Reddit for Virtual Reality

Hey everyone.  Apologies for the infrequent posts... I'm in a bit of a lull as far as Activeworlds goes (it happens).  Anyway, I'm still around on other parts of the net and I've acquired the r/virtualreality space on reddit to foster a commonground between various VR platforms.

For the uninitiated, Reddit is a social content site where users can submit links that other users can vote up and down on, and the highest-ranked content gets more exposure.  Reddit goes beyond other sites of this nature by allowing users to take control of reddits/subreddits (such as r/virtualreality), make their own rules, and manipulate their design.

I've spent the weekend preparing r/virtualreality, and I think its ready for others to join me now.  If you'd like to visit, just go to http://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/.  If you register a Reddit account, you can participate in the conversation by voting, commenting, and submitting.  It'd be really great to have a diverse crowd from many platforms, and I'd love to have some other AW users lurking around!

Practical Applications of Technology in Education

Hey guys! I'm a little busy today but when I've got some spare time I'd like to write a bit about practical applications of technology in education, and how that can be applied in a 3D environment too.  In the meantime, what brought this on was my recent introduction to the Khan Academy -- an excellent website that is home to thousands of instructional videos and exercises on an array of topics... from math to humanities, and its all free.

I've been using it myself as I'm learning Calculus.  The videos are really top notch, and they're a great idea.  I've posted a video below of a TED Talk concerning Khan Academy, and how it's really a great idea and I hope that it catches on.





But anyway, my experience using Khan Academy got me thinking: could similar intuitive education be done in the 3D environment?  What exactly would you need for that?  Interpersonal interaction?  Manipulating objects on the fly?  We can do some of this already.  As for the rest, well... I'll elaborate more on that later. :)

KnowledgeLand - My First Experience in Virtual Reality

While growing up I had the great fortune to be given the (now classic) JumpStart game series.  The games occupied a good deal of my time when I was younger... I think I played them out of order but I really enjoyed them.  Anyway, through this series I was introduced to KnowledgeLand -- an early online game that incorporated many of the JumpStart properties into a virtual world where you could interact with other players and collect trading cards to upgrade your 'character' -- or avatar.  Here's an image of the back of the cover:

Windows 95!?  Get lost, we don't serve your kind here.

Quite the throwback, isn't it!?  To my great dismay, I lost the KnowledgeLand disc when my family moved when I was 10 and I never recovered it.  A few years after I had discovered Active Worlds a few people I spoke with remembered the program, and I wanted to find it again.  A quick google search reveals that details about KnowledgeLand on the internet are pretty scarce -- as of this writing, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia article!

Frustrated, I gave up the search until very recently, when I found a lone YouTube video from another nostalgic user who -- by chance -- still had a copy of the game.  I've included it below:  it's a 10-minute long demo of some of the game's basic functions.  Mostly character creation, dealing with the trading cards, and some areas that I have very vivid memories of.

As far as I can tell, KnowledgeLand was released in 1996 and I was playing it when I was still in elementary school... which is about at that same time.  You may also note that this is contemporary with the early years of Active Worlds.  KnowledgeLand was quite different from Active Worlds -- or perhaps AlphaWorld if we're going back in time far enough.  There was no built environment, and the game is quite obviously marketed towards children, though I'm sure there was a fair mix of interested adults as well.

Though I was still a very young child, this was my first experience into the virtual world and I'm sure some of you may have had similar experiences in other such worlds.  As far as I can tell, the internet was wide open for these sorts of developments in the late 90's -- there's quite a comprehensive list in the book Avatars!, by Bruce Damer, which features Active Worlds and Alphaworld.  Some names that I recognize include WorldsChat and The Palace.

So I'll leave you all with a question: what was your first experience into virtual worlds, or maybe just online game environments in general?  Was it Active Worlds, or another virtual reality environment?  Was it an MMORPG?  Let me know by leaving a comment! :)

Noticeboard: AWPromotions

Hey everyone!  Got busy towards the end of the week so I've not been posting, but I'd like to share an excellent new site by Urbane Chaos.  AWPromotions is a wiki-styled website that comprehensively displays sights to see in our Universe.  The front page offers an explanation of what the Active Worlds software is, and then -- in a clear style -- the sidebar offers a tour through our universe from the comfort of the 2D browser.

There are also some informative pages that will certainly be helpful for new users and should be distributed.

For anyone with some spare time and interest in learning about our virtual space, this would be a great place to direct them!  I encourage everyone else to check it out as well. :)

Building - Basic Terrain Manipulation

For private world owners, manipulating the terrain is very simple and can go a long way to adding character to virtual landscapes and scenes.  Terrain editing used to be a caretaker-only right, but as of Active Worlds 4.2 Build 1015 can be given to users through the World Rights list. Public worlds also have limited terrain editing abilities, and rely on bots such as Demeter to allow builders to manipulate terrain on their property.

This tutorial explains simple terrain editing for users who can edit terrain directly.  Terrain in Active Worlds is manipulated at the intersection of coordinate grids.  You can view the coordinate grid by pressing F10 in Active Worlds.  This is the easiest visual way to distinguish between different areas terrain, especially if they have the same terrain texture or are on the same elevation.