article

Active Worlds (AW) is a 3D virtual reality environment. Users can chat with one another or build structures and areas from a selection of pre-made objects. The program has web browsing capabilities (but in a 2D pane), and runs on Microsoft Windows. Users assign themselves a unique name, log into the Active Worlds virtual universe, and explore 3D worlds and places that other users have built.

The program's original goal was to be the 3D-equivalent to a 2D browser (such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla). Instead of creating a website, the user could construct an office, building, or area in which to display products or information. As a commercial platform, Active Worlds has not been notably successful. Some few users have been able to sell custom-made RWX objects or textures, but these are an exception.

The minor success of object sales can be attributed to the program's true strength: it allows artistically-minded individuals to create structures, areas, or even full-fledged environments using pre-made objects as building blocks. These are called "builds" by Active Worlds regulars, as in "Mount Bob is a great build. It must have taken Rjiinswand ages to finish."

Tourists & Citizens

Active Worlds has two ways of entering its universe: as a free tourist or as a paid citizen. Tourist mode is Active World's version of a trial account, and at any time a user may pay $6.95 per month to attain a citizenship. There is also the option to purchase a yearly citizenship at a slightly reduced rate.

Tourists

Tourists have many limitations:
  • Tourists cannot reserve a unique name across visits; when they log out, anyone else may choose the same name.
  • Tourists have only two choices of avatar (generally one male and one female).
  • In chat, tourist text color is gray instead of black. The tourist's name also appears "in quotes."
  • Anything that a tourist builds can be deleted by any other user. Because all tourists share a single citizen ID, any tourist may edit another tourist's work. Citizens can delete tourist buildings, but cannot place new objects overlapping existing tourist objects, because the citizen and the tourist have different citizen ID numbers.
  • Tourists cannot enter some worlds, and some they can enter but cannot build. For example the largest world, Alphaworld (AW), currently allows tourist entry but no tourist building.

But there are some advantages to being a tourist:

  • Tourists can work together on builds.
  • Tourists can enter Active Worlds for free at any time, their 'trial' does not expire.

Citizens

  • A citizenship grants the user (a "citizen") access to any public world in the universe.
  • Citizens get to keep any name they choose, including across multiple visits.
  • Citizen builds cannot be deleted or modified in any way, except by 1) the citizen, 2) the world-owner, or 3) a caretaker appointed by the world-owner.
  • Citizens may choose to give other citizens the ability to modify their builds, using a special secondary password called a "privilege password" or a "priv pass." This makes it possible to engage in collaborative building. (See more below.)
  • Send telegrams to other citizens. Telegrams are like instant messages. They allow conversation between citizens who are not within "earshot" of one another. Unlike Instant Messages, telegrams are stored on the server; if the recipient is not online when the telegram is sent, it will be delivered the next time the recipient logs on.
  • Send files to other citizens, though this feature is buggy.
  • Join other citizens anywhere in the universe (when the other user accepts your request)
  • Invite other citizens to teleport to your location.
  • Add citizens to your contacts list to see when the user is online and easily telegram or join them.
  • Access every public avatar available in a world.
  • Citizens have the ability to bring three bots into the Active Worlds Universe simultaniously. Noteworthy examples include the dictionary-based Preston Bot and the multi-purpose Xelagot.

Main Features

Building

Building allows users to create their own environment. For example, a user may search or request an open plot of land and then construct the walls of the build with 4x4 meter wall pieces. The user may then decide to add windows, doors, furniture, landscaping, etc. Active Worlds supports objects stored as RenderWare script RWX (and the RW3+ binary equivalent DFF) and trueSpace objects COB. The available objects are defined by the world owner; it is not possible to upload custom objects to a public world. Builders must work with the available objects, or else purchase a private world.

Tourists may build, but their builds may be deleted by anyone. No one is allowed to "encroach" on territory that has been "claimed" by another user. (Claims are made by covering the desired area in objects, usually large "groundcover" objects.) Citizens who wish to build collaboratively can share their "privilege passwords" with one another. Entering another citizen's priv pass grants you the right to modify their buildings. Any changes will be recorded in their name, not your own.

Building in Active Worlds is done using the keyboard and mouse. All buildings are constructed of multiple copies of particular objects, arranged appropriately. In some respects, it is like building with virtual Lego blocks. Right-clicking an existing object will highlight it and open an "Object Properties" dialog box. Once an object is selected, it can be moved up/down, left/right, or forward/back. It can likewise be rotated in all three dimensions, yaw, pitch and roll. The object may be duplicated, and the new copy moved into a new position. The object may also be transformed into another object, by typing in the name of the desired object. So, for example, it is possible to transform a tree03.rwx into a rock10.rwx by selecting it and typing in "rock10.rwx" as the object name. The new rock can then be rotated 90 degrees around its X axis, moved 3.5 meters to the left, and sunk 1 meter into the ground.

