Virtual Tours In A Virtual World: Exploring Cyberspace With The ‘Locals’
Where there are tourist attractions, there will always be tour guides.
Whether it’s the formally accredited do-this-for-a-living kind, or the more informal do-it-because-I-like-it sort, there’s almost always someone willing to show non-locals the sights (normally for a pre-negotiated fee).
It was only a matter of time before the virtual world joined the fray.
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world with over a million inhabitants, each staking a claim to a part of their virtual continent.
Kevin May of Travolution entered this online world not so long ago, ostensibly to take a look at the virtual replica of the Aloha Hotel, recently launched in cyberspace.
It was an ‘unnerving’ experience, he said, being dropped into an entirely foreign place (without a stitch of clothing) and having to create an identity and then find one’s way around.
But now there are folks that can help you find your way that bit faster, and perhaps even show you the virtual world’s best sights (whatever those may be).
Via Springwise, I discovered that SynthTravels, the ’1^st^ online Virtual Travel Agency’ now offers virtual tours of several cyber worlds, including Second Life (yes, there are others… Guild Wars and The Matrix Online, for example).
Virtual tourism in a virtual world. Fascinating, but I still think I prefer the real one.
Posted in General Travel
November 7, 2006 at 12:05 pm
SecondLife is very interesting – but it does eat bandwidth and the average home PC needs a pretty decent graphics accelerator to run the software. anyway, glad i found some clothes as it was pretty chilly on the Aloft Island!
klm, ed, travo