Wow, I never knew there were so many. I still prefer SL though I haven’t tried many. Honestly I don’t know mow much I’d consider the 2D sprite based ones to be “virtual worlds”. More like, Graphical Chat.

Anyway, the cell shading of vSide looks pretty awesome.

Didn’t know half of them. And I totally agree with Josh that 2D based are more like graphical chats than really Virtual Worlds.

I visited Google Lively and have an avi in Twinity but Second Life has no match until now :D

Thankx for showing us this Vint :D

I tried Lively but man does it suck.

Also i find it interesting that the comments picked up my yahoo Avatar even though I signed through with my google one.

I wonder what system it’s using to find that.

My comments? It’s using mybloglog. If there is no avatar present, it checks gravatar. (Or it is supposed to do that. I did not look at it after the site had some major problems about four months ago, not sure which backup I placed back for the comment system. :d)

Looks like MyBlogLog is owned by Yahoo now, I don’t think they were before, at least not when I signed up. Interesting though off topic.

A big one that I have an account in that is missing from the list is RedLightCenter.com. They also have a social networking component that is lacking in other applications that ties into RLC.

***A major bonus, its for adults only and not for minors.

Thank you for the tip, Nicole. Sounds like ‘virtual amsterdam’ in a stand alone VW? They do make the daring statement of being the internet’s most advanced virtual reality universe. As far for minors not being allowed, I always believed that goes for Second Life too? ;)

From the flash preview/intro, they seem to be in dying need of prim hair, and buttocks, knees, elbows and breasts are squared too. Do they actually have animations/toys you can’t find in SL? (And if they do, remind me I’ll let Veyron & Tiessa know. :d)

Servers: Red Light Center runs on the Prototerra engine, on multiple UNIX machines. (Never heard of Prototerra? Except in video feature above *points up* Google does not reveal much either.)
Building: We have custom software to create our rooms call Ted. (not much info on that either)
Currency: the Ray (Rays) (no idea about exchange rate, need account login)

…
I’m getting curious.

Found this dating from a year ago. For being major competition we have not heard about them much? Any idea how much users there are now? And do ‘metaversevangelists’ rather keep silent about this one because it’s ‘just’ about sex? (3D pr0n world is not a virtual world? Ignoring the Red Light District of the metaverse? ;))

With over 300,000 users (and growing at a rate of 1,500 new users each day), Redlightcenter.com has become one of Second Life’s biggest competitor. Redlightcenter.com is expanding with the rollout of their first major virtual city (Virtual Vancouver), and is introducing several new approaches to operating online retail and services. Users can participate in virtual commerce with commercial space, real time sales, and a new virtual currency, called the ray.

Red Light Center creates a virtual environment that facilitates and encourages human interaction of the Internet in a more natural manner, achieved by creating unique user identities (avatars), allows natural human interaction models. Red Light Center runs on the Prototerra engine, on multiple UNIX machines. Our database is a very beefy dual 2.4mhz processor server with 4 gigs of ram. Red Light Center was designed to mostly runs on the users’ computers, hence our bandwidth is cut down. We currently cap at about 10 megabits for all the content we provide to VIP users. We have custom software to create our rooms call Ted. The textures and avatars are created in various 3d software such as 3d studio max and then imported into Ted.

For those looking to monetize on the metaverse, store fronts and showrooms are available for lease at Red Light Center, a 24 hour marketplace which could a good avenue for business owners to promote products and services that may be of an adult nature. RLC charges a monthly lease plus a percentage of sales generated from the virtual world businesses and promoters can create shopping malls, entire streets, and even their own separate city that can be connected to the RLC through an airport or a subway.

Been to Multiverse, HiPiHi,There, Entropia, Lively, Twinty, IMVU, Moove, and Weblin. HiPiHi looks most like SL but is quite empty. There is pretty well populated but it’s hard to find stuff you want to but, plus it has people as young as 13 in it, so it’s watered down a bit.

Oh, he also forgot about MeetMe (by Co-core / Transcosmos) , they even have a whole virtual continent dedicated to Toyota.

According to redlightcenter.com’s FAQ, they don’t consider Mac or Linux users worth bothering with, and advises them to spend $500 and get a Windows box from Dell to run the software… so they can do without my business.

Nice post. Re-posted it in my blog. Txs.

I was a free member at Red Light Center but their newer updates don’t work on my older video card. However Prototerra.com now has their own virtual world. It’s still early in the building but I’m enjoying my time there so far. Just needs some more people.

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