More advanced effects can be achieved through the use of "actions". There are a few dozen different commands one can apply to an object through actions. One of the most common is "texture", whereby the object's texture can be altered. For example, our hypothetical rock10.rwx can be made to look like red sandstone by giving it the action "create texture stone7". When the object is first "created" in the browser of a visitor to the area, the browser will read that command and change the texture of the rock to "stone7". Actions can be written to take place at creation time (create), when a user bumps the object (bump), when the user clicks the object (activate), or when an animation has completed (adone). In essence, the commands form a primitive scripting language which makes it possible alter objects' appearance, make them move on cue, emit light, or move a visitor to a new location.

It is even possible to write simple games in this language. However, the scripting language lacks inherent support for conditionals and variables. It is possible to simulate those using advanced properties of the "animate" command, but doing so is fearsomely difficult, awkward, and unwieldy. Achieving anything more complicated than a door that opens when it's clicked is cause for celebration.

Despite these limitations, some of the more dedicated builders have created beautiful, rich, complicated environments. Some of these, notably SW City, have grown enormous. SW City, a collaborative build started in 1999 and involving roughly 250 builders, spans some 150 square kilometers of virtual territory. It includes some of the most sophisticated builds in Active Worlds, some of which can be seen in their screenshots.

Public Building Worlds are a major attraction to Active Worlds. Public Building Worlds, such as "Alphaworld" or "AWTeen", are vast and expansive worlds that allow any citizen (and in certain cases, tourists) the opportunity to build to their hearts content, with the limit of building being your own imagination. Public Building Worlds are often populated at every time of the day, and are constantly at the top of AW's World List user count. Not counting the standard citizenship fee, there is no additional fee to building in these worlds, or building very large areas. Most Public Building Worlds are owned and operated by Activeworlds, Incorporated. Notable exceptions include TheBeans world, and AWTeen.

Building in Public Building Worlds is often very different from building in your own, private world. There is a set object path, or list of objects that are usable in the worlds, as well as the worlds own textures and other building resources. Builders in private worlds have the advantage of importing large objects from other programs directly into their world. With the exception of AWTeen, most AW, Inc. owned worlds have object paths that are rarely updated, and that can make building in them very restrictive. As of July, 2006, most Public Building Worlds also lack simple primative objects to build with. As building in these worlds is of a method often referred to as 'Building Block' building, most builders resort to using other objects to make innovative buildings with.

Several Public Building Worlds are themed worlds, with their own specific object path and landscape. These themed worlds are often p1000 sized (1000 coordinates of land from the ground zero in N/S/E/W directions.) and are usually very unpopulated. Such worlds include:

  • Mars, a world themed on a futuristic version of Mars,
  • COFMeta, a world loosely based on the book Snow Crash
  • Yellow, a world themed for Yellowstone Park
  • Atlantis, an oceanic building world.

To enhance individual users experience, the use of AW's local path option has become popularized in recent times. Alphaworld Enhanced is the most developed example. Alphaworld Enhanced is a graphical modification developed expressly for Alphaworld. This modification uses to local path to upgrade existing textures to textures of much higher quality, as well as making unintendedly tiled textures seamless. A skybox, additional avatars, and gestures also come with this.

Chat

Communications in AW involve being within 200 meters from other people in the area and chatting. Users will quickly learn the common areas to chat, such as the starting location ("ground zero") when first entering a world. Citizens may also communicate with telegrams, which contact the user in any location. Telegrams are private, and it is possible to "whisper" private messages to nearby users. All other chat is public. Though, Hermes, a bot, can broadcast chat to everyone in a "global chat network".

Traveling

Traveling is endless as AW has over 900 worlds to look at. On top of that, the few public worlds are enormous and support tens of thousands of builds. The largest world, Alphaworld, is larger than the state of California. To aid in navigating such a vast area, the Active Worlds browser offers users the option to "teleport" to a specified location, and to maintain a "Teleport List", rather like a list of bookmarked web pages.

Bots

Bots assist users in many tasks, such as automatic greetings and information for visitors, helping with building or build relocation, and games. Bots are developed to function within the Active Worlds virtual environment using the Active Worlds SDK. There are many other potential applications that can be developed using the SDK like, for example, a program that automatically explores a world and creates a map.

