Snow or not?

It is snowing this year at the city ground zero. But since the ground is warmer than usually, almost all snow are melting.
Happy Holidays!

No hits at Cy Awards 2007

This years Cy Awards are at hand. Horizon City or anyone related to our city wasn't nominated this time either. Oh well, I'll keep the city up with few other builders for as long as I can anyway. Perhaps someday, someone notices our effors.

AWExpo Booth set

AWExpo 2007 is soon to be opened and I've finished the city's booth there. I had no idea what to build only two days ago, but finally got something built. It actually looks quite good.. Go check out the place: -teleport-

Owning Virtual Land - AW vs. SL

I noticed something funny recently: I own more virtual land than the biggest landowner in SecondLife, but I only pay 69.95$ / year for it. For a builder, AW seems to be much better option.

Rendered tower

Here is another view about the Belle Van Zuylen tower at Alphaworld coords 7030s 14000e. The render was made by Roadkill. Thanks!

Belle van Zuylen and Japanese Town

Over 260 meters high skyscaper, Belle van Zuylen tower is almost ready at Horizon City central area. The tower is based on real life plans of multi use skyscraper, that is proposed to be built in Netherlands. I will post more images of 3D model of Belle van Zuylen tower later.

The other real life inspired project is japanese town in northeastern Horizon area. The town is based on idea of long time Horizon City builder Roska, who has lived in Japan.

Simulated reality

Is it mandatory to have many similarities between 3D environments and real world? Most of the cities have roads that go from one place to another. There are railways, walkways, paths, etc. Why are those needed? Aren't we talking about virtual reality, an environment where everyone can fly or go through objects? Everyone can teleport, who needs roads?!

Is there optimum ratio, how much elements from a real world is needed for a good virtual environment? If a scale is from zero to max, current AW places usually try to be closer a max than a zero. Most of the other virtual environments, such as Second Life, seems to aim to be near max. People like to see familiar features in artificial realities over the technical possibilities of having different kinds of realities. The optimum seems to be quite near the resemblance of real world.

Because of the difference, somekind of lore is sometimes created to fill gaps between realism and fictional computer based environments. For example if teleporting is possible virtually, easy way to explain it is to make a lore that is based on future. But not too far of a future, as most of the similarities to real world have to be maintained. Fictional governments are also common. Or are they fictional? Is it possible to actually have a Mayor on virtual city? Or a city counsil? What would they do? What are their rights? Doesn't everyone who buy a citizenship from a company that runs the program have equal rights? Is there a mature way to have a city in virtual reality? What is the definition of a city in virtual reality?

By claiming that Horizon City is "a city" in virtual environment makes it already a part of an unwritten lore. Why not to write the rest of it, anyone?

Back on map

The city general map with 10x10 km scale is up to date again! Thanks to AW Citizen RoadKill for generating it.
Central area map is also updated.

One free plot left...

There is room for only one more builder in the city. Then we'll need a major renovations at the city center, because builders wall will be filled with builders names. I wouldn't thought that someday the space for the names would run out. I quess anything is possible. Next wall will be big enough to fit all the names.
Thanks to all who have built so far!

Bridge City?

Several new bridges reach over northern water areas in the city. I recently finished bridges that were started in 2004. You can see how they look by teleporting to the location.

Sawards 2007 Nominee

Our efforts were noticed in this years Support AW Awards with two nominations. Congrats to the winners!

400m bird's eye view

Here is another view above the city ground zero. This one has about 400 x 400 meters area covered.

The most active Citizen

Our most active citizenship was renewed yesterday. Yes, the Horizon City -citizenship is with us again! Almost a half of the city is built with that cit. The cit is under control of city administrators: Sirqus and KraemerG.

With the cit re-activation there is even more areas open for everyone to build. Welcome, you can be the 381st builder in this Historic city!

The Boys are back in Town

KraemerG and Partymaster has been seen in the city recently. KraemerG is one of the earliest core team members and Partymaster is long time team member too.

