Virtual Worlds Review
A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users.
The world being computer-simulated typically appears similar to the real world, with real world rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication has, until recently, been in the form of text, but now real-time voice communication using VOIP is available. This type of virtual world is now most common in massively multiplayer online games (Second Life, Entropia Universe, The Sims Online, There, Red Light Center), particularly massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, Lineage, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars
Virtual world concepts
One perception of virtual worlds requires an online persistent world, active and available 24 hours a day and seven days a week, to qualify as a true virtual world. Although this is possible with smaller virtual worlds, especially those that are not actually online, no massively multiplayer game runs all day, every day. All the online games listed above include downtime for maintenance that is not included as time passing in the virtual world. While the interaction with other participants is done in real-time, time consistency is not always maintained in online virtual worlds. For example, EverQuest time passes faster than real-time despite using the same calendar and time units to present game time.
As virtual world is a fairly vague and inclusive term, the above can generally be divided along a spectrum ranging from:
- massively multiplayer online role-playing games or RPG's where the user playing a specific character is a main feature of the game
- massively multiplayer online real-life/rogue-like games or RLG's, the user can edit and alter their avatar at will, allowing them to play a more dynamic role, or mulitple roles.
Some would argue the the MMO versions of RTS and FPS games are also virtual worlds if the world editors, such as GtkRadiant allow for open editing of the terrains if the "source file" for the terrain is shared. Emerging concepts include basing the terrain of such games on real satellite photos, such as those available through the Google Maps API or through a simple virtual geocaching of "easter eggs" on WikiMapia or similar mashups, where permitted.
A virtual community or online community is a group of people that may or may not primarily or initially communicate or interact via the Internet. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other in real life. The dawn of the "information age" found groups communicating electronically rather than face to face. A "Computer-mediated community" (CMC) uses social software to regulate the activities of participants. An online community such as one responsible for collaboratively producing open source software is sometimes called a development community. Significant socio-technical change has resulted from the proliferation of Internet-based social networks.
There are several motivations that lead people to contribute to virtual communities. Various online media (i.e. Wikis, Blogs, Chat rooms, Internet forums, Electronic mailing lists) are becoming ever greater knowledge-sharing resources. Many of these communities are highly cooperative and establish their own unique culture. They also involve significant time from contributors with no monetary gain.
Virtual tourism refers to pre-planning alternative touristic activity before your departure, by integrating multiple digital resources to explore regions of the world without having to physically travel. It helps focus attention onto people, places and exploring changes over time!
By using the internet, travel literature (travel guides and travelogues), Journals, Papers and television visual learning courseware graphically shows information necessary to make an informed decision about which places to visit and historic or scenic byways to explore.
It is an economical activity that employs people from several different specific areas, such as journalists and photographers, geographers, editors, cameras, writers, etc... and it is one activity related to promoting nature-based or people-powered outdoor recreation involving adventure-based tourism.
The phrases panoramic tour and virtual tour are often used to describe a variety of video and photographic based media. The word panorama indicates an unbroken view, so essentially, a panorama in that respect could be either a series of photographs or panning video footage. However, of late the phrases 'panoramic tour' and 'virtual tour' have mostly been associated with virtual tours created using stills cameras. The image above is an example of what a virtual tour movie looks like when it has been 'flattened', this is also referred to as a panoramic image.
Some 'panographers' will add hotspots (allow user to click and walk through doors etc) and integrate plans or maps.
