Beyond Building

Missing Mauz

2011-04-30T10:24:00.004+03:00

Today, a sad and unexpected news was announced. One of my long time AW friends, Mauz has passed. Many will miss her.

In Activeworlds Universe, the welcome message was updated to display the news:

It is with great great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Mauz, one of our first users and most dedicated person to the AW community. Mauz was a huge source of inspiration and made enormous contributions to ActiveWorlds. May she rest in peace and may we all spend this weekend remembering her passing. All Bingo games have been canceled until further notice.

Snowy End of 2010

2010-12-31T14:53:00.002+02:00

While there are another set of new features for AW users I haven't played with them much yet. Instead I made winter updates in the city ground zero. Eventually, the virtual snow will melt and I'll learn the new features. They integrated nVidia PhysX physics engine to AW Browser, allowing new object types such as Cloth.
Happy New Year!

They're Coming

2010-12-04T23:20:00.002+02:00

AWI announded that all expired Citizenships and Worlds will be renewed till January 4th 2011. I hope to see my old AW friends and that they get the message of their citizenship renewal. They should see that Active Worlds today is much more advanced as it was some years ago.
I have some expired citizenships in my pocket as well. Today I logged in with old AWTA citizenship and updated some textures of a building in Horizon City.

Belle Tower Painted

2010-12-03T19:32:00.003+02:00

In virtual reality, everything is easier and faster. I painted a whole tower within minutes by using a bot. I also optimized some parts of the towers structure.

I'm also re-building some parts of the city GZ so that it will look more up to date. New 'shear' and 'color tint' features will be used on it. Virtual snow will be there soon and once the snow melts, we'll see how the entry area will look.

Shear Terraining

2010-11-26T19:57:00.005+02:00

New shear command is one of the coolest new features. It allows yet another new method of landscaping. A builder can now use flat objects with shear command and make a smooth 'terrain' out of them. I made a small sample about how it works near Mini Fukuoka. I'm sure that someday, someone will make a bot that can build these smooth terrains easily. If you are, or if you know a bot maker, I can share my idea about how such bot would work.

With regard to the Mini Fukuoka area, I develop it different way than many other areas at Horizon City. I actually update the area and demolish or update old buildings there. As most of the city's areas are preserved for historic reasons, Mini Fukuoka is not. Recently I updated all roads there by using color tint command. The roads looks much better now imo.

Speedbuild 2010 Results

2010-11-16T19:08:00.003+02:00

Remember the speedbuild contest that I was participating? Well, it went good! It was quite intense and we had actually fun with other contestants. The results came out last week and I won! My task was to Create a HISTORY MUSEUM detailing a theme from Active Worlds. So I made a building called "History Museum of One Specific Topic from AW". The building exhibits traditional tourist avatar fashion from years 1997-2010.

Cy Awards 2010 Achievements

2010-11-15T22:27:00.002+02:00

The Cy Awards 2010 gala was held last weekend. There was over a hundred people following the event. I had to stay up to 4 am to follow the award ceremony!
Two of my creations were nominated for awards: Collapsing building for 2010 Cy Award in category of "Best Effect" and Cobra Wing for 2010 Cy Award in category of "Best Build". Neither of the builds qualified to top 3 on their category.

The winners are listed here at activeworlds forums.
AW Reunion seemed to rule at Cy's this year. I have to admit of voting some of the "AWReunion nominees" too...

Congrats to winners and nominees too!

Blog Layout & Other Updates

2010-11-15T22:14:00.004+02:00

Hope you like the new layout. The background image is a screencapture from the city GZ.
I also updated the official Horizon City ad: horizoncity.cjb.net/hcad.jpg.

A Way to Build - Casa Cubic

2010-11-07T20:18:00.007+02:00

The cubic house is ready and open. I call it Casa Cubic. In a way there is something different at this building. I pushed limits of Activeworlds building with it and only used elements that exist at original Alphaworld environment. No third party textures were used. I'm quite satisfied about the result. It proves that Activeworlds building environment is unique compared to some other 3D platforms. In AW an user can choose to build extraordinary structures with smallest details or he can build with 'normal' 3D-way: using boxes and other simple elements with neat textures on them.

Everyone can visit there. All you need is Activeworlds browser, then you need go to world AW (Alphaworld) and teleport to coordinates 6748.6s 14220.5e 4a 275 or type ^jump casa cubic to chat screen inside the browser.
Welcome!

