Virtools Opens 3D to Designers
Translated from French appearing in PC News

Founding Virtools in 1993, Bertrand Duplat wanted to create an interactive environment to create projects in real time 3D. A simple idea, but time consuming to develop: it will take 5 million francs of capital risk investment to finance the last part of the project. Result after five years of work: Virtools, the first development platform of real time 3D content. Place your 3D scenes in Virtools, add your characters and Virtools takes charge of the rest, ... managing the interactions between characters, objects and scenes. You can assign behaviors to any object (click on a light switch and it light's up... or explodes!). The behavior library furnished with Virtools is insufficient? You can create your own and exchange them on the internet with other developers, Virtools having already put in place a web site to that effect (www.swapmeet.com). But the genius of Virtools is that you do not have to compile your creation to test it. A simple click and you are in the game! From that, the development time to create a prototype can be counted in days rather than months - and non-programmers can create their 3D games. Presented this spring at the Computer Game Developers Conference in Long Beach and at E3 in Atlanta, Virtools has seduced publishers like Cendant Software who commanded it even before the availability of the beta version! Virtools can then claim the paternity of the Lara Croft's children.