WorldsPlayer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WorldsPlayer is a 3D chat system that was originally developed by the company "Worlds, Inc" back in the early 1990's. It uses a fairly primitive ray-casting graphics engine, similar to that used in very early 3D games such as "Wolfenstein 3D".
Users are represented by avatars. Avatars are chosen from an "Avatar Gallery", which is a special room in the world set aside for that purpose. In addition, "VIP" users are able to create their own custom avatars.
There are two kinds of avatars, 3D and "holographic". A "holographic" avatar is simply a collection of eight views from different angles (front, front-left, left, back-left, etc). Some of the holographic avatars that come with WorldsPlayer are based on photographs of members of the original Worlds Chat development team in various costumes.
WorldsPlayer supports standard 3D chat features, such as the ability to "whisper" to other users, mute people who are annoying you, and so on. By default, any text you type is displayed only to the 8 avatars closest to you. In addition, one-to-one voice chat is supported. The WorldsPlayer server also provides a built-in "mail" system to leave messages for other players who are not currently online.
Navigation through the space can be done with either the keyboard or mouse, and users are able to teleport to other locations. They can also set "WorldMarks" at particular locations that they want to return to later.
Although definitely not up to the standards of today's multi-user virtual worlds such as Second Life or There, WorldsPlayer continues to be surprisingly popular. It's not unusual to find its "ground zero" entry point populated at all times of day.
