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The Virtual Worlds Group at the Stanford Computer Science Department is investigating large-scale networked virtual environments. We are researching the challenges in growing virtual world systems to millions of concurrent participants. What kind of architectures will they have? How can collective computing resources be utilized to deliver the best experience to participants, from visual quality to simulation fidelity? How will millions of casual users contribute content to virtual worlds? How will they imbue it with behaviors? How will they communicate and interact? How can the experience of 'presence' be achieved on a societal scale?

Graphics and simulation pipelines should be reconsidered in light of massively distributed client/server systems. Fine-grained security mechanisms should be established to protect virtual world objects from intrusion. Novel content creation tools should make three-dimensional modeling widely accessible. High-level behavior specification should allow the creation of complex phenomena with little need for explicit programming. World simulation should augment user inputs with data sourced from the real world.

Behind the rosy predictions of virtual reality and telepresence lie concrete challenges for computer graphics, distributed systems, security, human-computer interaction, and social science. Beyond these challenges lie the applications of virtual worlds, which we are just beginning to uncover. What are the implications of parallel societies whose progression through time is archived in minute detail? What affects their characteristics and evolution? Humans are not adept in world creation, yet are about to engage in it. We need to thoroughly understand the possibilities and the limitations. The potential payoff is worlds that do not match reality but surpass it.