With Guild Wars 2 looking at a 2011 date, I decided to quench my craving for new fantasy gaming content with a desktop based RPG game, the new Dragon Age Origins, which just launched last month.

I have played a few MMORPGs, but this is my first PC-RPG and it is quite the experience. There are advantages to desktop RPGs that you don’t get online. The obvious one is cheat codes, game mods, etc. If you get stuck somewhere these are options.

MMORPG requires eveything be balanced, while PC-RPGs actually thrive on imbalance. Finding power combos (like taunt and forcefield) that are way over powered aren’t going to get nerfed in the next update. It sets up a choice whether you want to go the easy way or the “pure” way, as nobody gets hurt from your “cheating”.

The biggest difference is the storytelling possibilities. MMORPGs have linear storylines which occasionally branch but eventually re-merge. PC-RPGs can be very complex, and because enemy difficulty can change along with the player there is no need for easy regions or hard regions. The path you take is fairly open.

The NPC’s have complex personalities, and keeping good relations with them is a part of the game. Some of them will even quit your group if you make decisions they are upset with. On the other hand, some can develop into sexual relationships. (One of the reasons why the game is rated M).

The first thing that amazed me was the first big battle cut scene. Hundreds of characters on the screen at the same time is something I have never seen in a video game before. Most “battles” I see are maybe 12 characters fighting 12 enemies, more of a skirmish than a battle. To see battles the size and scope you see in the movies is a new experience.

The world is immersive, the stories emotional and complex, the directions it could go are not open ended, but there is a lot of content here. Choices you make on the opening character creation screen can completely change the story that is told, making the game very replayable. Many people in the know say this is the best RPG game ever made, and I see no evidence not to believe them.

Metaverse News dragonage, reviews, role play, videogame

What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came? That seems to be the question facing the makers of a 3D virtual world that I recently discovered.

I was tinkering around with evolver.com a 3D avatar maker that hopes to create a common avatar for multiple web based 3D worlds. I was using it to create a new avatar for facebook, and I saw one of the “transport” options was something called

friendshangout.com

The name sounds atrociously lame. Sounds like a chat website for lonely emo teenagers. Who would want to go to a website like that? Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. The website was as lame as I thought it would be, featuring lots of pics of good looking college kids with dumb smiles on their face, and a video of some blonde chick reading marketing dribble from a teleprompter.

My first reaction was “I want no part of this”, my second was to see just how lame of a 3D chat this was going to be, like slowing down to look at an auto accident, or smelling expired milk before throwing it away.

So I create an account, go to the 3D chat page and pick a beach setting. My expectation dropped even further when I saw the 3D Chat runs in a web browser (remember Google Lively?). I was ready for the worst, and then…

OMG!!!

This was completely unexpected! A beautiful fully developed 3D world with awesome graphics, easy to use navigation, decent evolver avatars, that runs in a freaking web browser!

There are also vehicles to ride, and about a half dozen environments to explore. The only thing I didn’t try out was the chat feature as I could never find anyone else online. I pretty much had the place to myself, which was kind of sad.

This is a quality 3D Virtual World that impressed me way more than Blue Mars, and it is too bad it is buried behind crappy marketing.

Further reasearch indicates that the virtual world is based on the Unity game engine. The friends hangout “Island Paradise” is identical to the demo “Tropical Paradise” as seen on unity3d.com. Apparently some of the other places at friends hangout consist of other demos, or worlds created from arteria3d.com.

A little whois research indicates that friendshangout.com was registered over five years ago by a company that has a bunch of similarly designed websites, which tells me it is some off the shelf web template they are using.

So someone has managed to combined cheap avatars from evolver.com, with a cheap web based 3D gaming engine from unity3d.com (was $200, now available for free), and put up a cheap website with a domain they already owned.

If they were to actually get some professional web designer with a decent social network web system, and buy a decent domain name, and promoted it, they may have something really cool.  

There is not enough content here for long term interest, but in the mean time, I am enjoying what is here.

It is a nice place to visit on the remote outskirts of the Metaverse.

