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Vir-Con
The First (?) Virtual Convention
Vir-con, which billed itself as the first virtual convention (though I remember Scifi.com doing a few a few years back), ran August 2-4, 2002 in conjuction with Creation’s Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, NV. They used 3D VRML to place the virtual convention in a space station setting including a replica of Quark’s Bar and a view of the Earth rotating outside. You could walk the halls as a virtual avatar and interact with the environment (in a limited way) and chat with other fans. How was it? Well, it certainly won’t replace a real-world convention to me, but all in all, it was not bad.
First of all, the technical side of things had some glitches. Vir-Con used the Blaxxun Contact VRML software that I’m very familiar with from Cybertown, though they didn’t switch to their “big bad servers” (to quote one of the administrators) until Friday morning when they actually asked everyone to log out for about 15 minutes less than an hour before it was to officially start. My first thought was why in the heck are they doing that the day the convention starts? Why not have done it the day or even week before? From the reactions of many of the administrators, I had the impression they hadn’t even seen most of the VRML world before Friday! I wondered what would have happened if the big servers hadn’t worked correctly??? While the servers worked, there were definitely glitches throughout the weekend (some of which I’ll mention below). Supposedly, these big servers were capable of handling 10,000-100,000 people (depending on who you talked to) at once - though I’d be surprised if they had more than 200 the entire weekend. With the lag experienced with just 200, I’m glad they were far short of their estimate!
Having the probably unique opportunity to test it with both my “big bad” office computer (a P4 1.7 megahertz with 1 gig of ram and high-end graphics card with dual monitors running Windows 2000) and my much older home computer (a P2 400 megahertz with only 128K ram and an old nvidia graphics card with Windows 98 -- which is soon to be replaced!), I can feel sorry for anyone who had a low-end system. My home computer wanted to crash Internet Explorer 6.0 a lot and both machines crashed a lot more often then they do in Cybertown, leading me to believe it was a problem on Vir-con’s end. While I had no problem with the streaming video feeds (I have the newest versions of both RealOne Player and Windows Media Player), there were many reports of people not seeing it at all, or only getting the audio. I have a cable modem at both locations, so the speed of the feeds weren’t any problem, though I think more testing of their system in general would have been a good idea. And offering a non-VRML option for people without high-end systems or fast connections would also have been a plus.
On the event side, they had a good selection of guests and I enjoyed the streaming video, though wish they had offered better streams to everyone than just the higher level ticket holders (about mid-way through they opened up the pay per view rooms to all ticket holders so they could see the close-up feeds - which rightfully upset the higher level ticket holders who had already paid more for this privalege). Most pass holders watched from inside a VRML ballroom on a screen inside the VRML room with a full-body view of the celebrity whereas the pay per view and private view rooms had a media player window open with a head-and-shoulders view of the celebrity. One complaint I had was that they didn’t seem to take the time zones into effect and only had scheduled events during the convention’s hours of 10 am to 7pm Pacific Standard Time. A friend in the UK had to stay up very late in order to see anything. The only thing that ran outside of convention hours were the Mall (an unimpressive collection of links to online stores), Trading Room (links to E-bay auctions, mostly Creation’s own), and a contest called Virtual Pursuit (more on it later). Even the Trivia Contest only ran during convention hours. Of course you could chat 24/7 with other fans as well, but then you can do that in Cybertown or anywhere else for free. They also didn’t have any administrators around after convention hours (or if they did, I sure couldn’t find them!) which was a problem. A 24 hour live tech support link would have been nice.
Of the events, the two I enjoyed the most (and not just because I won prizes in them!) were the Trivia Contest (I finished 2nd on Friday and I think around 16th overall) and Virtual Pursuit, an online scavenger hunt where you had to find objects which gave you points when you clicked on them - the highest score in the shortest amount of time won (and I came in 12th). Only problem with Virtual Pursuit was that we found out after the fact they had realized they failed to put all the objects (which were supposed to total 1,701,000 points possible) out until sometime Sunday! And then, didn’t announce this fact so those of us who were on top before then (I was third Saturday night), suddenly got bumped from the top positions as others found objects we hadn’t had the opportunity to find. My friend in the UK went from first place to 8th thanks to this glitch! An announcement in the general message area when you logged in to the effect would have been nice rather than finding out after the contest closed. The trivia contest occasionally suffered from lag which affected your time score.
My biggest complaint though is concerning the tickets. First, they were overpriced (which I come to expect from Creation so didn’t surprise me) and second, they only took credit cards. So anyone without a credit card couldn’t get a pass at all. Having the opportunity to pay via check or through Paypal would have been nice. They apparently realized the pricing problem as they suddenly offered a 25% discount during the show and a few weeks before slashed the price of their Latinum pass (the highest level) by about $100, though I’m not clear on if they actually gave refunds to those who bought at the higher price.
All in all, it was something different to do on a weekend and generally enjoyable - though also frustrating thanks to crashes, glitches, and things they obviously didn’t think of in advance. I don’t think virtual conventions will replace a real convention in my eyes (at least not for another few years!), but it was certainly an alternative for those who can’t travel or otherwise get to a real-world convention.
Want to share your opinions? Email me at info@scificonventions.com
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