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Name of Site: The Sims
URL: http://thesims.ea.com/
Load Time: Medium
Ease of Navigation: Signposted
Review: When it comes to escaping reality, nothing comes close to the
Sims universe. After years of ongoing development, it is getting to the
point where you can cease all real world activities and spend the rest
of your life playing God. With so many plug-ins, add-ons and Internet
capability, it is easy to see how this has become such a phenomenon. It's
challenging, funny and highly addictive! Now that 'The Sims2' has taken
it all to a whole new level of reality, you can be excused for your incurable
delusions of grandeur. - SS
Name of Site: Worlds.com
URL: http://www.worlds.com/
Load Time: Scorching
Ease of Navigation: Walk in the Park
Review: With a simple plug in, you have access to the cynical, commercial
side of virtual Utopia. Forget about forming new societies and having
meaningful online interactions, let's just spend our money idolizing celebrities!
You can actually have a fair bit of input here, with poetry readings,
comedy and trivia, but it is very much geared towards content creators
feeding stuff to us less creative drones. Bowie and Aerosmith are proud
to be involved - as you'd expect, being old school rockers who crave hoards
of adoring fans - but these days, the average Joe/Joanne wants his/her
own stage to prance around and play superstar. - SS
Name of Site: Active Worlds
URL: http://www.activeworlds.com/
Load Time: Scorching
Ease of Navigation: Signposted
Review: Longevity in the VR game is a rarity, but AW has been around long
enough to amass over 1000 'worlds' and over 40,000 people milling around
bumping into each other. The company maintains a huge world library but
also licences their technology to independent providers so moviemakers,
for example can build a world specifically for a new flick. They have
3D shops and chat as well as pure virtual exploration through the terrains
built by the participants. So choose your avatar, download the plug-in,
get Active and start living! - SS
Name of Site: Digital Space
URL: http://www.digitalspace.com/
Load Time: Scorching
Ease of Navigation: Signposted
Review: With a philosophy taken from the old real world - the village
common - Digital Space hopes to foster that same kind of community feeling
in cyberspace. It all sounds quite exciting, combining technology with
small-town values. So far it is pretty much experimental and doesn't go
much beyond 3D Java chat, but you can feel the enthusiasm breaking through
the inertia the world has to such fanciful notions. It's worth book marking
this site and keeping tabs on how this transition to the perfect world
is unfolding. - SS
Name of Site: Virtual Reality Portal
URL: http://beard.dialnsa.edu/~gpagano/index.html
Load Time: Scorching
Ease of Navigation: Signposted
Review: Most sites concerned with VR and 3D web seem splintered into their
areas of expertise, so it is nice to come across this broad primer, covering
all aspects, from history and system architecture to software and societies,
and whetting the appetite of the uninitiated. It's basically one dude's
own effort, after getting interested in VR from a dissertation he had
to do for Uni, but it is a generous offering that should orient you well,
before you begin heading off on the link trail to your immersive interactive
Eldorado. - SS
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