Metaverse News 3D art, evolver, friendshangout, metaverse, reviews, virtual worlds

With the popularity of IMVU now matching Second Life levels, I decided to check IMVU out again after a 4 year absence.

I signed up after IMVU went open beta, and was the 814th person to do so. In those days IMVU was Instant Messenger Viewer Utility. It was a tool that you add to any IM program of your choice, so to use IMVU you had to be using AIM or YIM, and the person you were chatting with must be as well.  Finding people to chat with was difficult. Eventually, they got smart and just started their own IM service for IMVU users to use.

Even after creating their own IM service, I found it annoyng that you could only form a chat with one person, and then add people to the chat.  I prefer to chat wih groups rather than random strangers.

I returned back about a year later to discover they were experimenting with a group chat feature. I liked this, but it was a bit flaky at first. It wasn’t long before I lost interest again, and I pretty much did not have it even installed on my computer for 4 years.

So, after reading the press release about IMVU making money,  having 6 million unique monthly visitors, and traffic equal to Second Life, I had to go check it out again after a long absence.

A lot has changed, so much that I feel like a noobie again.  The biggest change happened in July 2009 when they completely revamped the client program.  In the early days you had to keep 3 windows open to use IMVU: the IM program, the client, and the website.  When they added their own IM service it was reduced to two.  As of July 2009, you only need one.  Shopping, friend finder, group finder, and profiles are all now accessible in the client itself, even through tabs.  It is all organized really well, and Second Life could learn a thing or two, (or three, or four…) from the client.

IMVU now has in my estimation the best 3D client program of any 3D Virtual World I have seen.  Its unfortunate that the bar for this achievement has been set so low.

Since the last time I started IMVU, they have changed the default avatars.  The oversized heads are gone, feet are smaller, and they look more proportional to human normal.  Hands are still big though.

The bad news is that my account still has the old avatar with the big head.  Some would just roll a new avatar with better looks, but in the last 4 years I have collected over half a million game credits through various promotions. Plenty to fix my avatar’s flaws. Its also too cool to have a 3 digit ID number when most have 8 digits.

I have been visiting random rooms, trying to reestablish myself.  I like the rooms with 6 to 8 other people.  I don’t know very many other players so I just dive in and see what people are discussing.  It is mostly just fun blather — the same stuff I find a lot in SL or There.  Part of that is due to the max 10 person limit in all rooms.  The small limit also  forces you to circulate, don’t feel obligated to stay in one place, and don’t get offended if you get booted from a room due to overcrowding.  There are all the usual rooms: roleplay, night clubs, sex play, etc.  Finding stuff you are interested in is not too difficult. Finding people you actually want to hang with is a little more challenging.

I got an “adult pass” years ago, allowing me into all but the VIP rooms.  Rules on the use of adult pass (known as AP) has changed a few times.  For a while there, the only difference between AP and not is the ability to see and say dirty words.  Today nudity is allowed in AP rooms, though it is not as prevalent as one might imagine. People like to dress up a lot. AP is a good way to avoid the “teens” and troublemakers on freebie accounts.

Among the things you can purchase in IMVU is music that you can play in world.  Its about 65 cents a song, but you have to be in a room with someone else to play the music — RIAA rules.  Most of the music comes from emusic.com, so lots of indies, not a lot of mainstream hits. There is some good stuff in there though.

So far I am enjoying the visit, but I have no plans to become one of the IMVU addicts.  My favorite activity in 3DVW’s is to explore, and the format of IMVU is largely anti-explore.  The 10 person per room limit restricts the kinds of events you can have.

Metaverse News IMVU, reviews

Blue Mars has officially gone into open beta so I can now talk about it in full. So where to start?

First I need to say that I am reviewing a beta product. There are many bugs, which I wont discuss, and there are many missing elements I will discuss that I assume will get fixed eventually. My initial impression was not very good but I met with one of the admins in world and he  says many of my concerns will be addressed in future releases as noted below.

