Let's talk about it. Copypasta from /x/:
>Worlds.com is a relic of the Internet from the late 90's and early 00's. It was the first 3D chat client - the predecessor to programs like Second Life and IMVU. While it was massively popular in its beginning, receiving sponsorships from Britney Spears, Coca Cola, David Bowie, and many others, it didn't last long. New 3D chats cropped up and technology advanced. Worlds quickly became outdated. However, a small group of dedicated regulars has kept the chat alive. Mostly.
>What's left now is a large collection of interconnected and largely abandoned maps that range from mundane to eerie. There are a number of official worlds, but there is still a vast system of user-created worlds to explore as well.
>The labyrinth of largely abandoned and forgotten worlds has a distinctly creepy aura surrounding it, much like any other abandoned place would have. Plus, there are large number of worlds that are downright strange or unsettling simply for their subject matter: bright crimson hallways with people lined up in cages, a carnival of clowns with the backdrop of a blood red sky, a psychedelic trip through an LSD simulator. Your mileage may vary, of course
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Looks like welfare second life
no thanks
From an ancient deleted thread titled I live permanently in a virtual world from 1994
I am one of the few veterans who still plays.
I have been a regular player since 1996. As, at the time, virtual reality was somewhat of a craze I purchased a pair of svga iglasses and played in vr preferentially. Due to a combination of aspergers and paranoid schizophrenia I gradually reordered my life around the game.
I now live alone in a one room house in a poor neighborhood as my only concern was power and Internet access. In 2005 I upgraded to the HMD pictured. I am very happy with it, although some like me are still using the ancient Forte VFX3D with no complaints.
My windows are covered, I have no bulbs, and live in relative darkness save for nightlights near the bathroom and fridge. I order pizza only after dark. I own only a robe, for when I must answer the door, and support my expenses by a combination of adsense, mechanical Turk and various other crowdsourced programs. Worlds.com is more real to me now, although Second Life also intrigues me and I may try it out. First priority in the near term is to repair or replace my P5 dataglove. They don't appear to make it anymore.
Pre emptively I would like to say that despite being a shutin, I do follow news sites and likely have a more complete understanding of what is going on in the real world than people who live in it. I am also not out of shape although my only means of exercise is a treadmill left by the previous owner.
It seems to suffice to keep me thin although I imagine I am otherwise in relatively poor health. It helps that I have made a science of eating in very small portions such that a large two topping pizza lasts a full week, and I am experienced in exploiting the dominos coupon interface to drive down the price as much as possible. I have no living family but I do have one friend, an older fellow in minnesota with a vfx3d who lives much as I do except he has family who sometimes visit.
I suppose my lifestyle is strange. I don't own any mirrors so I have forgotten what I look like. I might be frightening to look at and I would not know. But I am not a bad person. Nor am I good, I suppose. You lose track of things like that after a few years like this.
I have such memories in worlds.com. People I know fell in love and got married here. they had businesses. They learned, created, grew up in this world. How could they leave?
I have so much more invested in this world than the one outside I am more attached to it and it seems much more valid and real to me. How could they leave me alone in here?
I search these empty wastelands of broken image link posters and glitched artifacts that used to be works of art, mangled digital remains that were once lively cities. It is like the world ended and only a few survived. We rarely even talk anymore. Like ghosts left behind after a nuclear war. We just follow and watch the increasingly rate visitors who come to investigate. Knowledge of glitches allows us to follow and monitor them from outside world geometry. Why did they come? How do they know of this place? With this thread more will visit and it will be interesting to follow them and see what they think of the remains of the world we still live in.
>Did you used to have people that you would talk toe everyday on there and one day they just never showed up again without a word?
Yes. One by one they vanished. Even the only girl I have ever understood or felt anything for. We used to talk over ventrilo. Last time we spoke was a year ago. She said she wanted to start a business in Second Life and I should come with her. I was not ready to leave. I tried to reach her by ventral but I guess since SL has voice built in, she doesn't use it anymore. My few friends also migrated there over many years and now I am alone. I wonder if I would find them if I moved to SL. I don't know their names there. I would have to search the world for them, if they are still there. I very much wonder if they would be surprised to see me.
