Active Worlds -- Worlds, Inc. seems to know exactly what the VRML language should evolve into. I wasn't prepared for anything new from this amazing company until later this fall when the greatly anticipated Worlds Fair is expected to be released. I couldn't have been more surprised to learn of the release of a new, 'super' version of Worlds Chat called Active Worlds, also known as AlphaWorld. Now out of beta release and in development by an entirely different company (Circle of Fire Studios), Active Worlds continues to show promise of being extremely interesting and entertaining for individual users as well as being profitable at the corporate level. Like Worlds Chat, Active Worlds is a 3-dimensional landscape complete with scenery, realistic objects, and generic avatars. Once you ‘naturalize’ yourself with the Active Worlds immigration patrol, you’ll be able to control your own animated avatar and converse with others as you venture out into the world. Active Worlds allows you to navigate in many new ways including a flying mode and a 3rd person point of view, as well as the more common ‘walking’ mode. There's also a teleportation/transportation option for visiting different worlds that works in a similar fashion to a web browser's bookmarking capabilities.

So what gives Active Worlds even more potential than Worlds Chat? In addition to its ability to portray realistic landscapes and objects (including trees, houses, and even fire hydrants), every object in Active Worlds has the potential for acting as a link to a web site, gopher site, mail address, newsgroup, and more. Combine this with a forum for conversing with hundreds of others and you have the beginning of an extremely new and fascinating technology that corporations will be able to use in augmenting typical activities like training sessions, presentations, conferences, and perhaps most importantly, marketing and advertising promotions. Worlds Chat also has many of these features but is limited in the types of objects that can be represented. This is perhaps best evidenced by Active World’s potential for virtual communities.

Entire communities can be created with Active Worlds -- communities that we may well learn to call our second home someday in the future. Inns, houses, malls, and stores are just a few examples of the virtual real estate that can be found and created in Active Worlds. With the aid of your web browser, you can also create links to any site on the Internet from your virtual home. Cool new features that have been added to the recent releases of Active Worlds include a much-improved rendering engine, transportation capabilities, firewall/proxy support, automatic updates for Active Worlds, integrated web browser support (Internet Explorer only), an improved interface, tons of new options, and textured 3-D animated avatars. This is amazing technology that is almost too good to be true. If you’re getting impatient for Worlds Fair to arrive or are just looking for a way to cruise the web in 3D, take a look at Active Worlds -- you won’t be disappointed.

Pros: ‘Super Worlds Chat’ -- a new 3-Dimensional world to explore with near limitless possibilities
Cons: Slow, limited to one generic avatar, communications problem with some video drivers
New: VRML 2.0 support, transport feature, new avatars, share building rights, new worlds, more

Version Reviewed: 1.32 Build 199 Date of Review: 1/25/98

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