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Actually, I think "Worlds, Inc" may have a valid complaint here. If I remember right, Alpha World became Active Worlds.
The previous owner of Alpha Worlds split off or something... There was some sort of drama, which created, I believe, Worlds inc.
For those of you who dont know, Alpha World was essentially a "Second Life" type adventure, where you can claim land a build your own house. Although it was mostly prefab type items, it did evolve to allow some modifications and customizations.
I was known on there as "theone" (this was before Matrix).

Microsoft has patented this in 2006.

Second Life has been doing this since March 2005.

There are also other, less known virtual worlds that have been doing it since prior to 2005.
(I think Active Worlds had this running in the same year or earlier? Needs to be checked.)

I wonder if this patent would hold against this sort of a prior art?

As a Vet and a recovering addict, I think this is a great idea. I used to go to NA meetings on IRC back in the day and I used to have my own world in Activeworlds http://www.activeworlds.com/, where me and some friends would get together for a small meeting. It was great, especially when someone was out of town and couldn't make a meeting in meatspace. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the VA to figure this out. LD

Just some examples of people interacting as avatars in a virtual 3d environment.

The only 3d world I knew about pre-2000 was alphaworld. Currently known as activeworlds http://www.activeworlds.com./ I remember tinkering around in that world around 1995 or so.

On balance I think it likely to be here to stay and evolve as the prime metaverse.

They're not first - Activeworlds has been around for years (I first used it in 97 or so).

http://www.activeworlds.com/

Odd that the author didn't mention Active Worlds http://activeworlds.com/ that already has the features claimed for Multiverse. In fact, the two look remarkably alike. The only significant difference I see is that Multiverse http://multiverse.net/ seems to use higher-resolution graphics.

Active Worlds has one advantage in that you can download the client and visit all the worlds as a "tourist" without registering or paying any fees. This makes it more like the original Netscape than Metaverse, which requires registration and even then limits your travel to a "demo world".

http://www.activeworlds.com/
Done years ago.

I never got a good feeling of community at Active Worlds, which Second Life has in spades. There's a huge academic community within Second Life as well who seem fairly convinced that the educational possibilities of Second Life are immense.

I would take the O.S System one step further. Forget the Desktop; it's an antiquated anology from the days when P.C.'s were mostly used in the office. I would like an enviorment that resembles http://activeworlds.com/ or the old VRML sites that would represent my virtual home with rooms that represent different applications or groups of applications. Suppose I wanted to record some music. I would enter a room that had icons of music apps on the wall or sitting on a desk. I click on the app I needed and start working. If I turned in another direction I would see other apps I might have open or click on another app to start it. Then to look at each open app I simply rotate or back up. Of course I will probably have an 'Office' which would hold my Open Office app and docs and other text related stuff. The system would most likely have a teleporter that would act as 'shortcuts' to fequently used rooms. Some ideas for rooms: - Movie room. When you leave the room the movie pauses. - Game Room. When you leave the room the game pauses. - Web Room. Get out of the house by going to a virtual mall. I'm not sure why someone's not doing this now. We certainly have the technology. R.H.

http://www.activeworlds.com/

I would like to see a big open ended Virtual world where killing each other off wasn't the goal.

http://secondlife.com/

http://www.there.com/

http://www.activeworlds.com/

Nothing new.. activeworlds has had this for ~8 years

And you can modify the environment.

I haven't logged on to it in years (read: since maybe 1999), but I always remember that I thought it was pretty cool given the 3D capabilities of x86 machines at the time (read: none), and it wasn't TOO bad for dialup. Even played MIDI tracks while you were walking around. I think they eventually went to a pay-for-service model, and hopefully they eventually adopted some kind of 3D acceleration technology (via ActiveX?)

If I may point out, this isnt anything new. Blaxxun, Activeworlds, Secondlife are all similar 3D platforms, but have a great deal more experience & interactivity (having all existed for some years now). I posted some info on my favourite 3D platform at the moment (Secondlife) here

(Also check out Activeworlds & There (nb: there is more a social use, like the topic, rather than a 3D platform on it's own.))

