Virtual Worlds: Live Beyond the Real

Virtual world is no longer about socializing using 3D animated avatars or chatting only; it has evolved into a serious business medium. We take a close look at the opportunities for enterprises and the key benefits

Saturday, April 05, 2008

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The word 'Virtual,' has had a great impact on the IT industry. Virtualization has opened up new vistas for the IT industry and solved many a problem. Now is the time to go beyond platform or resource virtualization and look toward something totally different, a Virtual World. A world where everything is as real as you can get, just that it exists on virtual space. Virtual worlds are computer–based simulated environments where people can interact via 3D avatars. These avatars could be textual or two dimensional, but the most common and interesting ones are 3D Avatars. Virtual worlds are modeled in such a manner that they replicate real life in virtual space. While creating them, people take the liberty of adding elements as per their fantasies. In one of the most popular examples of virtual world, called 'Second Life,' people can fly from one place to the other; which by any stretch of imagination is not possible in real life. So even though this experience is very close to the world we live in, still at the end of the day it's only virtual and can be defined and modified by people as per their will and fancies.

Another platform for social networking?
Social Networking has been in news for some time now. Orkut and Facebook have revolutionized the way we use Internet, and redefined interaction via web. Social Networking has become so popular that even enterprises have realized the importance of some of the features on offer in these sites and many of them have integrated these features on their portals. But the time has come to look a little further and take social networking to a new horizon. Virtual worlds have opened up that new horizon for people, where static pictures have been replaced by animated avatars. Even though virtual reality has been in existence since a long time, it recently hogged the limelight with sites such as Second Life getting popular. So like Orkut and Facebook, are sites such as Second Life also about social networking? Even though it is a strong factor resulting in the popularity of these sites, there are other better opportunities to be explored in this field. For eg, the opportunity to have your own house designed the way you want it, to earn money by playing games and using the money to buy property in a virtual world. You could also explore the opportunity to open your own office and showcase your solutions to the rest of the world. Similarly, opportunity to make a presentation to the outside world or even get a job in one of the MNCs by entering their office and being interviewed in virtual space.

How does a virtual world work?
Whenever a user tries to explore a simulated world, the virtual world software instigates him to manipulate the different elements of the modeled world and thus experience telepresence. The simulated world may have rules based on the real world or some hybrid fantasy. These rules could be anything ranging from gravity, topography, locomotion, real time action, communication etc. Communication amongst users could be via texts, visual gestures, voice or through touch. To use a virtual world environment, one needs to install client software on his system that already has a high-end graphics processor. Some virtual world software don't require any kind of installation and can be accessed via web, however, such kind of applications consume a lot of bandwidth.

In Second Life, avatars can be customized to reflect the personality of the users

Cyberpunk and Snow Crash
These two names form the backbone of virtual world. Both are a work of fiction and helped build the base for Virtual World. Cyberpunk is a science fiction that focuses on high-end technology and features advanced applications of cybernetics coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in social order. Snow Crash falls in a similar category and is part of the same fiction from where Metaverse came into existence. It describes the vision behind the current work on fully immersive 3D virtual space. Metaverse portrays an environment where humans interact as avatars with each other and with software agents, both socially and economically. So, in cyber space it replicates the real world without its physical limitation. Snow Crash is a unique usage scenario for Metaverse and shows how it can be implemented, used or how it acts as an interface with or compliments the real world.

Second Life: The secret behind its success
Second Life is a name that has become the face of virtual world and has revolutionized the way people interact using Internet. Like other virtual worlds it has been inspired by the Cyberpunk literary movement and Snow Crush. Linden Research Inc, commonly referred as Linden Labs, is the developer of the notion called Second life and hence the currency used in Second life is called Linden Dollar.

Using a downloadable client program, called 'Second Life Viewer,' users within second life, commonly referred to as 'residents' can interact with each other through motion avatars, hence providing an advance level of social networking combined with general experience of a Metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in group activities, create and trade items.

Enterprises can use virtual worlds for holding meetings and conferences apart from just using it for social networking

Why Second Life has become more famous than any other virtual world is difficult to answer. It could very well be a much hyped promotion of the site or due to the Metaverse they have created. It could also be due to the fact that they haven't kept it limited to social networking and have allowed enterprises to leverage maximum benefits out of the virtual environment. They've opened up a new horizon for enterprises to explore and help them to grow their business and decide strategies based on the feedback of residents. Add to it the simplicity and user friendliness of the site, and you have a hot property in the virtual world. Second Life does have a strong competitor in IMVU, There, Active Worlds, Kaneva, etc which are making their presence felt in the international market slow and steadily. But what most of these sites lack is the variety of features that Second Life has to offer, and the lack of an exciting environment such as Metaverse. They only cater to either 3D chatting or socializing, whereas Second Life provides much more avenues within virtual world, those which can be implemented in real life too. Second Life has a touch of real life in it, which others lack. It would be interesting to see if any of these sites can provide the same facilities as provided by Second Life, but as of now Second Life remains the de-facto standard of virtual worlds.

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