Community

AW Reunions

Since 1998, Active Worlds users have organized and held an annual real-world reunion. Typically, this is organized on a web page or internet forum in the months before the reunion. During their time together, Reunion Attendees will meet, visit sites in the city they are in for that year, and chat with AW Users online in the universe at the hotel. In past years, more than one reunion has also been held.

Every year, a world named Reunion is built and modeled to reflect the city the reunion members are attending. In this world, users from the universe can interact with the reunion members while they are in the hotel online, and a webcam is set up at the hotel as well.

Below is a list of AW Reunions that have been held to date:

Towns and Cities

In the Public Building Worlds, towns and cities are common throughout the world. These towns are collections of buildings and builders, and are essentially small, virtual communities. The majority of the towns in Active Worlds are abandoned, and most towns are active for several weeks with a small amount of builders.

Some towns though, notably Moonlight Heights and SW City have survived for years and have many participants and have moved on to incorporate other projects into their towns. Other towns, such as Off World are uniformly themed and have a clear focus for builders.

History

In the summer 1994, Ron Britvich (Protagonist) created WebWorld which was the first 2.5D world where tens of thousands could chat, build and travel. WebWorld operated on the Peregrine Systems Inc. servers as an 'after hours' project until Britvich left the company to join Knowledge Adventure Worlds (KAW) in the fall of that year. On February 1995, KAW spun off their 3D Web division to form the company Worlds Inc..http://www.kether.com/words/thesis/context.html, Beth Scannell, November 6 1999

Britvich was eventually joined by several other developers, and the renamed "AlphaWorld" continued to develop as a skunk works project at Worlds Inc, internally competing with a similar project known as Gamma. While AlphaWorld was developing a strong cult following due in large part to Britvich's open philosophy of favoring user-built content, Worlds, Inc. favored Gamma for the company produced contract projects for Disney and others.

On June 28, 1995, AlphaWorld was renamed Active Worlds (from Active Worlds Explorer) and officially launched as version 1.0. Around this time, Circle of Fire (CoF) was formed to create content for the Active Worlds universe. This company would end up playing a pivotal role in the future of the product.

In January, 1997, Worlds Inc., after failing to secure needed contracts and having spent its venture investment of over 15 million dollars, laid off almost the entire staff of the company, keeping only several employees which included the author of Gamma, now known as WorldsPlayer. Active Worlds, never considered much of an asset by the company, became an object of struggle for those close to it. Eventually, it ended up in the hands of CoF, with most of the development team joining CoF until internal disagreements caused most of the team, including Britvich, to leave and eventually sue the company.

On January 21, 1999, CoF was bought by Vanguard Enterprises, Inc., which changed the company's name to Activeworlds.com, Inc. and, later, Active Worlds, Inc. While none of the original developers (although Shamus Young has been involved as first an artist, then webmaster, and now developer since when COF took over) are involved, and development on the product stalled for years, it continues to have a following.

In 2001, the company tried to bring back its original purpose by providing 3D homepages *. Each citizen account is entitled to one free 30 day trial of a virtual 10,000 square-meter 3D homepage, using their choice of layout from a selection of pre-designed styles. After the trial, the user has the option of upgrading to a larger size and user limit. These 3D Homepages are hosted for the user, unlike traditional worlds where the user would have to get their world hosted by another company or user, or themselves.

In 2002, the company in an attempt to financially survive and turn a profit, increased the price of their yearly Memberships from $19.95 USD to $69.95 USD http://www.tnlc.com/Lara/aw/awpriceplan-2002/noll_letter_revised_feb-6-2002.html, Rick Noll, February 6 2002. This event caused discontent amongst current users of the program and subsequently in the following months, activity within the program substantially died down.

In January, 2006, Wells Fargo's Stagecoach Island program was released, which uses a pre-release Active Worlds 4.1 version. Beta versions of Activeworlds 4.1 are available to registered citizens only, but the final release has not yet been issued. http://awnews.org/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=564, Maki Kato, January 11 2006

On May 30, 2006, Active Worlds commenced the rollout of the 4.1 version. Active Worlds routers did not last for long due to the extreme amount of users downloading the new 4.1 browser and a large amount of users in the new 4.1 universe. 4.1 was closed for a short time, while Active Worlds upgraded their routers and equipment. On the 31st, 4.1 was reopened and the rollout of 4.1 was commenced. Currently, users who cannot run 4.1 due to equipment difficulties are still in the 3.6 universe, while others are in 4.1.

On June 1, 2006, Active Worlds released the public world server version 4.1. While a normal amount of issues were reported for a massive software update, there are now over 600 worlds converted to 4.1, with few more remaining unlisted at the owner's discretion.

Notes

See also

External links

Virtual reality communities | Internet culture

Active Worlds

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Active Worlds".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world