CitySpace was an internet-based

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space or spaces) is a Computer simulation, computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many simultaneous users who can create a personal Avatar (computing), avatar and independently explore th ...

launched at

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

1993 by educator and project director Zane Vella. CitySpace was one of the earliest online virtual 3D environments and first came to attention via mainstream news media in late 1993. CitySpace was also the first user-generated virtual world, similar to virtual worlds like

Second Life ''Second Life'' is a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an Avatar (computing), avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for person ...

, and enabled participants to contribute

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called Computer-generated imagery, CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional Computer-generated imagery, computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian coor ...

and digital imagery to a collaborative real-time rendered 3D virtual world in which participants interacted with each other via

avatars Avatar (, ; ) is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means . It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance" is sometimes u ...

. CitySpace was active from 1993-1996 and won the 1996 NII Award for Arts and Entertainment. CitySpace-1

Early CitySpace installations at the Boston Computer Museum (1993),

Exploratorium The Exploratorium is a museum of science museum, science, technology museum, technology, and art museum, arts in San Francisco, California. Founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer in 1969, the museum was originally located in the ...

(1994 and 1995) and Ontario Science Center (1995) combined educational computer graphics workshops and introduction to internet communications for young people ages 8 to 18.{{cite news, author=Blackwell, Gerry, title=Class act Oakville school is at the forefront in bringing hi-tech to their classroom, publisher=The Toronto Star, date=1995-10-26, url=http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000577.html, access-date=2007-09-20, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070818223954/http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000577.html, archive-date=2007-08-18, url-status=dead Both during and between CitySpace installations, contributors around the world collaborated via email and early internet video tools including

CU-SeeMe CU-SeeMe is an Internet videoconferencing client. CU-SeeMe can make point to point video calls without a server or make multi-point calls through server software first called a "reflector" and later called a "conference server" or Multipoint Co ...

to create avatars, buildings, vehicles and virtual toys. CitySpace installations consisted of networked

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

Onyx Reality Engine

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

-based 3D modeling and graphics software,

videoconferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

and data projection. The CitySpace software, written by Chris Cederwall of the

Electronic Visualization Laboratory The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering’s computer science department. EVL specializes in collaborative visualization, virtual reali ...

, enabled

real-time rendering Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface ( GUI) to ...

, six degrees of avatar motion, text chat, and

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

communication between CitySpace clients for sharing avatar position information, chat content, and graphics updates. In 1994 CitySpace was also featured in the

Cave Automatic Virtual Environment A cave automatic virtual environment (better known by the recursive acronym CAVE) is an immersive virtual reality environment where projectors are directed to between three and six of the walls of a room-sized cube. The name is also a referen ...

at the SIGGRAPH '94 VROOM event, a demonstration of the state of virtual reality technology.

Participants

The CitySpace project team included

Coco Conn Coco or variants may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Coco'' (2009 film), a French comedy film * ''Coco'' (2017 film), an American animated fantasy film * '' Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle'' (), a 2020 Japanese anime film ...

(producer), Zane Vella (director), Chris Cederwall (programmer), Jim Damiano (3D modeler), David Goldberg (educator), Ann Hess (mentor), Ole Lutjens (artist), Jim Thompson (network guru), and Daniel Blackman (collaborator)

References

Virtual world communities Virtual reality works