Microsoft V-Chat

Microsoft V-Chat is an innovative 3D chat environment that enables users to express a range of emotions and actions through off-the-shelf or custom made avatars. The emoticons include wave, smile, flirt, shrug, sad, angry or silly and the dialogue is visible in a large text window above the environment window.

Off-the-shelf avatars include an attractive female named Lulu, a precocious little boy named Joey, and a smartly dressed business man named Anderson. Avatars are easy to move about the space and emotions are expressed by clicking the emoticon button for each one on the control bar.

V-Chat, a long time favorite stop for MSN users, is not available on the Internet. The graphics take advantage of DirectX technology and for the Internet version the company has added "whispering" capabilities which let you talk privately with others.

V-Chat 1.1 uses the Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) and takes advantage of the Internet Chat Server (ICS). ICS is a standard protocol that supports advanced administrative features. Visit the MS Commercial Internet System pages for more information about the CIS.

Microsoft DirectX technology is used to generate and display 2D and 3D graphics in V-Chat 1.1. V-Chat uses features of DirectDraw and Direct3D, a high performance 3D rendering engine. DirectX is a Microsoft-developed industry standard for graphics intensive multi-user game titles and multimedia applications.

New features of V-Chat include the ability to secure your custom avatar with a password so that only you and your friends will be able to use it. Content Advisor lets you decide what V-Chat environments your computer will have access to. Custom avatars can be posted to your own personal Web page in addition to publishing it to a central server.

I found this chat environment to be one of the easiest to use and I enjoyed the emoticons and the richness of the graphics.