And now I have a company that models roboticsįor NASA-moon mission designs-which is ironic, as it was a vision I had asĪn 18-year-old, and poof, one day I wake up and I am doing it for real.ĭamer: That's all about human culture, a human face on cyberspace. Worlds in graphics some time in the future. Processor computer in 1981 and thought that it could be used to create these Paper as a cartoonist, I would create fantastic cityscapes with vehicles and You've obviously been extremely involved in the development and promotionĭamer: As a kid I was always building imaginary worlds in my mind. It means "a god'sĮmbodiment on the Earth." In other words, if a god came to Earth, the form Term from Sanskrit, an ancient human language of India.
3d virtual world games online how to#
And he and others tried toįigure out how to describe their embodiment in the world, and he took the You canĭamer: That came from Chip Morningstar while he was working at LucasfilmĬreating an environment called Habitat. Maze War was ported to a dozen platforms after theįirst one and played across the Arpanet in the 70s. More of a game than a social virtual world, but it was still the firstĪvatar space. Points of view, 3D graphics, bots, chat, IM, shooting and scoring. It had all the features: multi-user, different What do you consider the first digital virtual world?ĭamer: Well that might have to be in 1974. It was like (Neal Stephenson's novel) Snow Crash or Tron or something to them. I would demo these worlds at conferences and it would blow people away that this was happening. Everything had to run on 28.8 modems which were fast then. People felt they were inventing a brand new medium, the new medium of the 21st century, and they were right. What was it like to do these things in 1996 when the technology was still so young and unknown?ĭamer: It was amazing. Then we did a re-enactment of Kubrick's film 2001 in 2001, and middle earth in 2002 for a (JRR) Tolkien-inspired environment. The first one was like a convention center, then we went to connected domes and then we went fully 3D-no gravity-and met in a virtual space station. Each year we experimented with different types of spaces. We had 4,000 real visitors in-world and 30 nodes around the We made a virtual conference hall in ActiveWorlds in 1998. They were ultra cool, with lots of speakers and parties where everyone dressed up as "their (favorite) avatar." The first two we did in San Francisco and then we moved it into cyberspace. The first one was "Earth to Avatars" in 1996. We held several real-life conferences about virtual worlds and 3D social spaces. What was it about those environments that attracted you?ĭamer: It was exciting. I've seen all the ages of middle virtual earth. I am kind of a "Gandalf the Grey" of virtual worlds. And soĬreative, like the period where personal computing was in the 70s. It was a heady time, with so many approaches to avatar cyberspace. We were looking at spaces like The Palace, AlphaWorld, WorldsAway, Traveler and Blacksun.
It was all about experimenting with the first virtual worlds platforms that were then appearing on the Net and seeing what would happen. What is your history with virtual worlds and 3D social spaces?ĭamer: Back in 1995 I co-founded an organization called. He gave me a great demo of the platform and invited me into the beta. Q: How did you come to be in the Second Life beta?ĭamer: Well, I met Philip Rosedale back in the alpha period. The virtual world as "Digi Weaver"-shared his personal history with virtual worlds as well as his thoughts on where the environments come from and where they might go. With all that in mind, CNET recently invited virtual world historian and DigitalSpace CEO -who also runs the DigiBarn computer museum inĬalifornia's Santa Cruz mountains and authored the 1997 book, In fact, fully 3D social spaces have been around at least since the mid-1980s, and some would argue even longer than that. Yet, while many players are only hearing of Second Life and There for the first time-as suggested by -virtual worlds are not a recent development. Massively multiplayer online game, many see a clear difference between goal-oriented online games like World of Warcraft, City of Heroes and EverQuest II, and pure virtual worlds like Second Life and There. Over the last few years, there has been increasing interest in 3D online games and virtual worlds.īut while these are often lumped together under the rubric of the