What I can see now is the overall game plan of the admins.  Could Blue Mars be the Second Life killer everyone is looking for?  Short answer: no. Long answer I’ll address in a future post.

I decided to break down my review by looking at the various components I expect to see in a 3D Virtual World.

3D Graphics - So once you get past the avatar creation step (which I will talk about later) and pick a destination to visit, the first thing you notice is that Blue Mars looks fantastic. It is by far the most realistic 3D virtual world out there. I took a walk on the virtual beach and the waves and surf as it hits the sand is damn close to the real thing. You know how when you walk on a real beach the water gets repelled from your feet? They simulated that on the virtual beach. Lighting, weather, everything, just looks fantastic.

Avatars – Now here is where things start to get a little messy. The first thing you are greeted with is the avatar creator, and it is one of the least intuitive avatar systems I have ever seen. Trying to get your skin tone and eye color right is down right frustrating. Whats wrong with just letting us choose these options right up front? Then they have three different ways of adjusting your head and facial features, none of them are very good.  If you play other 3DVWs I highly recommend going to “advanced” and using the good old slider bars. Even here, the slider bars seem to have a mind of their own.

The avatars were done by e-Frontiers a Japanese company that owned Poser for a while.  Unfortunately, the adjustments you can make here are no where as flexible as Poser. They seem to have designed it to keep “fugly” avatars from being created, but at the same time make it difficult to make really attractive avatars as well.

Previously, I wrote an essay on what makes a good avatar: the looks of PS3 Home avatars, the interactivity of There avatars, and the flexibility of Second Life avatars. The avatars got the PS3 home looks down, but still lack the interactivity of There  and flexibility of SL.

Another virtual world fan has a way to measure avatars from game to game by simply asking 3 questions. Can you get naked? Can you make your avatar look like yourself? Can you be something other than human? The answer to all 3 is NO! You can only look like yourself if you happen to be a petite 15 year old. Body shapes types and even heights cannot be adjusted at all. Apparently the reason for this is to make sure all animations work the same for everybody.

User Created Content - You can sign up for the development program to design original content for Blue Mars. They will give you some off the shelf tools compatible with the CryEngine2 platform, but it is up to you to figure out how to use them.  All content has to be submitted for approval, and I have no idea how long that takes. Most of the tools that are available are very high end for 3D artists who know what they are doing. If you don’t know what a LOD is, you will probably get frustrated quickly.  Considering how building stuff is a major component of all successful virtual worlds, I’m not sure how well this will go over.

This is a weakness of any platform built from “off the shelf” software.  Second Life, There, and IMVU were designed from the get go with user created content in mind.  CryEngine2 was designed for professional game developers, and most of us amateur designers, are likely going to find the process a bit overwhelming.

Stuff to Do – Blue Mars is built on a gaming engine, and thus there are a few games available. The first one I tried was a fly a hover ship (a helicopter without blades – this is set in the future after all) through a series of rings. Controlling the ship was so unintuitive that I did not bother with the game and just decided to fly around the scenery. There is a golf game too, which looks good but not as fun as dedicated golf games. I assume that over time there will be a lot more stuff to do. The Admins to their credit are giving all the tools they can to developers, its only a matter of time before people start making some really cool stuff.

Interface Notes – Things that need some work to make the game more usable and playable for typical players:

Avatar Movement -  Your avatar can do two things, walk and run, and there do not seem to be any easily accessible vehicles to do anything else. Worse, moving around Blue Mars is frustratingly unintuitive.  Movement is all based on clicking the ground and having your avatar walk to that point. MMORPG fans are used to this. ASDW keys do not work because of the need to type text, which is fine, but the arrow keys behave very weirdly. Your avatar turns, but the camera does not. Pressing “up” is the equivalent of clicking on the ground a couple of feet ahead of the avatar, but without the camera following, it is very difficult to “steer” your avatar.

Each zone seems to play by its own rules too. You can fly in New Venice. Press escape and your camera will fly around using ASDW keys,  Press Q and your avatar will land where you flew to.  There is no flight in Beach City yet, it is all point and click to navigate there which is annoying because of the size of the city.