>It must be amazing to sustain such a life, however, how could you do it so early on? Internet was still in its infancy back then and the tech around it as well. Now we are only nearing realistic looking graphics and proper performance for massive worlds, yet we still have a long way to go.
>I think most of us would like something like you do but we usually just cannot accept substitutes and lesser ones. Thats the spirit of this place, we absolutely must have perfection or at least something that honestly strives for it.
There were a number of Mmos at the time, typically based on raycasting doomlike engines if 3d. I also authored and explored vrml worlds, which were more tolerable over dialup because many were instanced. People could add things and update them, and you could keep visiting to see what was new. By 1996, worlds.com was already two years old and relatively usable. I did not make it my primary residence until one of the 2.5d fantasy Mmos I played shut down. It is now back on private servers but it is even more empty than worlds.com. SL looks like a better bet.
>What kind of computer you have OP?
I have a Turion processor, 2 gigs of ram and a Radeon x1800. It seems to run even SL very well, although I did not play for long. It was startling to enter such a new and different reality. I only dipped my toes in. I will be making more expeditions soon and as I gradually cut my ties with worlds.com I may eventually live here full time.
>What are those virtual reality glasses like? Might pick up a pair.
They have become very good, but compatibility is an issue. To make the 3d effect work for the z800 you will either need to run period appropriate drivers and windows XP or buy a newer HMD like the vr920 which is supposedly fairly good for the price, though slightly inferior to the z800. Vuzix has the best HMDs out right now and a high res wide FOV model near release, plus they sell an addin eye shield. They offer full up to date driver support unlike emagin but I am holding out for the Sony HMD as it appears basically perfect
>You're interesting. I'd like to hear more of your thoughts and stories even if I don't reply to them, I'm reading them.
>What is it that you like about virtual reality?
If I cannot see anything outside of the HMD I can forget it exists. That is why I prefer HMDs with full wraparound eyeshields. I fabricated my own from neoprene for the emagin z800. It is very comfortable.
>How are you contributing to society?
I am not. Except I guess as a sentient mind capable of performing low level elabor on mechanical Turk, chacha and stuff like that, which is how I pay for net/food/utilities. If people are willing to pay for it, I guess it is a somewhat valuable contribution and I do not see how it is less valid than any other type of low paid labor.
>Don't you think it would all be better if you just have a nice day?
Why? I am not suffering.
Some of you from /x/ are worlds.com moderators. Septagon, for instance.
>Can you tell us about Septagon?
He is how I found out about Ganker. He likes to stalk outsiders who visit to explore and gawk. He teleports them to a virtual hell that is mazelike and difficult to escape. You could consider him a world guardian although also somewhat of a prankster.
>Your tale reminds me of a story I once read, about a man who made a bet with a wealthy businessman that he could live in isolation for a very long time, and the businessman ended up accepting. If he could stay in his room for the duration, he'd receive a large sum of money. I can't recall exactly how much but I believe it was over a million dollars. In the end, a few days from the deadline, he wrote a letter which was to be delivered to the businessman the following morning. The letter basically said that he had lived so fully inside of his books and dreams, that he didn't need the real world. The businessman's wealth had declined in recent years, and he no longer was able to easily meet the wager. He was going to go and smother the shut-in in his sleep, but relented upon seeing the letter addressed to him on the table.
>I guess what I've been meaning to ask you is: Do you believe that your life inside your "virtual reality" is more real than the world around you, similar to the shut-in in that story?
Yes. Or it was, back when it was highly populated and eventful. Now it is an empty husk. It is why I feel ready to migrate.
>I play second life, I used to make real money. worlds.com is a homosexual
Please tell me details. I am intrigued by second life precisely because of money making opportunities. It would be a big life change for me to move there, but my world is dying. No matter how attached I am it seems like I must move on to the next eventually, and if I can earn enough I would be able to upgrade my hardware more often.
>secondlife is a massive world joined by grids, its seamless; you can make money selling plots on your grid, animations models textures anything
>I can't explain how complex sl can be, you can script in real time and build with primitives, and this year you can now start to upload mesh files, you can buy plots of land and set up shops and sell items you created virtually
That sounds amazing. I have visited briefly, a place called Kowloon. It reminded me very much of the old rp cities in worlds.com. I think one day I will migrate. It will open up new possibilities for me. My world is dying. Perhaps like rats fleeing a burning building only to settle in the one next door I must escape this decaying world and be born anew into SL. I wonder what my new life there will hold.
