We met up with our guide in the RaiJuku district, a sleek urban environment with a distinctly Japanese architectural feel. As Tim told us when we recently spoke, vSide's areas are each designed to create an impression of cultural location without being bound by architectural fidelity. The two other districts are European-influenced LaGenoaAires and hyper-mod New Venezia.

When I arrived in RaiJuku, all the other alpha users were literally dancing in the streets.

vSide has an impressive array of very intuitive emotes, most of which produce character animations in response to key words in chat -- so while your avatar stands and chats with another, it looks like a real conversation's taking place, moving mouths and all.

There's a laundry list only of dance moves for every music style, which fits right in with the hip, heavily music scene-centered vibe.

The world is exceptionally good-looking, with beautiful environmental renders and impressively lifelike textures. The poppy, cel-shaded avatars are a nice touch -- well-modeled but stylish, the semi-cartoonish appearance sidestepping the creepy humanoid-android look of avatars exceptionally true-to-life.

I followed our guide through the streets of RaiJuku via simple navigation; vSide uses standard MMO controls, with most actions having corresponding "slash commands" (type forward-slash before an action's name to shortcut the point-and-click menu for many activities). Our first stop was one of the hotels.

While vSide users will be able to rent, with enough Creds (the in-world currency) their very own apartment, those without fat virtual wallets will still be able to host parties in a hotel room that's built on the IRC model; one room owner invites participants. At the hotel lobby's elevator doors, we were given a list of all the currently available and inhabited rooms.

Our destination was a party being given by Ling, one of our hosts from Doppelganger.

The hotel room reflected the fashionable urban Japanese design that influences the entire RaiJuku area. My guide told me that each district has its own set of hotel rooms with architecture and decor consistent with its vibe.

At Ling's party, I was introduced to one of vSide's neatest features; each area has interactive hotspots that will change your character's behavior if pressed. Ling's hotel room had a big hot tub and sauna; pressing the hotspot over the sauna seat caused my avatar to sit and meditate, blissing out while others lounged in the tub nearby, some of them changing into bathingsuits via their characters' clothing menu.

With a music player embedded in the interface, while cool music played and friends hung out, it felt like a real party -- easy to picture a group of friends getting together in-world to have fun.

Next stop was one of the hippest hangouts in downtown RaiJuku. Another neat element about vSide is that increased participation is rewarded with increased opportunities; your respect statistic accumulates whenever you add friends, investigate new areas, or earn applause from others -- such as when my avatar decided to dance on top of the table at this chi-chi rooftop bar, which my guide told me is a rather exclusive spot.

Some clubs won't let you past their exclusive velvet ropes unless your stats are high. It's a good way to encourage and reward socialization -- and, moreover, make vSide's society resemble a real one.

We also visited Downtown Records' virtual outpost, a top-floor recording studio with a view, where there are listening stations for artists on that label and clothing to buy. The shopping is almost as much fun as in real life -- different stores sell different things, and you can change on the spot into your new digs and accessories.

I went from t-shirt and jeans to a slinky black number to hipster chic in just a few minutes.

When we talked to Tim, he'd mentioned video games as his inspiration for the vSide vision, and on the tour we got a sneak peek at some of the game-like content slated for the world that will give the characters mysteries to solve and reward them for working together to find new areas.

You can examine another character's clothing up close in a separate window, and special shirts that are given out as part of an upcoming story event may have puzzles or clues embedded in the image.

The influence of game worlds is also evident in terms of the attention to detail. There's a lot of choice, too -- for example, at a dance club's bar, there are hotspots that let you chill leaning up against a wall, some that let you put your elbows on the bartop, and others that let you hop up on a stool.

Rather than stilted avatars standing awkwardly in unison, the variety and personal customizability of each avatar's action makes it look -- and feel-- quite a lot like a real-world place.

vSide is still, as founder Andrew Littlefield said, "very Alpha," minor glitches and all, but what they have thus far is very promising, entertaining and impressively lifelike. My avatar actually looked a bit like me -- only much more glamorous (okay, and maybe a touch thinner!), and therein lies vSide's primary appeal.

It's a city like one you might know, only cooler, and users can live the hip scene life that up until now, most of us could only read about in magazines. We'll keep an eye on this promising new world as it develops!