The Fashion Research Institute that currently holds Shengri-La island complex in Second Life (SL) has decided to build a multi-million dollar service using IBM for a product life-cycle management. This will involve using SL and the virtual world platform OpenSim (refer to AI 70, 73, 83, 92, 93 & 94).
The new service will involve twenty international design houses and include product samples and factory specifications to design mass production systems in the real world. The aim is to drive down sample costs by over 50% by allowing everything from design to prototyping to be handled virtually.
This move shows the emerging route map of prototyping in SL and migrating to an industrial strength platform using OpenSim.