Camera Movement – Using scroll to zoom does not function normally (it did in hover ship mode, but not avatar mode).  The only way to zoom is in the “camera” menu and even then there are only 4 preset zoom settings. You can pivot the camera around by holding the right mouse button.  Basically the camera controls do not make up for the lack of an auto following camera when using arrow keys to control. The Admin that I talked to says cameras are being worked on.

Graphics Compatibility – The incredible graphics of Blue Mars comes at a price. You have to have a pretty robust computer to run it (nvidea 8800 or higher), limiting the number of players right from the start. According to the admin, the Beta test currently runs in the highest graphics settings for testing purposes. Later they will allow lower settings and lower graphic requirements.

Blue Mars currently runs in a window with a set resolution that looks a little small on my 2048X1170 monitor.  Currently, only  the Developers version has graphic adjustment settings, future player clients will eventually allow you to change the graphics settings.

The “Very Beta” State of the game – The following are things that are missing or sub-par at this time. Hopefully they will be coming soon:

Communication Systems - Currently local chat only. The chat tool consists of either bubble text or chat window by people in close proximity with you. They have a primitive “Friends” system to keep track of people you meet and find out if they are online or not. There does not seem to be any IM system or player search or teleport system at this time.  The Admin that I talked to in world says that there are plans to implement these things in future releases.

In Game Web Content – None at this time.  The admin I talked to says they plan to eventually enable in-game flash players for streaming audio, video, animation etc.

Out of game Web Content (i.e. Website, Social Networking, player profiles etc.)  - Currently a player forum and a developers blog are available. They have basic player profiles now too.

Bottom Line – The makers of Blue Mars seem to have taken an off the shelf graphics engine, an off the shelf gaming engine, and off the shelf avatars, put them all together in hopes of being the next Second Life.

What we get is incredible graphics, weak gaming elements, and nice but uninteresting avatars mashed together with little common purpose or interaction.  One of the most common VW activities, Building, is only available to developers, and done outside of the game. There are no web services yet, no streaming audio for clubbing, no built in browsing or linking. Even though this stuff may eventually get fixed and improved, it is destined to always have a patched together feel you don’t get with virtual worlds built from scratch.

This is more obvious from a developers tool standpoint as different components have to be developed using different tools. It is going to seriously limit what is possible in game, and eliminate any possible contention as a “3D web standard”.  The graphics are great, I admit, but as I previously mentioned in a past post, great graphics do not make a great game.

At this point, Second Life and There have nothing to worry about.

Metaverse News 3D Web, bluemars, reviews, virtual world

If you have an Nvidia card designed for DirectX 10 (8800 or better Windows XP or Vista), and you update to the latest drivers released June 19,2009, you might find something new in the NVIDEA Command Center: Stereoscopic 3D glasses support.

I have not seen this feature mentioned anywhere, not even on Nvidea’s own site. Probably because it is in the experimental stage. Older drivers supported it, but you had to hack your registry to enable it. Now you can enable it with a couple of clicks.

There are two methods that are supported. The first requires a special 3D ready monitor with two video inputs, a set of glasses that opens and closes shutters on either eye and an IR device that triggers the glasses, at a cost of $600 or so. Eventually this will come down, but it costs to be on the cutting edge.

The other method is to use a pair of red/cyan glasses, (called anaglyph 3D, or Nvidea calls it 3D Discover) which if you don’t have a pair lying around, you can get four pairs packaged in the DVD of Spy Kids 3D which you could probably find on sale for $10 or less. I have a few different kinds lying around and the ones from Spy Kids work the best.

The stereoscopic effect can be enabled or disabled with a simple key press (ctrl-t is default but you can set it to whatever you want) and works with any Direct 3D game with mixed results.

It does not work with OpenGL — Sorry Second Life and Google Earth fans!

I tried it in Guild Wars, and the stereoscopic 3D looked fine, but the text labels on the screen were not in 3D and looked wrong. Also much of the text is in bright primary colors that changes with the red/cyan glasses. I am sure there are other games in the same boat, so the system is not perfect.