>This whole thread is kind of fascinating since personally I did not realize there are people actually living more in a VR than reality.
>This whole concept is kind of pulled out of a fantasy novel, but how exacly is it wrong if it makes OP happy? He maintains friendships, even if he never meets them in person (although by nature of this thread, one could argue he did meet them in person). If he's happier that way, why change that?
Precisely. There is community here. For instance much celebration recently with the announcement of Sony's new HMD. you see HMDs are often limited by software support and also only work with hardware of their period. So each new HMD depending on the level of support allows us to also upgrade our PCs while stimultaneously increasing field of view, resolution and so on. The improvement from iglasses to the z800 changed my life and many of us expect the same from the new Sony HMD. These hardware improvements gradually increase immersion and with it any sense that we are missing out on the outside reality fades away.
Unfortunately the money I have set aside right now is for a trackirpro5, since the z800s head tracking is drifty and requires frequent calibration. Ir tracking is supposedly far more precise and good head tracking vastly improves immersion. Once I have it I can begin saving for the Sony HMD. I hope it does not disappoint.
>Your life doesn't give you enough joy it seems.
You balance your life between videogames and outside stuff right? So do I, except instead of returning to meatspace when not playing videogames or watching movies or working, I return to a virtual world instead of meatspace. It fulfills the same needs, I honestly don't feel anything lacking although it is becoming lonely as this world is basically abandoned by this point. SL will do fine, it is just difficult for me to move on. many of my programs are from the late 1990s and I just keep downloading community patches or writing my own to keep them working. Still running XP and will keep doing so until I cannot anymore.
>Did something drive you to abandon the real world? If you don't wish to share it with us, just say so.
I have a neuroses concerning material imperfection. My own meat body disgusts me. Eating is the worst. Mastication is so messy, edible biomass crushed between teeth, mashed into paste, swallowed and dissolved by acid. Don't get me started on defacation. In my brief exploration of other boards like this one I found the term 3d pig disgusting. If I understand the meaning correctly it is an excellent description of how I feel, not specifically about women but the entirety of meatspace. Nothing is perfect or clean. Everything is in a constant state of decay. So am I. I am repulsed by it. Perfect pure clean polygon worlds do not rot, or become contaminated by dust, debris, waste. This world is made of math, perfect geometry. It is so clean and pure and eternal.
it's all LARPers; there at least used to be a guy who would message people earrape vocaroos but now it's just zoomers who send you decade-old gore pics thinking it's some top secret goose chase
Who the frick would make cult in shitty online game
That's must've been the worst cult ever
Lmao if this shit even real, prob some insane boomers have nothing to do with their time on the death bed
Fricking cringe if you actually believe those "ARG" stories
Worlds is what I imagine the wired is like in Lain.
Do you want to:
>Get uwu spooked?
>Recieve a Vocaroo from a gay librarian who has nothing better to do?
>Praise some homosexual who is probably a schizo?
>Explore sp00ky worlds that make no fricking sense whatsoever?
>Chat with people who never respond?
Then Worlds.com is the place for you!
>WHAT IS WORLDS.COM? (To the uneducated newbie):
Worlds.com is an old (probably one of the first) 3D chatroom service, that is like an internet ghost town, where the users usually just idle for the whole day.
The combination of desolation and bizarre usermade content has resulted in a rather strange, and there is a LOT to chomp through, but why obsess over exploration, why not know some of the people who inhabit this strange and fossilised land? The worlds created are only one half of the experience, whilst the people you meet (and who some created such worlds) are the other.
You can still explore around of course, okay some dead links are strewn here and there, but to a newbie it's all new so what does it matter?
looks like a game that literally just exists to patent troll
nexpo is shit, his worlds.com video was barely researched and just served to ruin the comfy atmosphere it had.
plus most of his vids are just him reading reddit and /x/ posts, fricking thrilling.
Damn this shit doesn't even work anymore, need to downgrade Java or use a VM. I give up.
I remember this, there were a few straggling weirdoes who still logged onto it and larped around when I checked years ago
if melissa wasn't so fricking fat I wouldn't have to keep moving
>join cult
>first stop is a virtual gay bar
good times