Raftworlds and TGTworlds
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Raftworlds and TGTworlds |
In the Interplanetary age virtual worlds became increasingly complex.
Many were used as extensions of other entertainment media, and
presented entire worlds which were often based on popular
works of fiction. With the advent of strong AI, intelligent virtual
entities (known as Virtual
Aioids and Sims)
were created to populate these worlds; additionally flesh-and-blood
humans could enter these worlds using immersive technology and direct neural
interfacing. Some humans
lived large proportions of their lives in virch, while their bodies
were maintained in life support devices of various kinds. Later the
technology for uploading a
human mentality became available,
and many human virch-addicts moved into the virtual world completely.
Most early fiction-based virch worlds were reasonably similar to the real world, often based on fantasy or semi-realistic science fiction scenarios; but a number of worlds based on a series of simulated universes in which the physical constants of nature were changed were developed in the Interplanetary age. Of these, Raftworlds and TGT worlds were the first.
Raftworlds are virchworlds with a huge gravitational constant. Inside, the conditions resemble the fictional "Raft" universe from the book by Old Earth Information Age Author Stephen Baxter. The billion-strength gravity allows for large regions of breathable air held together by gravity, and stars only a few kilometres across.
Another of these virchworlds are TGTworlds, worlds in which the strong nuclear force is hundreds or thousands of times stronger. TGT stands for "The Gods Themselves", a book by information age writer Isaac Asimov in which a parallel universe with this property is described.
These virtual environments were popular in the Interplanetary age among virtual entities and human users, when Asimov, Baxter and the like were considered great visionaries of space exploration and imaginary worlds, and began a trend in virch worlds away from a straightforward reproduction of the physical universe. Virtual aioids in particular were quite keen to get away from simulations of the so-called real world, and to explore the almost limitless possibilities of virtual physics.Eventually virtual worlds with alternate physical
characteristics came to be classified according to a number of
different criteria; for more information see The
Classification of Virtual worlds.