I tried stereoscopic mode in other direct 3D games. Tomb Raider Underworld looks fantastic, race games are amazing fun in anaglyph 3D, even The Sims 2 and 3 work fine. Because all of this is handled at the driver level, no game has to be rewritten to work, it just has to use Direct 3D. Older games work wonderfully well without having to be rewritten.

There is a certain fatigue factor after long use, so you can’t play this way for hours, but it is a fun way to rediscover many of your older games, and enjoy them again. It also adds a new feature to PC gaming you can’t get on consoles.

Apparently once they get the bugs worked out, NVidea will be promoting it more and will be selling special anaglyph glasses anywhere video cards are sold.

Media, Metaverse News 3d anaglyph, 3D navigation, nvidea, reviews, stereoscopic 3D, videogame

The new 3D virtual world Free Realms by Sony, launches today! So I thought I’d post a review.

Free Realms is sort of a hybrid program. It is kind of like a virtual world, kind of like an MMORPG, and kind of like an online game portal.  “Kind of like” gets used a lot in explaining Free Realms. For example, “the graphics are kind of like World of Warcraft”.

It probably has the distinction of being the first MMORPG for all ages.  Really young kids (below 8 yrs) might find many activities too hard but others just right, Adults might find it a little too cutesy, but it manages to balance things enough so that parents and children could play together and both find it entertaining.

Free Realms has multiple activities. Some include “Brawling” (like a MMORPG style melee fighting), racing, demolition derby, “cooking” (simple 2D flash games for kids),  raising a dog or cat, playing board games (chess checkers, etc), and playing collectible card games. There are other types of activities available if you sign up for the full version of the game.

I tried this out in beta, but even then it already seemed like a full complete game. I did not really run into many bugs or horrible lag. Some players did however. It seems the better your computer hardware, the fewer problems you should have. A good video card seems to be especially important.

I found the game entertaining enough to play and the world is big enough for quite a few hours of fun, but it seems that as soon as you get far enough into an activity, your progress is hindered unless you sign up for the full version ($4.95 a month) . The “Free” part of “Free Realms” only goes so far it seems.

For example, I got into a battle with a “boss” and managed to defeat him by using some health drinks. After the battle, I looked to see if I could get some more health drinks, and it turns out the “gold” I have been collecting cannot be used for more health, only “Station Currency” which requires credit card purchase

Nevertheless, there is enough to do in the free parts to know whether or not you enjoy it enough to become a full member.  It is an entertaining enough program, and I suspect there may be quite a few players who do sign up.

As a “virtual world” it is very basic. You can customize your avatar, though there are not a huge number of choices. Each activity has a different outfit, which you can customize as you advance in level, or purchase optional items. The video demos I see indicate that home and yard decoration will be an option, but did not see anything like that in the free version. There are no player submissions. Chatting is limited for child safety reasons.

The MMORPG part is also somewhat basic. Even in the free game, you get better armor and weapons as you level. Being kid friendly, there is no “killing” or “dying”, it is all about knocking out the other guy before you get knocked out.  If you get knocked out 5 times in a mission, you lose the mission.  Most missions involve talking to NPC’s which launch individual “instanced” missions.  I have yet to see any team missions.

Racing felt a lot like one of those Nintendo kart racing games, where running over things gives you additional abilities like turbo boost, etc. Click to start a race, and others may join you, or more likely you will face a bunch of computer drivers.

It is definitely worth trying out if your computer can handle it.

Metaverse News 3D navigation, freerealms, reviews, virtual worlds

Generally speaking I do not do movie or TV reviews on this blog, but Caprica is a sci-fi story that hits many themes I tend to hit on this blog.

