Croquet Joins the Metaverse Gold Rush

Most people associate the Metaverse with ARVR (Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality) headsets, but Croquet, a startup founded by ARVR and game industry veterans, is betting people would also want to join the platform from their mobile phones and tablets. Their gamble comes in the form of a software development kit (SDK), called Microverse IDE.

Now in Beta, Microverse IDE is described as "a development platform for the Metaverse that extends the next generation of Web and Mobile. It is built on the existing infrastructure of the web." 

Croquet's platform supports glTF, FBX, OBJ, and other neutral 3D file formats. Smith believes the web is the primary mechanism for enabling Metaverse applications. Therefore, Croquet has built a web-centric platform. 

Startup Croquet offers Web-centric Metaverse application development platform. Image courtesy of 

As an emerging player, Croquet's platform is set to compete with other offerings from NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Facebook, among others. NVIDIA has decided to use the Pixar-developed USD format as the standard across its Omniverse platform.

To house digital twin applications, Croquet's platform has built-in physics, driven by Rapier. "We funded the development of Rapier. We believe it's the next generation engine. It's free and available to anyone," clarified David Smith, CTO and Cofounder of Croquet. 

The platform is offered as on-demand subscription. The midtier (Business) costs $19 + usage fees. The top tier (Enterprise) comes with support for additional fees. 

"We want to make it easy for regular programmers to build sophisticated multiuser collaboration apps," said Smith. Smith pointed out its platform is a live application development environment. Changes in the code are immediately updated. 

Croquet Microverse World Builder: Tour from Croquet on Vimeo.