Als virtuelle Welt oder Virtual World (engl.), kurz VW, wird eine Welt bezeichnet, welche zumeist über den Computer und das Internet betreten werden kann. Als wichtiges Merkmal ist hier die simultane Partizipation mehrerer Nutzer kennzeichnend, die sich unabhängig voneinander im virtuellen Raum bewegen können. Die Intensität der Interaktion ist durch die jeweilige Ausprägung der Virtuellen Welt bedingt. Diese reicht von rein textbasierten Anwendungen bis hin zu komplexen, hochauflösenden, dreidimensionalen Umgebungen. (wiki.de)
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm (or world). The terms multiverse, parallel universe, alternate history, story or screen bible, backstory and crossover have a considerable amount of overlap with fictional universes. A fictional universe can be almost indistinguishable from the real world, except for the presence of the invented characters and events that characterize a work of fiction; at the other extreme it can bear little or no resemblance to reality, with invented fundamental principles of space and time. (wiki.en)
Open Wonderland
Use Open Wonderland to build your virtual world! Create dynamic learning environments, collaborative business applications, or interactive, multi-user simulations. Start with a blank slate, or modify an existing world. While some types of worlds can be created by end-users or 3D artists, this toolkit is designed primarily for developers familiar with the Java programming language. As a developer, you can extend any part of the system and add functionality by creating modules, the Wonderland version of plugins. Click the Browse button above to explore the extensions currently available in the Wonderland Module Warehouse.
Blue Mars
The free Blue Mars Client is your window into our free to play massively multiplayer virtual world made up of an expanding set of independently operated Cities that feature unique themes, activities, and attractions. Through the Blue Mars Client, users can participate in a wide variety of entertainment, educational, and productivity experiences.
The free Blue Mars Sandbox Editors are the bridge between your offline content and the online Blue Mars world. Our Editors work in concert with digital content creation tools like 3DSMax, Maya, Blender, and SketchUp to create immersive 3D spaces and upload them into the virtual world. Using the Blue Mars Sandbox Editors, developers can arrange geometry, script interactive features, define items for sale, manage shop and residence interiors, preview lighting conditions, adjust time of day, create shops, manage land, develop terrain and vegetation, choose textures, adjust shaders, and much more. Our editors are “What you see is what you play” so the view of your offline content in the Editor is exactly how it will appear in the online environment.
Active Worlds
Active Worlds has been around since the good old days of 1995. Since then the company has changed management several times and is currently operated by Activeworlds, Inc. Members help develop the world by building objects that visually enhance each world’s setting but don’t appear to do much else. Unlike the futuristic themes of worlds like Cybertown, Active Worlds is full of modern-day cities with a new age utopian twist. There is a distinct “international” theme in Active Worlds, with many worlds based on real-world countries.
DigitalSpace
DigitalSpace is an international corporation with a leading practice in virtual worlds for industrial design engineering, education and public outreach. Established in 1995, DigitalSpace produced some of the first Internet-based 3D “avatar” applications including virtual events and tradeshows, learning spaces for K-12 and college, corporate information sharing spaces, and virtual worlds for artists. Since 2000 DigitalSpace has been engaged by contracts from Adobe, NASA, and other federal agencies and prime contractors to produce a variety of virtual environments for space mission design, training and to serve the learning needs of developmentally challenged children.
Twinity – Powered by Real Life
In der 3D Online Welt Twinity, der kostenlosen virtuellen Welt, kannst du deinen eigenen Avatar gestalten, mit deinen Freunden feiern, shoppen und per 3D-Chat kommunizieren. Lass deiner Kreativität freien Lauf und richte dein virtuelles Appartement in einer echten virtuellen Stadt ein. Erkunde zusammen mit anderen Avataren die Straßen von Miami, Berlin in 3D, das virtuelle Singapur oder das virtuelle London als erste von vielen virtuellen Städten in Twinity, und unterhalte dich dabei über 3D Chat. Meld dich jetzt an und entdecke die Möglichkeiten, die dir Twinity als dein neues, virtuelles Zuhause bietet! Twinity ist kein klassisches Online Game (MMO oder MMOG), sondern eine Mirror World, das heißt eine 3D Online Welt bzw. Virtual World, die die Realität spiegelt.
Sketch Worlds
SketchWorlds lets you build your 3d world, where you can interact, play and meet people. You can make your world public and let anyone from anywhere in the world connect, or close it off for private use only.
The first realXtend hosting provider made a new version of the official realXtend viewer. The new Sketchworlds viewer contains some usability tweaks, daylight improvements and cleaned up menus. The viewer can connect to Opensim, realXtend and Second Life.
Open Cobalt
The Open Cobalt project is a community-based effort to build, deploy, and demonstrate a new way of supporting deeply collaborative co-presence, and simulation-based discovery across a large scale network. The vision is to enable researchers, educators, students, and others to interact within a widely distributed set of interlinked, public or private 3D virtual workspaces that can be richly provisioned with resources on demand. These resources may include human experts, data repositories, computational processes, sensors, web resources and media, along with collaboration services and applications scripted within the workspace or projected into the workspace. Through the Open Cobalt application, virtual world participants can access and collectively build a very large and rich network of secure and feature-rich interlinked virtual workspaces.
Youtube: Open Cobalt Alpha (2009)
Unsorted:
HiPiHi http://www.altoxeno.com/hipihi
Tribal Net http://www.tribalnet.se/
Twinity http://www.twinity.com/en