Sedona room: online tours and 3D spaces

RELease 1.0, Feb 23, 1995

The new service adopts the best social and graphical concepts of Habitat, but greatly improves the technology. Worldsaway offers a rich, animated 2D environment where people, worldwide, can meet, interact and join together to build virtual communities. Participants can create and control their online identities - called avatars - and portray their real personalities or create totally unique personas.

Avatars can walk, wave, jump, sit, create facial expressions and take part in a variety of activities including social functions, scavenger hunts, and even run their own virtual businesses. Avatars communicate with each other by typing and through actions by gesturing and creating facial expressions. What the users type shows up overhead in color-coded word balloons. Participants can earn or buy tokens and use them to get new paraphernalia for their avatars, decorate their apartment or to access special features, such as a transporter.

The service will be generally available by this fall. Access to Worldsaway is through Compuserve. Participants will log into Compuserve through the Compuserve Information Manager (CIM), then through CIM launch the Worlds-Away application.

Knowledge Adventure Worlds considers itself to be a publisher and packager of 3D, multi-user virtual environments. It has split into commercial and consumer groups since we first wrote about it in Release 1.0, 6-94. Its basic offering is similar to Worldsaway in that multiple avatars can interact in a virtual environment and exchange typed messages. There are several differences: KA Worlds' spaces and avatars are three-dimensional; the spaces can exist as multiple, distributed instances (as opposed to a centralized subscription service); and they work over the Internet. In fact, starting this spring, the client software for some KA Worlds products will be downloadable from the Web http://www.kaworlds.com). Users will then be able to launch the software and participate right away. Other titles will run from CD-ROM, with a connection through the Internet or online services, and will be distributed through traditional channels.

KA Worlds is designing virtual commercial spaces under contract as business applications. The company's San Francisco office expects to unveil an online World Trade Center by the end of the year. It has an Interactive World's Fair and other trade shows in the works as well. KA Worlds' first round of financing included an investment from UB Networks, a subsidiary of Tandem Computers.