34 Virtual reality communities

Active Worlds is an online virtual world, developed by ActiveWorlds Inc., a company based in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and launched on June 28, 1995. Users assign themselves a name, log into the Active Worlds universe, and explore 3D virtual worlds and environments that others have built. ActiveWorlds allows users to own worlds and universes, and develop custom 3D content. The browser has web browsing capabilities, voice chat, and basic instant messaging.

Adobe Atmosphere was a software platform for interacting with 3D computer graphics. 3D models created with the commercial program could be explored socially using a browser plugin available free of charge. Atmosphere was originally developed by Attitude Software as 3D Anarchy and was later bought by Adobe Systems. The product spent the majority of its lifetime in beta testing. Adobe released the last version of Atmosphere, version 1.0 build 216, in February 2004, then discontinued the software in December that year.

Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H. Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. Notably, the toys are stuffed with plastic pellets ("beans") rather than conventional soft stuffing. The toys come in many different forms, mostly animals.

Cybertown (CT) was a free, family friendly, online community. There were places available either through a 2D or 3D chat environment. Users were able to have jobs within the community, earning virtual money called CC's (CityCash) that could be used to buy 3D homes and items. Each user was allowed a free 2D home and could locate it within any of a number of colonies subdivided into neighborhoods and blocks. The cost was $5.00 per month or $49.99 a year.

eRepublik is a free-to-play, web browser-based massively multiplayer online game developed by Romanian studio eRepublik Labs which was launched outside of beta phase on October 14, 2008 and is accessible via the Internet. The game is set in a mirror world where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics where they can help formulate national economic and social policies as well as initiating wars with their neighbours and/or tread the path of a private citizen working, fighting and voting for their state. It was developed by Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru. eRepublik is programmed in PHP using Symfony framework and runs in most modern browsers. eRepublik has spawned a number of similar games due to the commercial success.

Gaia Online is an English-language, anime-themed social networking and forums-based website. It was founded as go-gaia on February 18, 2003, and the name was changed to GaiaOnline.com in 2004 by its owner, Gaia Interactive. Gaia originally began as an anime linklist and eventually developed a small community, but following a statement by founder Derek Liu, the website moved towards social gaming and eventually became forum-based.

Habbo is a social world building game and online community aimed at teens and young adults. Habbo is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finnish company. Founded in 2000, Habbo has expanded to nine online communities, with users in more than 150 countries. Since August 2012, more than 273 million avatars have been registered with an average of 5 million unique visitors per month.

Horseland was an online community and browser game where members took care of, bred, trained and showed horses and dogs. Begun in 1994 in the United States, Horseland had grown to have more than 8 million users who played from all over the world. Most of the players were females from age 10 to 22, although a number of adults played the game. In September 2006, an animated cartoon series based on the website was launched in the United States. The cartoon is now distributed around the world. The game is no longer online, having closed sometime in April 2019.

The Virtual Universe Community or VUC is the internal IBM interest group for Virtual Worlds.

IMVU is an online metaverse and social networking site. IMVU was founded in 2000 and was originally backed by venture investors Menlo Ventures, AllegisCyber Capital, Bridgescale Partners, and Best Buy Capital. IMVU members use 3D avatars to meet new people, chat, create, and play games. IMVU had over four million active users in 2014. Current number of active players are 6M+, and currently the site has the largest virtual goods catalog of more than 40 million items. The business was previously located in Mountain View, California. It was also known as one of the leading practitioners of the lean startup approach.

Koinup is an image and video hosting service, web portal and online community for virtual world users. It is used both as a photo and video repository platform and as a tool to share virtual world screenshots, photographs and machinima. As of November 2008, it claims to host more than 100,000 items uploaded by its members and reaches about 100,000 visitors monthly.

Google Lively was a web-based virtual environment produced by Google Inc.. It was discontinued on December 31, 2008.

Marvel Avengers Alliance was a turn-based social-network game developed by American studio Offbeat Creations and published by Playdom on March 1, 2012. It was based on characters and storylines published by Marvel Comics, and written by Alex Irvine. The game was available as an Adobe Flash application via the social-networking website Facebook. It officially launched in Facebook at March 1, 2012. It was initially released as promotion for the 2012 Marvel Studios crossover film The Avengers. It won the award for Best Social Game on the G4tv.com Video Game Awards 2012.

MyCoke was an online chat game used for marketing the Coca-Cola brand and products. It was created in January 2002 by VML Inc an Atlanta-based digital agency using core technology from Sulake Corporation, the company responsible for a similar popular online game called Habbo Hotel. Version 2 of the game was released in late 2004 on a new technology platform called Galapagos, created by Studiocom, and featuring new locations and a special double-reward 'Coca-Cola Red Room'.

NeosVR is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality metaverse created by Solirax. It allows users to interact with one another as avatars and features development tools for players to create games, maps, avatars and more in-game. NeosVR was released for free on Microsoft Windows via Steam on May 4, 2018, and currently supports several different VR headsets.

Open Cobalt is a free and open-source software platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual worlds both on local area networks or across the Internet, with no need for centralized servers.

OpenQwaq is open source computer software for immersive collaboration, which enables organizations to implement online 3D virtual world workspaces for their specific needs. OpenQwaq is based on the Teleplace technology, a conferencing platform that has been in the market since 2007, with the name Qwaq Forums until 2009.

ourWorld is a virtual world containing a range of online games and activities. It was developed by FlowPlay, and is aimed at the teen and tween demographic.

The Palace is a computer program to access graphical chat room servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop. The software concept was originally created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by Time Warner in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.

