GeoSim’s move from military to commercial applications puts in into the every growing Virtual Platform market (Refer to AI 70). Its first focus is city models and is working on Virtual Philadelphia in partnership with the Center City District and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
This first city will include commercial activities, featuring shops, stores, and museums.
"The city model is still a major investment," explained CEO Victor Shenkar. "We would feature it as an application platform that could at the same time support infrastructure planning, security, and training at the same time as business, search, and local real estate, and, last, but not least, games and social interaction."
The focus is to support tourism and with over 25 million people visiting Philadelphia each year this is regarded as low-hanging fruit.
"We believe the main leverage to bring users to this new medium is personalization, not user-generated content," said Shenkar. "We have no intention of providing our users with tools to build their houses or furniture or apartments. They will go to stores and be greeted by avatars who show purchasing and knowledge of their personal details and are helpful and nice and personable."
Some of that may happen automatically, with non-player characters greeting customers or showing off a potential property, but then GeoSim will provide avatars for salespeople to directly communicate to their users. It's an approach, Shenkar says, that many of the approached companies have been embracing.
