What a surprise! It's a bit strange because is getting more and more like a monopoly …
It looks like there are coming a lot of negative comments from the 3D community about this. Some people quit using 3ds max because they felt that improvements didn't went fast/intense enough … now they are back in the same house. Autodesk keeps repeating about a secret plan for gaming …. talked about it here, too. So now we will get a mega-dcc-solution-suite? … …
Currently there is a Unity multi-day conference in Copenhagen called Unite. One guy blogged about some announcements:
- next Editor release will run on Windows too
- one day Linux/Unix will be supported, too. There is a cooperation with Novell
- iPhone add-on now available
- FusionFall, a MMO project for CartoonNetwork, was intended to use GameBryo but now uses Unity for the client
- new features that were added to the MMO project will be included
- the Editor was completely rewritten in C# and comes now with docking panes, tabs and more scriptable interfaces
- 3d snapping inside viewports
Last year I hoped that they would release the PC-Editor this year - i.e. at this conference. With all the new platforms (iPhone and Wii) they added I got doubts. Thus it's great to hear that it's not sooo far away anymore … The windows release will certainly boost them once more.
Interesting times ahead… 
Well, as usual, this is a quite busy time for me therefore it took a bit longer but here we go:
Download Dom's Interface PlugIns for 3DVIA Virtools
The Zip file currently includes builds for 3.5, 4.0 and 4.1. So what's new beside some bug-fixes?
HTMLView has 3 new commands that allows to put text into the clipboard of windows. With Patrick (aka Hightree) we had, some years ago, the idea to somehow unify shader codes for that sharing and mixing would be easier. Maybe some of you remember suggestions we also put on the forum about having some kind of shader-fragments library built into the editor or having tools that convert a standard material to a shader (like 3ds max is able to do). We also suggested node-based shader authoring like one can now experience in ShaderFx, MentalMill or the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately I wasn't able to focus on shaders and only from time to time I deal with them. I have a little lib of shaders from past projects but nothing is unified. Mixing, reusing is not effective. Patrick recently referred to an article how one could split up things in separate files. I wasn't aware that HLSL function get inlined, so this approach is indeed interesting!
Anyways, having HLSL fragments ready to use might help too and now HTMLView can be used for this task. You can setup a special HTML page that contain your HLSL fragments. By clicking links you either set the complete clipboard text or you add text to the one of the clipboard. So, not only you can have a place for a code skelett but also mix fragments within a few clicks.
I have no idea if this is really works well - as setting up the HTML page takes some time etc - but it's there, you can give it a try! The commands are
SetClipboardText, AddClipboardText, ClearClipboard
Unfortunately you have to use \t and \n for indicating tabs and newlines inside your fragments. There is also a new button which opens a file named "HTMLViewShaders.html" from the Virtools root directory. You can use that as your code fragment repository. There is already a file for demo purpose but this isn't how you should do it. That page mainly contain one-liners and I don't think this is how to do it. Better would be to mix code blocks instead of one-liners.
Additional information about how to setup commands can be found in the HTMLView.html page. Briefly, here is how a simple link command can look like:
dev://AddClipboardText#float4 MatDiffuse : DIFFUSE;\n
In case you are teaching or doing some kind of presentations, you can use these commands to have i.e. VSL code much quicker available for pasting. It takes less space on the page as the code is hidden behind a link and no longer needs to be displayed entirely or be in IFrames.
Yesterday I wrote a new little helper that I included in these builds, too. Fast Cam Switcher is actually doing something that was already possible via HTMLView and it's 'activateCam' commands. When I have to switch a lot between camera views, I really don't enjoy using that drop down list from the 3DLayout. With this new little floating dialog, you can assemble a little list of your favorite cameras quickly. By clicking on (and releasing) any of the names, the view is activated. This is much faster - it only saves a few clicks but I think it does matter. Each click matters! Hehehe …
I am trying to catch events like RESET in order to check for deleted objects, but I noticed that it doesn't work very well, yet. So please be careful if you use any dynamic objects in any of my tools. In some cases there is a refresh button that helps.
Enjoy! 
I wanted you to know that I am intending to release soon an update of my Interface Plugin for the 3DVIA Virtools authoring system. I will try to include binaries for 4.1 so people like feranti can be happy. It will also contain a few fixes for bugs that produced crashes.
I think I will not include my simple texture painting module although actually it reached a usable state. It's no real paint application with plenty of features but I wished I had it back then when we did our first custom GPU shaded terrains in 2004 with per-pixel splatting masks. I think for these kind of tasks it might be good enough but I am still thinking about if I will include it to the free plugin-package or not.
Besides this, HTMLView got 2 or 3 new commands … pretty simple stuff but maybe a very interesting toy for some of you. Stay tuned! 
Gamesindustry.biz titles "Google Lively to become online games platform" and quotes from an interview with Kevin K Hanna who works at X-Ray Kid, the company that was contracted by Google to produce during 2 years 3D content for Lively. Kevin says:
There is a longer term goal of opening up the API so the architecture of Lively could be used as an online games platform
Moreover he states
I'd like for it to be invisible, where when it makes sense to have 3D aspects of the web, that everyone will have already downloaded the plug-in, it's one of the first things you do when you install your machine, and you're able to just jump around and play in a creative space
Now, Kevin is not working at Google directly but both statements can be considered as a clear intention/vision. If this is the direction, they will try to create a big user base and enable the platform over a period of time.
… Beta-Style …
In the late 90s and early 2000s we had Web3D like Pulse, TurnTool, Blaxxun etc etc where in most cases the interactive experience was very limited. Virtools with it's webplayer and it's hierarchical graph behaviour engine was ahead of it's time. I believe that nowadays we a have a new generation of web3d. So many companies come up with web3d applications and more and more of them are of complex interactivity like online 3d games. In addition to that more and more 3d authoring systems with webplayers are available or in the works.
The integrated 3D Gfx Intel chips still hurt as we see in the casual HW market stats published by the Unity3D guys. But it might be that with more and more available interactive 3D content, Intel has to deliver more performant integrated solutions. Larabee might do the job.