Pet Society was a social-network game developed by Playfish that could be played on Facebook. The game ranked as one of the most popular Facebook applications. Players could design their pets by choosing genders, names, colors and altering appearances. The user interacted with their pets through washing, brushing, petting and feeding.

Poptropica is an online role-playing game, developed in 2007 by Pearson Education's Family Education Network, and targeted towards children aged 6 to 15. Poptropica was primarily the creation of Jeff Kinney, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. As of 2015, he remains at the company as the Creative Director. The game primarily focuses on problem-solving through game quest scenarios, called "islands." Islands all center on a problem that the player must resolve by going through multiple obstacles, collecting and using items, talking to various characters, and completing goals. All islands, upon completion, award "credits," which are non-negotiable currency that may be used to buy costumes and special effects in the Poptropica store.

Rec Room is a virtual reality, online video game, and game creation system developed and published by Rec Room Inc. and can be played on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Oculus Quest, iOS, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X. It was released for Microsoft Windows in June 2016, PlayStation 4 in November 2017, Oculus Quest in May 2019, iOS in November 2019, and Xbox in December 2020.

Red Light Center (RLC) is an online virtual world was made available to the public in 2006 by Utherverse Inc. Its tag line is "EXPAND Your Fantasy". Red Light Center is modeled after Amsterdam's Red Light District. The online community site offers users virtual nightclubs, hotels, bars, movie theaters and stores. There is a virtual currency called Rays, which members can earn and use for services in the community, Zaby apartments, Gifts for other members, and various other purposes. Rays can also be sold on an open Marketplace for real currency.

Rise: The Vieneo Province is an MMO space simulator. The game is centered around an exomoon called Vieneo about 225 LY from Earth.

SmallWorlds was an online virtual world and social network service created by Outsmart Games, a privately owned company based in Auckland, New Zealand. The virtual world used Adobe Flash and ran inside a web browser. It integrated with YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud, and a number of other Web 2.0 services. The game had thousands of players, peaking in 2012 with a total of 3.8 million visits globally from July to August.

Snap! is a free, block-based educational graphical programming language and online community aimed at students to explore, create and re-mix interactive animations, games, stories, and more, while learning about mathematical and computational ideas. While inspired by Scratch, Snap! has many advanced features. The Snap! editor, and programs created in it, are web applications that run in the browser without requiring installation.

Stardoll is a browser-based game from Glorious Games. One of the world's largest online fashion communities, Stardoll has reached over 400 million users as of January 2016.

Twinity is a 3D online virtual world. Initially developed by Metaversum GmbH, it is currently held by ExitReality. The game offers its population, called Twinizens, to navigate around virtual (historical) versions of real-world cities, also called a mirror world or a Metaverse. A public beta began in September 2008 with the release of the first virtual city, Berlin, which later was followed by Singapore, London, Miami and New York. Twinity is built on BigWorld Technology and its economy is based on a free-to-play model.

A Virtual Military Organization (VMO) is a dedicated hobby organization that uses simulation to model the operations of a military. Virtual Military Organizations (VMOs) generally have a presence on the internet, similar to real military organizations. Most VMOs simulate military operations to varying degrees. A newer variant of Virtual Military is the MilSim unit. MilSim units differ from Virtual Military by placing emphasis on the simulation of military tactics in their chosen gaming platform, whereas traditionally, VMOs have placed emphasis on simulating the bigger picture, including a full military career path, logistics systems, coordinated movement of equipment around the world, and prolonged military operations. Although VMOs may appear to be a type of gaming clan, a key difference is that a gaming clan's primary purpose is to be an "organized group of players that regularly play together." VMOs are essentially role-playing environments within which an individual can immerse themselves. Realism groups are semantically similar; however, their primary focus is usually on following real-life procedures as much as possible. Therefore, tactical realism and MilSim are almost synonymous in the gaming world. A Google search for 'Virtual Military' reveals quite a few VMOs that go to varying degrees of depth to pursue their goal.

VRChat is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality social platform created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey. It allows players to interact with others as 3D character models. The game was released for Microsoft Windows as a standalone application compatible with the Oculus DK1 development kit on January 16, 2014, and via Steam's early access program on February 1, 2017. It supports the Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, Oculus Quest, and the newly added Oculus Quest 2 via the Oculus Store, the HTC Vive series, Windows Mixed Reality headsets and the Valve Index through SteamVR. Notably, it also supports full-body humanoid avatar tracking via Vive Trackers, though none of these accessories are mandatory to play.

vSide was an Internet-based 3D virtual world that was launched on May 15, 2006. The game is in its public beta phase. Initially developed by American studio Doppelganger, Inc., a studio founded in 2004, the game was acquired in June 2009 by ExitReality, which is the owner and developer. Inside the game's universe, users are called "vSiders" and can interact with each other through social networking, celebrity entertainment, virtual boutique shopping and self-expression. Membership is free.

vTime XR is a free-to-play virtual reality and augmented reality social network created by British virtual and augmented reality innovation company vTime Limited, developed in Liverpool in the UK. Cross platform, the app allows groups of up to four users to "jump into VR or AR and talk in what is essentially a private chat room. Users can customize an avatar and select a 3D environment to host the chat inside".

Whyville is an educational Internet site geared towards children from ages 8–14+ founded and managed by Numedeon, Inc. Whyville engages its users in learning about a broad range of topics, including science, business, art and geography. Whyville's users (Whyvillians) engage in virtual world simulation based games and role play sponsored by a wide range of governmental, non-profit, and corporate entities. In 2009, the website had a registered base of more than 7 million users.