For Battlestar Galactica fans, it is the story about the creation of the first Cylons. For Virtual World fans there is a deep plot involving virtual reality, its nature and practical uses. The opening scene is what a lot of SL players probably wish SL was really like. (this scene will likely be heavily toned down when the movie finally airs)

I like science fiction, especially the speculative fiction with real world ties, like Philip K. Dick, or the “cyberpunk” writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and early Neil Stephenson. This kind of stuff does not translate well to TV or Movies, and even when it is done successfully there is not a big enough audience to sustain it.

Battlestar Galactica often managed to get beyond its space adventure genre and start telling stories with real world parallels, like the “New Caprica” episodes and their table turning parallels to the war in Iraq.

Caprica loses the whole space adventure genre completely. It is more of the dystopia genre. Caprica is a parallel Earth slightly more technological advanced than ours. The fact that it is also slightly more advanced than BSG as well says that Ronald D. Moore and crew understand how tech can slide backwards in the time of war (which hasn’t happened yet in Caprica’s timeline).

Bottom line is that Caprica is a good sci-fi story set in the BSG universe. If you are a fan of either, you should really check this out. I will definitely be looking forward to the series this fall.

Media Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, reviews, tv

I know what you are thinking, “Oh no not another review of Spore”. I won’t insult your intelligence by trying to explain the game, or do an in depth review like the hundreds of others that are out there. This blog is more or less dedicated to the social 3D web, and I want to focus on that.

I know someone who downloaded a broken pirated version of the game off the web. The problem with doing so is that you can’t get any of the online content. He hated the fact that once you reach the Civilization stage you have to make all your own buildings and vehicles, etc.

My experience is different. I bought the game, and created an online account (arianeb of course) and on the So There Forum that I frequent, many of the people have also bought the game and posted their online account name. I made them all buddies.

The upshot is this: Things my buddies make for the game are easily accessible via the “Sporepedia” (third button in the bottom left corner). I got through the Civilization stage without bothering to make anything of my own, I just sponged off my friends.

Every level of the game is enhanced with stuff your buddies make and do for the game. The other creatures you encounter, the planets you visit, etc are derived from buddy content first. There is also tons of Maxis content online if you don’t like your buddies stuff.

One of my buddies made a “star trek” like vehicle, and I saw it flying around while I was still at the tribal level. When I finally made it to space, I used it myself.

Maybe my second venture through the game I’ll make my own stuff, but for now I’m just learning, and content from the sporepedia is fine.

Metaverse News reviews, spore, videogame

With the soon to be released version 1.20 client of Second Life, they will be adding support for 3D mouse navigation, specifically the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator. Here is the official info as well as video tutorials.

It looked pretty cool, but was not sure about spending $70 for another input device. I checked out their site, and what sold me was the fact that it works on many 3D programs, including a few others I use.

So is it worth it? It depends entirely on what you want it for. Some things it excels, some things it fails. Here’s a breakdown of the three uses in Second Life:

Flycam – This is a new feature to the 1.20 client that as far as I know is only available to SpaceNavigator owners. It is freaking COOL! Basically, in flycam mode, you leave your avatar behind and use the SpaceNavigator to move your camera.

You move the camera in all directions, and go through anything. It blows throught the 40 meter limit of the normal client camera, allowing you to look at stuff three servers away, especially if you have the view distance turned up.

If you are interested in making Machinima in Second Life, flycam is the perfect dolly/crane camera utility. Flying through scenery, is tons of fun.

NOTE: You cannot spy on other avatar’s actions from a long distance, so no you cant use this for voyeurism. It does improve exploring of scenic builds (my main activity) 100%. Grade: A+

Avatar Motion – The default action with the SpaceNavigator is to move your avatar in a joystick motion. Not just walking around, but also pull up to fly, and push down to land. It also controls the avatar camera to a certain extent.

This last part can be annoying, the first "customization" I did to the controls was to set the "panning" value to 0.0. Other than making "strafing" easier (walking sideways), and the fact you can navigate one handed, there is no real advantages to SpaceNavigator avatar motion over mouse and keyboard motion controls. Grade: B

Building – if you edit an object, you can manipulate the object in 3D with the SpaceNavigator. Other than showing off to friends how you can move and rotate objects at the same time, this feature is completely useless. Trying to build in SL with SpaceNavigator is an excercise in frustration, and makes building in There seem easy in comparison.