Three Hours Bridge

2010-10-28T00:06:00.003+03:00

Today I built a bridge near the "Casa Cubic" as a part of ongoing landscaping project. It took 3 hours to build the bridge. So I named it as "Three hours bridge".
Actually it was not the simplest thing to build, because in addition for using my own citizen rights, another end of the bridge was built with Horizon City -citizen privileges.

More 5.1 Features & More Building

2010-10-08T18:13:00.004+03:00

The browser has got many updates recently. I'm most exited about ability to increase visibility up to 500 meters instead of previous 200 meters! It's a feature that I've waited for a long time. Another nice thing for great screenshots is wireframe rendering. Here's sample of using 500m visibility and wireframe mixed with Paint Shop Pro for pretty cool screenshot. Building on the picture is the same cubic house as in my previous post.

Tomorrow I'm going to participate a speedbuilding contest. I have no clue yet what I am building there. Will be fun for sure !

Going Cubic

2010-09-19T00:54:00.003+03:00

Another build is rising up. This time I'm building modern cubic mansion like residential house. The build is temporarily called as 'Mi Casa'. It is still at work in progress -state.
Oh, and there are no physics features on this one.

Real Time Physics In Our Fingertips

2010-09-14T19:08:00.006+03:00

Significant milestone in Active Worlds history was reached today, as Physics simulation was implemented.
I've already learned some tricks how to build with physics objects, colliders.
Here is a sample pictures for couple of my latest builds: a building that is hit by a shock wave and a simple suspension bridge.

More about latest features here at ActiveWiki

Building Outside The City

2010-05-06T18:03:00.005+03:00

I haven't been building outside Horizon City for years. Since recently. My recent self-designed house located at Cobra Village and it is called Cobra Wing, because of its wing-like shape.

I've also contributed some Horizon City information to virtual encyclopedia dedicated to the Active Worlds: ActiveWiki. <- see the links.

Exokiasma Is Here

2010-02-28T15:14:00.003+02:00

The house is ready. You can find it here: AW 6718.74S 14209.20E 1.22a 114
Welcome!

Virtual House of 2010 Video!

2010-02-19T22:41:00.004+02:00

Here is a better preview of the house. It was made with Activeworlds browser Grab frame render plugin.

Building With New Style

2010-02-18T19:19:00.005+02:00

Messing around with new way of building has resulted quite nice house. I've built the structure of it at January and some details are still under construction. The house locates near my first prototype for Usonia1 house, which I later built to The Extreme Builder Talent Show III. Location for the both houses will be revealed same time.

Here is a preview of the newest house.

A Decade of Virtual Town Building

2010-01-05T20:44:00.006+02:00

As Horizon City has its 10 years anniversary today I want to thank all those 391 individual builders who have contributed to the city during these years.

I also want to welcome citizen Roska to the Hall of Fame for his long term support and efforts for taking significant role of developing various places in the city area, specially at Mini Fukuoka!

Roska joins other Hall of Fame members, KraemerG, Bluebean, Q iamai, Partymaster, Dieter, Kenny McC, Brody.

One of the first objects is still at its original place. Timastamp showing the building moment, January 5:th 2000. The object is now visible for eveyone to see as I lowered the entry point to back to 0m level as it was when building was started.

10 Years of Active Worlds

2009-10-27T19:08:00.003+02:00

Today is my 10:th anniversary as Active Worlds user. First time I visited at Alphaworld, I was impressed by the freedom of building. I soon built there many structures as a tourist.
My first building was deleted some years ago, but I rebuilt it from a backup using a bot. It still stands at its original site at Alphaworld.

Still Building

2009-10-14T18:07:00.007+03:00

Yes, I'm still building. There's a new house under construction. I'll tell the locationg once it is finished.
The picture was taken last night.

Rebuilding with Neighbor

2009-03-16T17:07:00.005+02:00

I've been re-building nothern border area with neihgbors help and agreement. Basicly, he makes more room and I'll fill it with some landscape. Here is a map of the area.

Building Some Nature Elements

2009-03-08T16:48:00.007+02:00

Last year I found out a new method of making landscapes and terraining at Alphaworld and posted some images about it in this blog.

I've made quite much terraining in the city since, but usually left it without nature elements, due the lack of time. Now the first layers of nature have arrived near Mini Fukuoka suburb of Horizon City. Naturally, I plan to make the whole city more nature-like at some point, but that will take some time..

Tri-Bridges and Jump Points

2009-03-06T21:28:00.007+02:00

Inspired by a new city that is coming at Alphaworld, I've rebuilt old area near the Horizon City GZ. I had to delete an old bridge that was built year 2000. I don't like deleting old objects, but sometimes old must be go to let new come in.
You can get near this place when you are at Alphaworld by typing ^jump Horizon City. It uses new global chat commands that are implemented in Alphaworld.

