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Virtual Dictionary

Alternate Life

Via VR mediation, true alternate lives become possible. These generally fall into one or more of two very different categories, both of which rely on advanced virtual reality immersion technologies:

1. Alternate lifestyle

The alternate lifestyle is a way of living, or acting out a belief system that is utterly incompatible with modern physical society. It includes radically differing modesty and/or behaviour laws, or even anthropomorphic viewpoints. Virtual forms, in a virtual environment allow such fantasy worlds to become realities for those who wish them, without infringing on anybody who disagrees.

2. Alternate body

The alternate body is a desire of almost everyone who has a significant, long-lasting physical disability, or is fully functional, but physically ?born wrong?. It allows an individual to shed a physical body that is not ?who they are?, and slip inside as high fidelity as possible, virtual body, via which they are better able to engage with the outside world on an equal level.


Related Dictionary Entries for Alternate Life:

Alternate Life


Kansei Engineering



Resources in our database matching the Term Alternate Life:


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The Basics For A True Alternate Life
In order to create a truly alternate life, totally separate from the physical, to 'begin anew' in the virtual, and live as the person you were meant to be, rather than live with the deck of cards you were dealt when you were born, what are the very basics required?

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The Only Two Guilds on Your Mud
A wry article on setting up a thieves? guild and assassin?s guild ? essentially griefer guilds, within a roleplaying, gaming , or alternate life VR world.

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The Senses of Total Immersion
Total immersion in an alternate reality is as old as the human race. Quite possibly they are even older than that. Dream realities, fantasies, campsite stories, the world of a good book. All stem from the desire to experience an alternative life, a different lifestyle, to be something different, or to escape what you are.

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Organized Roleplaying Events
Organising even a handful of players into a cohesive, functional group for a roleplayed event is a nightmare for any persistent world. However, if you are not running a gameworld, or alternate life world, but desire a one-shot roleplay event with whoever is in world at the time, you can. Here is how to set it up.

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Managing the Participant Viewpoint for greater Immersion
If you run a virtual world, whose premise centres around a form of living or lifestyle significantly different from mainstream society; whether roleplay, persona play, or full blown alternate life, the last thing you desire is for people to enter it, completely ignoring the in-world culture and behaving any way they like.

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A new life, a happier life, a virtual life
The life which most crave for is a life in which the form they wear is one of their choosing, one in which the visage they present matches the person inside. A life which feels as physically real as the one left behind, in which the person is more active, more vibrant, more alive than they might have been otherwise.

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A Virtual Life: A half-life?
A sobering quote from Count Zero which does make you think. Even for those of us keen to experience life through the virtual as the great equalizer, unless we hit the point where VR is literally everywhere, with AR and physical life hopelessly intermingled and intertwined, a life solely through VR is always going to be a life at disadvantage, when interacting with others, who get to live in both.

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Virtual Body: Fundamental Concepts: 2
When your physical form is not moving for an extended period of time, you start to develop potential issues. If there is a lack of use of your form for a protracted time, these issues deepen into serious concerns. This list is not exhaustive, but does highlight many of the major concerns with protracted VR usage as an alternate life.

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The life of a mud player
An interesting psychological article that looks at the role reversal between someone?s physical life and someone?s virtual life as they start to spend more time in the virtual than in the physical. It has particular emphasis for gameworlds, so many of the points do not really apply to worlds whose purpose is to improve quality of life.


Industry News containing the Term Alternate Life:

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A "real-life" photography exhibition at the Proud Gallery in London from 8 to 28 October this year, allows people to 'step offline' with their virtual identities, showcasting for the first time how people play with identities in online ...

()Press Release) FAIRFAX, VA - September 30, 2004 - Mythic Entertainment, developer and publisher of the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game "Dark Age of Camelot," today released new assets for "Imperator(TM)," their next-gen...

Former Propaganda Films member and director of Johnny Mnemonic Douglas Gayeton has chronicled the life of an avatar named Molotov Alva making his way through the virtual world of Second Life.

At 35 minutes long, the document...

The man behind Second Life is stepping down from his role as head of the company that created the virtual world.

Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale will become the company's chairman once a new head for the firm has been hir...


"You read those stories; as CEO I have to shake my head," said Mark Kingdon, who...