PLATFORM BLUE MARS INTRODUCES SEAMLESS AND SIMULTANEOUS USE OF ADOBE FLASH IN MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER 3D ENVIRONMENTS

Virtual World Users Can – At Last - Interact with the Web In-World

HONOLULU, Hawaii—December 17, 2009—Avatar Reality Inc., creators of the platform for virtual worlds, Blue Mars, announced the world’s first system for rendering fully interactive Adobe Flash 10™ content in a high definition massively multiplayer 3D environment. Developers can now create immersive 3D worlds in which thousands of users can experience and interact with Flash™ content simultaneously in any given world.

Avatar Reality’s Blue Mars platform enables individuals and organizations to hire developers to create small-to-large-scale virtual spaces for education, business, retail, entertainment, fashion, art and gaming with unparalleled fidelity, security, connectivity and scalability for tens of thousands of simultaneous users. Using the Blue Mars Sandbox Editors, developers can manage land, develop terrain, change lighting conditions, script actions, arrange collision volumes, and texture surfaces. Empowering developers with the ability to implement a seamless interaction with the World Wide Web in-world is without precedent and a first in a long line of innovations that will further define the expanding capabilities of the Blue Mars platform.

“Applications like YouTube, Amazon, Hulu and webcasting have already changed the way that the world experiences content,” said Jim Sink, Avatar Reality CEO. “By adding the interactive Flash capability to the Blue Mars platform, we are allowing developers to incorporate that content in immersive social spaces and create a staggering variety of different experiences:  from venues in which thousands of users can enjoy a live concert together to collaborative classrooms and business meetings, to imaginative locations where friends from all over the globe can share movies and videos, shop for real-world and virtual items together, or play games. With the thousands of Flash™ applications already available and more appearing every day, the possibilities are truly limitless. We look forward to seeing how developers will make use of this new functionality to create exciting and profitable immersive applications and experiences. Providing this choice is a competitive advantage for us and Blue Mars developers.”

“The Blue Mars system for Flash is super easy to use. You can create a Flash panel in a few seconds. Just drop the Flash panel where you want it, paste the URL into the form, and hit the Enter key,” added Kazuyuki (“Kaz”) Hashimoto, president of Avatar Reality. “We want you to spend your time creating rather than struggling with the technology. The depth of experience was just as important to us. We’re giving our developers a great deal more than just the ability to project static content onto surfaces. Now they can take any existing Flash 10 content and instantly deliver it to their users in its original, fully interactive form. The Flash applications are fully multi-threaded and run smoothly in the background, offering users the option of interacting with them or not, and keeping all interactions simple, with low impact on the overall virtual experience.”

Using the new Flash multimedia integration tools provided by Avatar Reality, developers can provide practically any Flash-based web content to their users, including: 

• Videos and TV shows - Youtube™, Hulu™ and more
• Live events - Sports, music, entertainment
• Flash video games - Tetris™ and thousands of others
• Communications tools - Voice and text chat, whiteboards, document sharing
• Stocks and financial data - Tickers and applications
• Commerce/Retail – Ebay™, Amazon™ and most retail outlets with a Flash presence on the web
• Presentations - Demos, simulations
• Educational - Flash applications

About Avatar Reality Inc.
Blue Mars (www.bluemars.com) is the premium 3D massively multiplayer virtual world platform featuring stunningly detailed graphics, compelling interactive content – including Adobe Flash 10™ - secure IP and payment delivery systems, and a massively scalable server structure. This immersive next-generation in virtual world technology enables end users, digital entrepreneurs, game developers, educators and corporations to manage virtual land, build themed and game environments, and operate business ventures for a global audience. The Public Beta launched on September 2, 2009, and powerful tools for the development of User Generated Content are freely available at www.bluemarsdev.com. Blue Mars is wholly owned by Avatar Reality Inc. (www.avatar-reality.com), a Honolulu-based company founded in 2006 by interactive entertainment visionaries Henk Rogers and Kazuyuki Hashimoto and led by CEO Jim Sink. 

Avatar Reality, the Avatar Reality logo, Blue Mars, and the Blue Mars logo are trademarks of Avatar Reality Inc.  Adobe Flash is a trademark of Adobe Systems Inc.  Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: Images available upon request. A video will be available in the coming week.

Press Contact:
Glenn Sanders
press@avatar-reality.com
808-954-6150