I think it would help if the 3D motion were limited to the build mode, like only rotate in rotate mode, etc., but it wouldn’t help that much. Stick to the mouse for building in SL. Grade: F

Bottom line, the selling point for me may be the selling point for you: How many other programs do you use that can benefit from the SpaceNavigator? Many CAD programs work with it, so 3D artists may find it indespensible.

Navigating through Google Earth 4 with it is totally awesome. Try a "fly through" of the Grand Canyon for example.

I also find it useful for Poser 7, though it only controls the camera. I keep the main camera locked, but when posing hands or face cameras, the SpaceNavigator makes things easier.

Anyways thats my review, hope you find it useful to decide if its worth $70-80 to get one, or not. Its definitely not for everybody, but some will enjoy the hell out of it.

Metaverse News 3D navigation, googleearth, hardware, reviews, secondlife, sl clients, spacenavigator

I have been playing with Exit Reality for a couple of months, but I’d thought I’d wait to review it until some of the more serious bugs were worked out of it, which they have been. This is still a beta product and still has lots of annoying bugs, but it now qualifies as “useable” at least, assuming you are using IE7 or FF2 (FF3 still not working yet).

Despite the stupid name, Exit Reality is based on three really cool ideas for the 3D web, unfortunately they add up to a fatal flaw I will get to soon. First, I want to describe these three really cool ideas:

Cool idea #1: Give people who are visiting the same website the ability to chat with one another. This idea has been around a while. I found similar 2D programs like weblin which do the same thing.

Cool idea #2: Do everything in VRML (aka X3D).
Why? First of all, it has been around for years, and thus you have tons of instant content to bring to your program. Exit Reality is essentially a 3D chat program built on top of a VRML viewer. Many early 3D virtual worlds, like Cybertown, were built in VRML. Keeping with the standard means that user created content definitely has a place in Exit Reality, assuming you know how to build stuff in VRML.

Cool idea #3: Create a handy “2D website to 3D VRML website” converter, so you can surf the whole internet in 3D if you want. Now the results of such
an ambitious undertaking, will obviously not be perfect because the vast majority of the web was designed to be viewed in 2D not 3D. But the Exit Reality people have thought of that and created special templates for some of the more popular social websites.

For example, going to my My Space Page in Exit reality brings up a nice studio apartment with my picture on the wall, and doors leading to some of my friends “apartments”. I also have the ability to move the 3D furniture around, though other visitors can come in and move the furniture around for me.

So these three ideas add up to a pretty cool concept.

Here’s the fatal flaw: 3D avatars built in VRML, have always, and probably will always, suck! Avatar animations are low rez and goofy looking, this is because VRML was never designed for human like avatars, and the ones that exist are the result of hacks that were not designed to use bvh animations, or in general live up to standards set by other 3D chat programs.

Exit Reality has yet to prove me wrong, and in fact the avatar system currently in place is where a lot of the most annoying bugs exist. The default avatar is what I call “boring doofus guy” with dark gray pants and a light gray shirt. There is an avatar selection tool and the list of avatars is large, but everytime you open up the list it does not remember where you were last time you opened it, and starts from the beginning. Everytime you open Exit Reality you default to boring doofus guy, and when you switch to other 3D pages, you run a 50-50 chance of reverting back to boring doofus guy. The pictures above used the “Candace” avatar, which starting with a “C” is not too far down the list of avatars in the alphabetically sorted list.

The cheesy avatar problem cannot be overlooked unfortunately. All avatar
based chat programs need cool customized avatars. Their avatar is their identity. Selecting from a list of lame ones won’t cut it for very long.

Kudo’s to Exit Reality for a cool idea in 3D web surfing, and as a side bonus, providing a top notched X3D viewer plug in, but the 3D chat side of this program will largely be ignored due to the crappy VRML support of avatars.

Metaverse News 3D Web, avatars, exitreality, reviews, virtual worlds