Winter Building Contest Gives More Powers to Horizon City

2009-02-25T14:51:00.002+02:00

There was a themed building contest at Winter-world some time ago. I participated the contest with Horizon City -citizenship, the building account of which nearly half of the city is built. V4-building rights were givent to top builders and the HC -citizenship scored by coming 3:rd! Special building features can now be used at Alphaworld with that account too... Finally!

Another Curved Tower

2009-01-18T21:48:00.004+02:00

Remember the Belle Van Zuylen tower I built earlier? Well, Im building another tower that has slighly similar form.

This one can be found at AW 6805s 14147e

An Epic Show of Talent

2008-12-12T22:35:00.007+02:00

AWExpo 2008 is about to start in couple of hours. Many people are already walking and flying around this years exposition site. Horizon City booth is set, but they placed it other direction than I thought. Fortunately I was able to make some late modifications to get the entry to other direction than planned.

Teleport to AWExpo world here

Screenshots from CY2008

2008-11-19T21:46:00.003+02:00

I took couple screenshots from the CyAwards. There was about 200 individual avatars at most. Most are displayed here. Click the pictures for full resolution.

CY Award for Horizon City!

2008-11-16T22:19:00.004+02:00

Annual CyAwards gala was last night. There was many nominations and many categories for Activeworlds users to vote.

Horizon City scored this time by winning the category of Best Community or Town! That is great! Efforts for building the town for years has been rewarded by the AW community. Thank you all who voted!

As I said in my acceptance speech, I thank Activeworlds Inc. for providing unique virtual environment and maintaining its largest world, Alphaworld free for anyone to build. With the freedom and the latest features, we can build almost anything. From smallest details to huge cities.

Sun rises at Alpha

2008-10-18T23:23:00.005+03:00

Caretakers have set up daycycle for Alphaworld some days ago. Looks pretty cool if you happen to be online at right time. There pictures are from Horizon City, I took them last night.

From vision to reality

2008-10-17T22:09:00.004+03:00

I have the original blueprint of Horizon City still on paper. The blueprint was made late 1999 and filled with citizen names as they built in the city.

I've combined parts of the original blueprint and current map data. You can see the names of early builders of the city as they were written to the original plan.

Detailed Paving

2008-10-11T16:11:00.002+03:00

The new scaling feature allows builders to make more real paving. Check out some of those here.

Two times more

2008-09-29T17:37:00.002+03:00

Since my last post here, they've added many new features for us to use. I'd say that the recent updates, including scaling of objects, gives two times more possibilities to build whatever you want.

Traditional Terrain Editing

2008-03-28T19:20:00.002+02:00

For a long time I haven't been building real terrain, but today. The picture is from one of the best public building worlds called TheBeans. I've built the whole terrain by hand to the P150 world some years ago.

It's clear with new objects

2008-02-21T20:59:00.003+02:00

Alphaworld has got set of new objects. As usual, new objects inspire me to build. This time I made some updates to city GZ. Snow, or what was left of it, is now complitely gone and all new trees have grown! I finally modified the builders wall too - it is now pretty clear.

To the Cities of The Future

2008-02-04T19:32:00.001+02:00

Once the AlphaMapper updates it will reveal new area in Horizon City. I took some photos from the area.

Monorail Station

New method of making terrain in Alphaworld

Snow or not?

2007-12-23T14:16:00.000+02:00

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

2007-11-17T21:56:00.000+02:00

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

2007-11-02T16:46:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-22T18:22:00.000+03:00

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

2007-10-12T17:31:00.000+03:00

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

2007-10-05T19:00:00.000+03:00

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

2007-09-22T16:53:00.000+03:00

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

2007-08-19T19:52:00.000+03:00

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...

2007-07-30T19:28:00.000+03:00

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?

2007-05-28T21:00:00.000+03:00

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

2007-04-29T20:53:00.000+03:00

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

400m bird's eye view

2007-04-07T12:43:00.000+03:00

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

The most active Citizen

2007-04-06T15:37:00.000+03:00

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

2007-03-25T19:17:00.000+03:00

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

2007-03-22T19:56:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-15T23:06:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-06T21:14:00.000+02:00

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

2007-02-24T14:18:00.000+02:00

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

2007-02-15T21:13:00.000+02:00

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

2007-02-10T23:58:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-29T21:42:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-28T19:37:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-22T22:50:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-14T18:10:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-12T23:53:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-11T23:12:00.000+02:00

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

2007-01-10T20:48:00.001+02:00

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.