Why is this news?

Activeworlds seems pretty cool

GameGrid dynamically partitions areas of the game map, including players and objects, onto different servers. If a player or object, such as a rocket, moves from one server to another, the first server sends the player's state--the player's name, vector, velocity, and statistics--from one server to the next. [. . .] Even if a player isn't physically "on" a server, he must still be able to "see" objects stored on another. The Quake code determines the state of the world every tenth of a second, Bethencourt said.

GameGrid dynamically partitions areas of the game map, including players and objects, onto different servers. If a player or object, such as a rocket, moves from one server to another, the first server sends the player's state--the player's name, vector, velocity, and statistics--from one server to the next. [. . .] Even if a player isn't physically "on" a server, he must still be able to "see" objects stored on another. The Quake code determines the state of the world every tenth of a second, Bethencourt said.

No, the first commercial implementation of the Snowcrash model was by Activeworlds, introduced in 1995. Blaxxun started in 1997. Activeworlds also just happens to be run by Uncle Enzo, who is the anti-competition mafia/family man leader in Snowcrash.

Active Worlds has one.

Is this the same as Activeworlds, which is like 10 years old yet has better graphics?

www.activeworlds.com

Tom Clancy wrote a book about a virtual nation that existed entirely on the Internet of the future and demanded diplomatic recognition. The book was pretty bad, but the idea is an interesting one.

I remember reading an article about Everquest a while ago that said that the amount of trading in real money that went on within the EQ system made it a larger economy than that of several real-life nations. I can't remember the source of the article, unfortunately, so I can't check its accuracy. However, I think it is entirely possible when you consider that the number of players is certainly greater than the populations of some members of the UN (for example, Tuvalu, population approximately 5000).

I am sure that one day Internet societies will be demanding diplomatic recognition as states. Right now, you can already see some examples. Google for "micronations" and see what you get. The ones I've been involved with were all political simulations that did not claim any sovereignty or try to have any relationship with the real states, but there are some that do.

A virtual environment like the Sims is even closer to a virtual state than a micronation or EQ, because the Sims is all about simulating life. The title SimNation is relatively appropriate; you can think of it as a gigantic distributed simulation of a society. If there was a governmental structure, that would make it a distributed simulation of a nation.

Anyway, another site to check out is Active Worlds, a 3D virtual environment. It's not as good a simulation of human characteristics as The Sims, but it still is a good enough representation of real life that simulated virtual nations have been founded within it.

Noone else is using it, anyway

It maneuvers like crap

There's alternatives much simplier than virtual reality

Basically, people aren't using it because there's no advantage of doing so. Those that are using it are, from what I've seen, much more social than the typical geek.

When will we see a world that provides both quality, as well as a reason to stay? Only MMORPGs seem to be providing it today.

(Then again, I haven't stepped into a chat-oriented world in a few years, so I don't know of any particular trends.. YMMV.)

Activeworlds is the only one I know of. "> It's even free if you just want to walk around. Being able to build your own stuff costs 20 dollars a year, and I'd say it's worth it (although I haven't visited since 1999... all my stuff is still built though :).

Hosting your own world is almost prohibitively expensive, although I doubt anyone would want to bother, unless you REALLY want to build an entire world. The main world thing you start on is big enough for all your building desires.

Lordfly

How is this relevant at all?

Don't want to be flamebait here or anything, but really... this stuff has been going on for years. Like Activeworlds has been doing since like 1997. You can even build your own stuff (landscaping, buildings, even entire cities -- I did so when I was 14) in real-time. Sure, you can't shoot people in the face, but do you really want to all the time?

I suppose this is News For Nerds because Counter-strike is l33t or something. Frankly, I wouldn't want to chat with most of the CS community... I might get accused of cheating using a Chatbot :)

But seriously, this has been around for years. I fail to see why this is important. Must be a slow news day.

Lordfly

This has already been done... Active Worlds has been around since about 1996 doing this. You build your own "town", and people can come and talk to you, full 3D and everything.

