YAVW - Yet Another Virtual World
Written on March 5, 2008 by Katherine W. Prawl
Troy McConaghy just posted a message to the Qwaq MICA group about a brand new Virtual World, Tomorrow Space from a company called Transmutable Networks.
I naturally immediately signed up for an account (katlemieux) and briefly explored this Web-based world, which only opened to the public this Monday. So far, they have two types of “rooms” available which one can rent on a daily basis and invite people to join you for free, and two generic avatars, “Joe” and “Jane”, which can be customized to a limited degree. With a Pro account, one can upload textures to create a better looking avatar and wardrobe, etc., but so far I haven’t found any specifications for those.
In general it looks promising. The idea of a low-cost, Web-accessible virtual meeting space has some real possibilities, even if it’s not visually rich yet. Already one can link to a folder of images to display as a slideshow, or a video file, and a voice chat tool is available. Adding voice to a meeting room rental (US$5.99) costs an additional fee (US$4.99), but that’s not horrible considering that people you invite to your room don’t have to pay a cent.
So far I’ve only tried browsing this site with Firefox on Mac OS X.5, but (after adding a line to my computer’s Java settings, according to Transmutable’s very clear instructions, and restarting Firefox), it worked very well. Later I’ll fire up my virtual machines with WindowsXP® and Debian GNU/Linux, and see how it works on them.
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March 10th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Just curious how you feel this compares to Qwak itself?
March 10th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I’m not sure, since I haven’t attended an event in Tomorrow Space yet, but from previewing the service it certainly looks less capable than Qwaq at the moment. However, the price is much cheaper, and it’s early days, so in time it may become richer than Qwaq. The fact that pro members can upload custom avatar textures and shapes, and possibly import 3D objects gives Tomorrow Space a little more flexibility than Qwaq. Without trying out the presentation tools, it’s impossible to say whether they work better or worse than the ones in Qwaq, but I hope to do that before too long.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:28 am
It’s early days for us (Transmutable) indeed! Thanks for your feedback and we’re all ears when it comes to where to take Tomorrow Space.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Thanks, Trevor! Your on-site documenary videos are worth any early-adopter blues. Lots of fun! I’m looking forward to giving the app a serious trial.