The difference I have felt in the kinds of socialising of a 3d environment and an IM (instant messenger) – Tutorial Task 4

First I would like to describe what an IM does and it capability and how I feel using it.

IM is an application that can be downloaded on to our system. That allows us to communicate in the Real world sense. We type in text and our friend who is also a member and also has the program on his system would instantly receive it. So we can write messages to each other just like speaking. These days IM s are equipped with VOIP technology where we can see each other LIVE over a web cam and have a voice chat using a mic or a speaker.

We can meet our friends and speak to them over long distances. We feel that we have not missed each other. We could do some serious stuff communication. If we don’t have a web Cam or a headset IM s are pretty boring because we could not perfectly express the tone of our feelings. There is somehow a way of representation of little textual graphic icons that appear just to make it fun expressing feel the most common feelings. The best part of IM is that as the name indicates fast communication.


Let’s have a look into what a 3D world is

Worlds where you are an avatar a comical person who could walk, fly, or do things around, its more control and flexibility over the body of being able to express and do things that you could do in a real world. The application needs a heavy bandwidth and a good fast computer to load those heavy graphics. Apart from the technical side even a 3D world looks more kiddish, you don’t feel it’s real. You feel like you are playing a game than for a purpose oriented communication. It is fun though. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it more realistic. May be then there are wider range of applications for it. The avatar should actually be you instead of a comical 3D already created avatar by the program. Your identity in a 3D world again is based on something like a name that is textual. It is harder to identify some one by just looking at the face of the avatar. Even thought there is much to be done it is still extremely creative.