Active Worlds

I think you underestimate the effort that has to go into laying out even simplistic protocols for a server and a single client to chatter with each other. Much less creating one that's scalable and avoids looking like alphabet soup.

If this were "scalable," the developer wouldn't require users to register by email before downloading.

I have no argument with the amount of effort involved for the developer. My point is that it's not really that useful. Active Worlds already does this, in 3D and with better potential; The Palace has provided graphical avatar-based chat for quite some time now without the P2P aspect.

So it's neither scalable, nor novel, nor revolutionary. I'll pat the developer on the back for coming up with it on his own, but I'll not download it myself nor recommend it to my friends when other long-time applications already do the same job, and better. If someone wants to make a MMO game out of it, they'd be better off starting with one of those other apps instead.

This is exactly what ActiveWorlds does. I played around with it a couple years ago. Last week, I looked it up to see if it is still there, and it's grown quite a bit.

The difference between ActiveWorlds and BrendanLand? ActiveWorlds is free to view and free to build things, but anything you build has public ownership, so anyone can modify it. If you subscribe (which I've never done), you can start your own world, and nothing built in it can be modified by anyone but you. Oh yeah, and ActiveWorlds is three-dimensional, first or third-person view :o).

Hasn't anyone ever heard of Ative Worlds? It used to be known as Alpha Worlds. This program was the sole reason I upgrade my 486DX2 33 to a PII 266, so I could "play" in alpha worlds. I didn't go for the big graphics card, so it wasn't that great, especially on my modem.

Active Worlds gives you everything this guy is trying to provide, except it isn't P2P, so you have to pay to build. The client is a free download, so you can walk and talk to your hearts content.

A paid account give you your own avatar. Worlds, as there are portals to other worlds, aren't restricted to "real" world environments. You can build whole worlds that are just matrices of connecting lines, etc. Every client then downloads different sound and graphics to represent the new world they came into.

It is essentially just a 3D chat program, but I like the fact that if you aren't in the vicinity, you don't "hear" the conversation. Check it out, the client is free to windows users.

Already been done. Except for the peer-to-peer bit. And the not-having-to-pay-an-inflated-price-for-an-account \server bit.

This is sort of like the Active Worlds concept on drugs.

Active World has the same "build your own space" concept, but it is pay to play. You don't really play, it is just a 3D chat environment. Other than paying, the main difference is it is all based on really huge servers. There are huge clusters of teleport tubes to go to different servers. You can even pay for servers that are private, where you control the access to the world.

Well, ActiveWorlds is a 3D chat environment that allows user building, has hundreds of worlds, and allows any object to link to a web page that appears in the web pane of the Active Worlds browser. It's always free for "tourists" as well.

Uh, yeah, look out Neal Stephenson, the metaverse has arrived.

Uh, yeah, look out Neal Stephenson, the metaverse has arrived.

Uh, yeah, look out Neal Stephenson, the metaverse has arrived.

Its been around for at least 4-5 years already.

Try Active Worlds . Not VRML (as far as I know), but some other custom protocol. Only Windows clients tough. It is fun, well *I* had lotsa fun hours on it.

In my humble opinion, Activeworlds is alot better for this purpose, as it is actually designed to implement this kind of thing....using a game engine isnt exactly the answer....

• VZones, the inheritors of the Habitat legacy.
• ActiveWorlds aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
• Blaxxun, actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
• The Palace, made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
• Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.

This sounds a little bit like ActiveWorlds.


...phil

Interest in VRML peaked in 1997. Even though browsers now come with VRML plug-ins, many machines have 3D graphics boards, and enough people have the CPU power and net bandwidth to use it effectively, VRML is going nowhere.

There's an attempt to resurrect VRML as Web3D, which is basically VRML97 represented in XML syntax. If you're really bored, you can try Excite's 3D shopping,a Web3D application. It's doing 3D rendering in Java, which is why it's so slow.

We have the technology. But we don't have the killer app.

I'm not involved with this project, I just found it a few days ago and it looks cool. It's about time we start using 3D for things besides shoot-em-up games!