From: am450@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Andrew Smith)
Subject: Re: SOC: Virtual Communities
Date: 15 Apr 1996 18:48:09 GMT
Message-ID: <4ku5l9$gag@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet


From: am450@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Andrew Smith)

Justin Couch (jtc@hq.adied.oz.au) writes:

> Stinet wrote:
>> I'm doing research for a Ph.D. degree in "Cybersociology"; sociology
>> about community-.making and community-feeling in a particular
>> newsgroup on Usenet. Do you have any ideas, comments or theories about
>> this, that you want to discuss with me? Not a lot of researchers are
>> doing work like this, and I have a need to participate in some
>> exchangement of ideas. Mail me, if you're interested and want to share
>> your experiences - professional or personal, it doesn't matter.
> 
> 
> At the moment we have a prototype up and running which is distributed
> (across 3 web servers) but we have not made the URL generally
> avialable (it is also passwd protected at the moment) since it is
> still very much in alpha stage but is about 5Km square in size. If you
> wish to know more either contact me directly or take a look at the
> community web page (the URL is being distributed to the world at large
> tomorrow so you get a sneek preview) at
> 
> 	http://www.messiah.edu/hpages/student/sr930922/commune.htm
> 


Well Alphaworld from www.worlds.net/alphaworld is already doing it.

But just to add some info.

They are at release 0.68. Running a real-time 3-D world with avatars,
Text chat, smooth intergration with Web browsers (mail and web pages
come up when clicking on a object) real-time building as well. Working
in Windows 3.x, 95, NT @ 14.4K.


In a short while (weeks), release 0.7x, they plan to be using
Renderware 2.0 libraries with 32-bit clients.  The worlds and objects
within them will all be served from Websites.  And the world server is
soon to be packaged at about $5000 dollars initially I
understand. Targeted at businesses. They also want to make a
Metaverse(Black sun).

Check the URL 
www.worlds.net/alphaworld
www.netrunner.net/~synergy/alphaworld/nwt/

Don't reinvent the wheel, unless you can do it better.

Bye.
Andrew

(not affiliated, but a fan of their work)[D
--
-- Andrew R. D. Smith        -      Carleton University Computer Science   =
-- mailto:am450@freenet.carleton.ca                  + Cognitive Science   =
-- http://chat.carleton.ca/~asmith                                         =
-- Internet Solutions Consultant, HTML 3, CGI, Secure Commerce, VRML, JAVA =