CitySpace was an internet-based

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

launched at

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference on computer graphics (CG) organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH, starting in 1974. The main conference is held in North America; SIGGRAPH Asia ...

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 an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...

, and enabled participants to contribute

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

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 "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance ...

. 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, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natur ...

(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 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 instructions ...

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

-based 3D modeling and graphics software,

videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...

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

Electronic Visualization Laboratory The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary research lab and graduate studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, bringing together faculty, students and staff primarily from the Art and Computer Science depar ...

, 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. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

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

Participants

The CitySpace project team included Coco Conn (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