Wasting yer ass in 3-D (II)
Part II of II of an introduction to 3D multi-player environments
(Read Part one here)

Virtual Gangs - Old School

I first went on World’s Chat about a year and a half ago and was thoroughly stoked. After running around in my Penguin suit for 2 hours, I got bored and started hassling people. A while later, me and virtual boy Cyro and ultra-suave Slick Willie, decided that gangs of annoying people could easily form on here, so we each jumped on our 'puters and tried our hand at the task. We moused around chasing, swearing, and generally bothering anyone and everyone for no reason other than 'we could'. In real life, we would have been decked, but no one would ever deck a Penguin, a Blue Bear or a Betty Boop Look-a-Like for this, even in real life.

For some reason, I see no useful point in any of this. At first I become completely enveloped by the new technology and the fact that I'm interacting with people from all over the world. I'll type to these people and find out about their (too often) pathetically boring lives.

After I become a bit snoozy with that, I up the ante: Think about it, you now have total freedom to be whoever or whatever you want. Hey, you're a penguin for PC's sake, so what the hell do they know? You become Peter the Pedophile, or Helen the MegaHornBall. You have the power to excite obviously lonely guys who have to switch to mousing with their left hand.

No one ever got a disease from hot chat, but no doubt endless guilt ensues on how pathetic you must feel after moaning to a busty cartoon avatar for 45 sweaty minutes.

Virtual Gangs - New School

If your machine, connection, and microphone are up to the task, you must check out Onlive Traveler. You hear actual voices and see avatars of those to whom you are speaking. (yes, they mouth your words too) Definitely a must for chat junkies, shut-ins, and other elephant-man looking sub-humanoids.

Anyway, is it just me or do people regress while online with these things? I was on Traveler the other night for the first time and was once again, stoked by the new technology. The bore-dumb time went from 2 hours to about 15 minutes however, and I found myself eavesdropping on a strange conversation between a Swedish guy and a Turkish guy both speaking broken English. After hearing parts of their dull little talk (and edging closer to hear better), I found myself awkwardly standing between the two chatting vector heads. At that point they both stopped talking and turned to greet me...

"Do those legs go all the way up?"

...Flashbacks of World's Chat came to me where I would type all those insults that would usually get Alice in Wonderland quite upset. Now though, it was so strange and different because I could actually hear these guys. Shoot, I could make fun of there accents! For some reason the pause after their initial greeting grew longer and I heard the Turkish guy yell "Can you hear us? Uh I don't think his sound is working". At that point I kind of froze up and rather than answer them or even begin the onslaught of insults, all I could do is start making that annoying noise that Jim Carey does in Dumb and Dumber. You know, "NAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

Adding the dimension of actual voices reduces the initial insult count, but yelling nonsense seems to be easy enough. I watched these two new "friends" slide off to another room with high hopes of quickly ditching me. Of course I pursued until I got bored with that too... the non-native English speakers couldn't appreciate my glib humor even when I mocked there relatively good English. The last thing I remember is them saying "you want move from stupid guy?" Man, the abuse I take.

I'm sure when the next new breakthrough chat comes about it will be full audio and video. Yes, I know that video is already out (see my quickcam?), but I mean 3D where we are placed on a plane where we are interacting with others through sight and sound, etc. I guess from there the question pop's up (literally) that when will the chat have full audio, visual, and sexual encounters. Virtual dating and screwing via T3 are not far off I'm sure. Kinda gives new meaning to the old finger command.

Lost in the polygons,

Hey, you wonderin' about all those other chat thing-a-ma-bobs? Well, they probably aren't 3D... I'll give you some other goodies when I do a "irc and beyond" segment. Remember dude, this has been 3D.

Next week we'll search the archives and pull up an old story to kick off our move to the SoHo neighborhood here at Geocities. Audi here.

The Realm | The Rant | The Rave | Renderings | Tall Tales | Users | Mailbag

©The Rëalm / PowerWord Kill All rights reserved. Revised: August 11, 1997.