I'm going to go back There someday
As you know I've been thinking about VR and online communities ever since I played Battlezone as a kid. I remember asking my dad a sleue of questions when we found a lone Battlezone machine at a Fishing Expo one night "What happens if I keep driving? Will I hit the mountain? Will I be able to drive up it? What's up there? Will I see anybody else playing?" He answered solemnly "I think it's just an illusion -- you're not getting any closer to that mountain. There's nothing up there."
Fast-forward 10 years. A friend in college got me hooked on MUDs (Multi-user domains) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented), text-based virtual places. They were basically multiplayer, persistent ZORK (for those of you who remember Infocom games) with the ability to make your own things, rooms and alterations to yourself. Every "thing" was text, of course. If you typed "look" then you saw a description of the room and the things in it. You could then "look" at each thing in particular to get more descriptions. Some of the "things" had verbs, commands that you could invoke and a message or behavior would happen. But other "things" in the room were people. Players. Every player had various verbs to conjure text at others. The two main ones were ':' for evoking and '"' for talking. Or you could program (in a Forth-like language for MUDs, or much cozier C-like one in MOO) your own objects with triggers. Some places even let Players develop their own homes with rooms. (I had a whole mansion going, with hot tub, pool, bar, etc.) This was so much more rich than today's ephemeral chat or instant messaging systems. But they lacked any graphics, and would be another 5 years before some of those started to crop up.
In the mid-90's, a bunch of attempts to add 3-D graphics to chat. A little earlier there were 2-D chat worlds like Fujitsu's Habitat and later World's Away, and Warner/Pathfinder (pre-AOL) even had one also. But they didn't catch on. VRML was the big buzzword -- it was supposed to be THE way to do 3-D on the web (still new at the time). I remember trying out three VRML-based worlds. World's Inc. had two, AvatarWorld, and Worlds Chat. Then there was OnLive, and audio-based 3-D world.
The first was pure 3-D, but back then there were no 3-D accelerator cards so the experience was painful. Lots of empty architecture, vast empty space. Chat appeared above simplistic 3-D bodies, but there was little to do except look at polygonal buildings. World's Chat was at least a little bit fun. It had a DOOM-like engine with decent frame rate, but the Players (Avatars) were flat cut-outs. Text appeared in a separate standard chat window. There were no actions or objects. So basically what would happen is you'd zoom around until you found a pocket of people, stop, type "hello" and soon there'd be a bigger cluster of static cardboard cut-outs just standing there in a 3-D environment. The only game I came up with to do was to go into the Space Room (which gave you up and down movement in addition to forward/back, left/right) and then play a crude form of tag. Get close enough and type "TAG" at someone. Thrilling! Anything else you'd want to do would involve a MUD-standard, which was emoting using *'s. Like *tickles you* or *throws a frisbee at you.* Imagination over graphics.
OnLive was a VRML-based playground of talking heads, whose mouths moved whenever a player spoke into his/her microphone. Interesting! You could move your head through space. When you got closer to others, their voices got louder. Unfortunately, that was it. No chatting, which would at least have allowed emoting. No objects to interact with. Plus, it's VRML architecture meant that the geometry of the world took FOREVER to download.
Fast foward to now. Over the last couple years, There.com has been developing a complex 3-D online community. It has two forms of chat -- both cartoon ballons over the head, and standard. It has a full, vast 3-D world with camera. There are cliffs, mountains, volcanoes, even an Egyptian tomb to explore. Lots of houses, night clubs. It has customizable Avatars, for which not only can you adjust bodily characteristics -- you can also buy or design your own (with a downloadable package) clothes and accessories! Your Avatars breathe and emote on their own depending on what others are doing or saying, but you can also emote with gestures. Some even let you send little hearts, snakes, and chickens at each other. Or you can do a backflip. But my favorite part of the place is their modes of transportation. You can teleport, or ride hoverboards, hoverpacks, hoverboats, or buggies. It's so much fun to grab up to 4 buddies and cruise over the island, or hoverpack up and over a crystal castle, landing on it and catching a rest on a nicely provided couch.
So soon you'll be getting "Postcards from There" in this blog and on my website. See you There!
