July 10, 1995

For more than a decade, those involved in the world of high-powered computers have helped build tools for creating computer-generated three-dimensional environments, which have become known over the years as virtual reality.

And because more of that computer power is finding its way into today’s personal computers, interest in bringing this 3D technology into the home is giving rise to a new genre of consumer software called “virtual worlds.”

A virtual world is not the same as what is known as virtual reality because it employs only a personal computer and a mouse to display and navigate 3D scenes. It does not require data gloves and head-mounted displays for viewing, thus avoiding both the cost (and the vertigo) that such equipment often produces.

Advances in networking technology have inspired several companies to create networked virtual worlds that spring from interlinked, or networked, computers. Users can meet on line and socialize in computer-generated space stations or fantasy landscapes. (Habitat, the first and most famous of these, was created by LucasArts Entertainment in the 1970s and is being reinvented by one of its original designers, Doug Crockford, for a new company called Electric Communities.)

In what you might think of as an electronic puppet show, users place themselves in these landscapes by creating on-screen versions of themselves. These stand-ins, called avatars, can be anything from a human form to a pair of cowboy boots with lips. Users move them around while talking (via keyboard) with other avatars on the same screen.

“Right now, there is no context for on-line chat,” says Linda Stone, who is directing a networked virtual worlds project for Microsoft Corp. “It’s all white space and text. Virtual worlds add context to on-line relationships and on-line culture,” so people can establish themselves within a community that has a visual sense of place, like a favorite cafe.

Concepts such as these are sufficiently compelling that everyone seems to be working on virtual worlds. Many on-line services are looking at incorporating virtual worlds into their systems.

A new protocol called VRML – for Virtual Reality Modeling Language – allows computer users to create and navigate 3D scenes over the Internet. CD-ROM and videogame publishers are sending designers back to the drawing boards to recast their two-dimensional scenes into 3D.

Moving through a virtual world, however, gives you much the same feeling as driving down the street pumping the accelerator pedal – you lurch, lurch, lurch along. If your body actually behaved this way, you would check whatever medication you might be taking and vow to lower the dosage.

And despite advances, computers and networks are not yet sufficiently powerful to let you do much once inside a world. As the multimedia artist Allee Willis says so aptly, “Right now, all you do is talk to people and steer around the furniture. How much fun is that?”

The quirks in today’s examples of virtual worlds are too numerous to list, and of course they will be improved over time like everything else technology wreaks upon us.

But as the futurist Paul Saffo says, “Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” Pointing out the emperor’s state of undress might help us resist another massive techno-snow job such as accompanied CD-ROMs. After more than five years of unrepentant hype and untold millions of investment dollars, there are still only a tiny number of CD-ROM titles compelling enough to bother with more than once.

Virtual worlds give the industry a relatively clean slate to work on a number of other shortcomings. Because they are designed as social experiences and represent the physical world, designers might start making virtual worlds where women and girls can feel comfortable.

Research by Doreen Kimura, a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario, shows clear gender differences in those brain functions that govern how people navigate through space. Women tend to turn a map to align it with the direction they are facing. Men, who tend to navigate by distance and direction, are less likely to turn the map.

Most computer games are route- and direction-oriented, with characters moving across a screen from left to right. “One theory why Sonic the Hedgehog has been more successful with girls is because a good part of the action is from the first-person point of view,” said Brenda Laurel of Interval Research, a technology think tank.

Crockford’s fascinating experiences with Habitat show that virtual worlds allows users to explore new social structures without taboos. Videogames get a lot more interesting if static characters turn into avatars of real people, which not only push back, but talk back.

Most of what passes for interactive media today – whether videogame or information service – is really no more than a way to navigate around a pre-determined experience.

It is the ability to let users participate in the creative process that drives artists like Willis – a film maker, artist and Grammy-winning songwriter – into the realm of virtual worlds.

She is convinced that virtual worlds will become “an entirely new pop art form” giving rise to a new genre of fiction that allows collaboration between people and fictional characters and environments. Though steering around the furniture might be novel for a bit, the smart money will focus on the bigger picture.

Denise Caruso

c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service