The most appealing characteristic of the internet is the ability to interact with people from all over the world in real-time.
Until now the possibilities for these interactivities were only graphically-rich-supported by online worlds with gaming focus; socializing and surf-based use of the internet was really underdeveloped until now from a 3D graphical point of view.
This situation started to change. Especially the virtual world Second Life made a major step into opening the internet's possibility to socialize online in an immersive graphical 3D world by the use of avatars without having a game background, just interaction.
VirtualWorlds3D.com will watch closely the development of virtual worlds that enable people to come online together in worlds that support sophisticated 3D rendering.
First of all we need to separate these virtual worlds into the following classification because of their unique world characteristics:
Social Worlds
provide virtual worlds as a platform for socializing with people without game-focus and story line. The most prominent representative is Second Life currently.
Game Worlds
provide virtual worlds where people can play games together respectively against each other. One prominent representative is World of Warcraft.
Web Worlds
provide virtual worlds for using and sharing web-related content in a graphical and interaction enhanced way. The most prominent representative is IMVU actually.
Virtual Earths
provide virtual worlds that are based on real geographical earth data. The competitors in this fairly new virtuality area are Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth.
All of these worlds do more or less provide the possibilities to create an avatar or character to explore the virtual world that consists mainly of
- user-generated content (Social Worlds)
- developer-generated content (Gaming Worlds)
- web-based and user-generated content (Web Worlds)
- earth-based content (Virtual Earths)
