Critique of OZ Virtual

Team: Amie Paxton, Tom Ivey, Chris Barrios, Neil Alphonso

Edited by: Neil Alphonso

	Out of the virtual worlds we have visited this far, OZ Virtual is one of the most puzzling. It is relatively new compared to the other established virtual worlds, but takes more steps back than it does forward. Perhaps this accounts for why OZ is a ghost town, a world without inhabitants.

	The majority of the advances made in OZ are technical. The use of next generation VRML results in a world that looks great and moves fast, complete with beautiful textures and actual light-sourcing. The avatars are non-VRML and probably 3D accelerated by Direct 3D or OpenGL. This provides for some nice shading on the avatars, and wonderfully complex and realistic avatar motion. These motions are undoubtedly one of the more impressive features of OZ, as it was designed with a nightclub atmosphere in mind. The gestures and dances are many and very expressive, and look so good that they probably used real dancers and motion capture equipment. The avatars can actually react to the actions of other avatars as well, but of course they are non-VRML and do not have the same restraints. The interface for OZ is impressive as well, and looks very slick. Having the interface separate as opposed to built into the browser like Blaxxun also gives a sense that the program offers something more than web interactivity.

	Unfortunately, the constraints and problems OZ Virtual seems to be so ruled by largely offset these good points. The major downfall of OZ is its lack of inhabitants. The world seems rather pointless, because at any given time the worlds are empty. Yet, even with this total lack of server traffic, the chat system and the motions are horrendously lagged. Even with direct connections in the lab during class, communicating was difficult. Not only does this make chatting difficult, but even if avatars want to react to each others’ dance moves, the lag is intolerable. Both the chat and the avatar motion interfaces are separate of the main window, a feature that serves only to divorce the two from the world. The visitor to OZ Virtual does not affect the world they enter save from when they are in it, and due to the deficiencies of communication much less the ability to build, the world does not have much appeal. All this contributes to the avatars that seem to frequent OZ Virtual the most, the ghosts.