First stop in digital space
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Notice
World Guide
| World Skills | System Requirements | Depth | Building Capacity? | Create your own Avatar? | Sound Support? |
| Beginner | Windows 3.1, Windows 95 | 3D | No | Yes, but for experts only | music, sound effects |
Minimum Machine
| Operating System | Computer | Resources | Connection |
| Windows 3.1 | 486DX
66 MHz PC, 256-color VGA | 8MB RAM, 6MB free disk space (24MB for Gold version),16-bit sound card is optional for music and sound effects | SLIP/PPP Dial-up to the Internet at 14.4 kbps |
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Worlds Chat Space Station
First stop in digital space | |
The good ship Avatar has made it into orbit with captain Digigardener (that's me) the crew and you, honored passenger. A great space station, our first stop on the way to the worlds of avatar cyberspace, is coming up on the ship's viewscreen. Our mission of exploration into digital space requires only an open mind and virtually unlimited curiosity. We will meet all sorts of people along the way. The natives of the virtual worlds we will encounter will be as diverse and fascinating (or as dull and offensive) as a group of people anywhere. It is your virtual theater, so strut onto the stage and find your audience!
What do you need for the trip? Pack along your computer, modem, some free hard disk space, a little sack of patience, and plenty to say.
Your Guide to The Worlds Chat Space Station
Worlds Chat Space Station: First Stop for Cybernauts
Worlds Chat Space Station: First Stop for Cybernauts
The bustling hub of the Worlds Chat Space Station.
The good ship Avatar is in orbit and racing to catch up with our first stop, the Worlds Chat Space Station. Worlds Chat was one of the first virtual worlds launched on the Internet, back in the spring of 1995. And unlike Kennedy's Apollo project, which won the race to the moon, but left no base to go back to, Worlds Chat has given us a great waystation, or stopover point, on the way into the digital solar system.
In the past, surfing the World Wide Web, sending e-mail, or chatting with text were the only experiences you could have in cyberspace. With Worlds Chat, you can explore a three-dimensional virtual world full of people, who represent themselves in digital costumes called avatars. This is what I like to call, ìthe new avatar cyberspace,î for it is truly a new frontier. The Internet is becoming a real place to visit, a place that is inhabited by people. People are communicating and creating new types of communities, based not on the towns where they live, but in the interests and beliefs they share. Sometimes I like to say that they are creating a new life in digital space. Many people question whether digital space is a real place, and whether this is a real life. But then, revolutionary inventions are always questioned and criticized in the beginning. Over 100 years ago, a businessman was reported to be shouting at a colleague, commanding him to remove a ìtoyî from his office. The person he was speaking to was Thomas Edison; the ìtoyî was a telephone.
Worlds Chat and other virtual worlds offer a whole new way of being with other people. The virtual world may be as important to the twenty-first century as the telephone was to the twentieth. Worlds Chat is a kind of space academy where you will learn the basic skills of this new medium and begin your life as an avatar in digital space.
