Thanks to Digado for pointing out a few advances related to the development of avatars. I was particularly stunned by the animation demo coming out of RealXtend, which is increasingly pushing the boundaries of what a “grid” can do (try hosting 80+ avatars and 100,000 prims on a sim! There’s still glitches but they’re onto something over there).

I’ve talked before about how the metaverse is already here, it’s just hidden off in little corners. Now Weblin let’s you carry the avatar concept of the metaverse with you - primitive, sure, and it’s really just a “flat” chat client that is layered on top of your Web surfing, but I found it instantly intriguing how it gave a sense of presence to Web browsing.

One of the features of virtual worlds is presence, and in one vision of the metaverse we fly through the information rich space of the Internet. An interesting early “feel” for how that might be - primitive, yes. Social…maybe. And it’s probably capturing more data than I want to think about, but an intriguing application.

Avatar selection screen:

Looking to give Vint a hug - look down at the bottom left that’s meeee! wheeee!

Help! Someone?

Also somewhat reminds of me of PMOG, which is an adventure game and social platform attached to Web browsing.