From virtual environment to virtual community

We discuss a virtual reality theater environment and its transition to a virtual community by adding domain agents and by allowing multiple users to visit this environment. The environment has been built using VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). We discuss how our ideas about this environment changed in time by adding more facilities to it and by paying more attention to potential users. Rather than a goal-directed information and transaction system, the environment is evolving into a virtual community where differences between visitors and artificial agents can become blurred. Before going into a description of our own environment and its development we survey the research areas that now allow the building of 3D embodied and animated agents that show intelligence and personality and that can inhabit our environment