Welcome back guys!

A milestone

A milestone was achieved when Horizon City ad was placed to Alphaworlds ground zero. It would have been almost impossible to have anything placed on display there just some years ago. This is one small proof that AW is slowly going to better direction: users get heard much better than before. Thanks Flagg!

Central area mapped

It's been over 2 years since I last time made a map in AW. I will someday update the old map over Horizon City. It will take hours to scan the whole area. Meanwhile I made partial map over the city central area. The area shown in this map is about 220 x 150 coordinates. The old map covers 1000 x 1000 coords and was made in 2004.

Gate Network in use

The Gate Network, which is quite similar with the Stargate in TV-series, has now expanded to Horizon City. You find it here. It connects several virtual locations within ActiveWorlds universe.

Streets turn

New standard for the city streets is released.

Some of those old street.rwx -objects are already replaced with new objects. Replacing all old streets seems nearly impossible as there were 35.001 street-objects in the city when I last time checked. I scanned all objects in the city area with a bot in January 2004. Each object covers 10 x 10 meters of land. That makes them cover over 3,5 km²! Each ten meters of new streets takes 11 objects. If all of the old ones would be replaced, the addition for object count would be over 350.000.
Gonna let beltways to be as they are...

Monorail Tracks on new track

Parts of the old monorail tracks near the city GZ will be moved to new path. The oldest parts were built in September 2000 and some of it has to be torn down now, as a part of city improvement campaign.

 

City history in Wiki

The city history from 1999 to this day is now added to Horizon City page in ActiveWorldsWiki. It seems that most of the city activities happened in 2000 - 2003 and that there is a blackout from 2004 to late 2006... Well, check out yourself!

Rawhiti Falls

Lord Perception is back in Horizon City. He continues building in his section of the city, which is now called Rawhiti Falls. I quote his blog here:

"Rawhiti Falls is born. Located in the Eastern sector of Horizon City, this will probably become my sole primary project in ActiveWorlds. The main theme of the estate will be centered around landscapes including rivers, gorges, bush land and of course falls, with some buildings amongst the scene."

Big welcome back to one of the greatest builders, Lord Perception!

New ad picture with 600m visibility

There is a new advertisement image for Horizon City. It is made by smoothing the original Horizon City blueprint from late 1999 with new long distance visibility screenhots. AW's camera feature is handy for making those long visibility screenhots. For the new ad I added almost ten of those screenhots to make one solid image with about 600m virtual visibility. Direct url to the new ad is horizoncity.cjb.net/2007ad3.jpg

Hills'n'builds - new area forming

About 150 coords to west from Horizon City center is a new area opened for talented builders. You don't find pre-built plots from there as there is no limit for areas size or shape for builders. Three beautiful buildings have already been built and hills for basic landscaping formed. River is connected there too and we're currently adding trees and other nature elements there.

Water escapes the city

Horizon City is also known of its large water areas. Now a river around the city GZ has is drying! But only temporarily as most of the water will be replaced with less laggy surface with some V4 features on it. As the area is quite large, I'm going to try object group loading, presets, to get it built faster.

Small steps

For a long time the city got a new builder! There are now 376 individual builders in Horizon City area. Unfortunately most of them are not building anymore at anywhere in this environment. Running a city here seems not to be as easy as it used to be. I heard that there is only two active cities in Alphaworld these days. Hopefully larger amount of users will join us and new cities and communities are born again.

V4 is here

Yesterday I got rights to use Activeworlds' new features called 'V4' in their biggest building worlds, Alphaworld. There is only limited amount of users who has those rights in Alphaworld. V4-rights enables for users to build special effects such as movers, particles and zones in addition to normal building rights.

Horizon City and Activeworlds

Horizon City is a multi-user built virtual 3D town in Activeworlds virtual reality environment. The city was established 7 years ago and it is still one of the best of its kind.

In this blog I will keep track how the things are going in Horizon City and in Activeworlds community. Nothing too serious is to be expected here.