As you know I've been thinking about VR and online communities ever since I played Battlezone as a kid. I remember asking my dad a sleue of questions when we found a lone Battlezone machine at a Fishing Expo one night "What happens if I keep driving? Will I hit the mountain? Will I be able to drive up it? What's up there? Will I see anybody else playing?" He answered solemnly "I think it's just an illusion -- you're not getting any closer to that mountain. There's nothing up there."
Fast-forward 10 years. A friend in college got me hooked on MUDs (Multi-user domains) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented), text-based virtual places. They were basically multiplayer, persistent ZORK (for those of you who remember Infocom games) with the ability to make your own things, rooms and alterations to yourself. Every "thing" was text, of course. If you typed "look" then you saw a description of the room and the things in it. You could then "look" at each thing in particular to get more descriptions. Some of the "things" had verbs, commands that you could invoke and a message or behavior would happen. But other "things" in the room were people. Players. Every player had various verbs to conjure text at others. The two main ones were ':' for evoking and '"' for talking. Or you could program (in a Forth-like language for MUDs, or much cozier C-like one in MOO) your own objects with triggers. Some places even let Players develop their own homes with rooms. (I had a whole mansion going, with hot tub, pool, bar, etc.) This was so much more rich than today's ephemeral chat or instant messaging systems. But they lacked any graphics, and would be another 5 years before some of those started to crop up.
In the mid-90's, a bunch of attempts to add 3-D graphics to chat. A little earlier there were 2-D chat worlds like Fujitsu's Habitat and later World's Away, and Warner/Pathfinder (pre-AOL) even had one also. But they didn't catch on. VRML was the big buzzword -- it was supposed to be THE way to do 3-D on the web (still new at the time). I remember trying out three VRML-based worlds. World's Inc. had two, AvatarWorld, and Worlds Chat. Then there was OnLive, and audio-based 3-D world.
The first was pure 3-D, but back then there were no 3-D accelerator cards so the experience was painful. Lots of empty architecture, vast empty space. Chat appeared above simplistic 3-D bodies, but there was little to do except look at polygonal buildings. World's Chat was at least a little bit fun. It had a DOOM-like engine with decent frame rate, but the Players (Avatars) were flat cut-outs. Text appeared in a separate standard chat window. There were no actions or objects. So basically what would happen is you'd zoom around until you found a pocket of people, stop, type "hello" and soon there'd be a bigger cluster of static cardboard cut-outs just standing there in a 3-D environment. The only game I came up with to do was to go into the Space Room (which gave you up and down movement in addition to forward/back, left/right) and then play a crude form of tag. Get close enough and type "TAG" at someone. Thrilling! Anything else you'd want to do would involve a MUD-standard, which was emoting using *'s. Like *tickles you* or *throws a frisbee at you.* Imagination over graphics.
OnLive was a VRML-based playground of talking heads, whose mouths moved whenever a player spoke into his/her microphone. Interesting! You could move your head through space. When you got closer to others, their voices got louder. Unfortunately, that was it. No chatting, which would at least have allowed emoting. No objects to interact with. Plus, it's VRML architecture meant that the geometry of the world took FOREVER to download.
Fast foward to now. Over the last couple years, There.com has been developing a complex 3-D online community. It has two forms of chat -- both cartoon ballons over the head, and standard. It has a full, vast 3-D world with camera. There are cliffs, mountains, volcanoes, even an Egyptian tomb to explore. Lots of houses, night clubs. It has customizable Avatars, for which not only can you adjust bodily characteristics -- you can also buy or design your own (with a downloadable package) clothes and accessories! Your Avatars breathe and emote on their own depending on what others are doing or saying, but you can also emote with gestures. Some even let you send little hearts, snakes, and chickens at each other. Or you can do a backflip. But my favorite part of the place is their modes of transportation. You can teleport, or ride hoverboards, hoverpacks, hoverboats, or buggies. It's so much fun to grab up to 4 buddies and cruise over the island, or hoverpack up and over a crystal castle, landing on it and catching a rest on a nicely provided couch.
So soon you'll be getting "Postcards from There" in this blog and on my website. See you There!
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