Jonas Karlsson, blogger at Xerox's Really blog, fills us in regarding Qwaq, whose Qwaq Forums is a business-oriented virtual world platform. Karlsson explains that OpenCroquet, on which Qwaq Forums is based, is "mostly the back-end of the system", with Qwaq adding in their own features, including interface and asset management.

In his detailed hands-on with Qwaq Forums, Karlsson says:

Rather than being peer-to-peer (as Croquet), Qwaq Forums is a hosted service which provides a virtual world where users can create rooms for different purposes. The system comes with a set of built-in templates for different styles of meeting rooms and project areas, for example. There are some limited tools for creating 3D content in the environment, but the philosophy is to not replicate functionality that is available in other tools, so the expectation is that users will import 3D models created with tools like Maya and SketchUp(!).

Other neat features are application sharing, integrated voice, and communication via https on port 80. The network part of it was actually one of the things that impressed me most, given the trouble I have connecting with Second Life through our client. When I started up Qwaq, it tried a couple of protocols and ports, figured out my proxy settings, and then connected to the server, without any intervention on my part.

Karlsson notes one drawback -- minimal avatar support, without much customization and personalization, which he correctly notes is an essential component of the virtual worlds experience, even if it's for strictly professional uses. "With too primitive avatars, I find myself feeling like I’m looking in on the world rather than being part of it," he says, adding, "Also, while the reliance on outside tools for content creation makes sense, I think it will limit the amount of creation done by users to those who whose job it is, as opposed to something everyone can do."

Another drawback: isolation, which is an issue all stand-alone worlds deal with, and Karlsson concurs that this will be a problem for all such "business-oriented" virtual worlds. "By setting up private environments that are not connected to a larger world, you are limiting users to the content and interactions that they bring in only. There is no way to cross-fertilize with ideas discovered during random explorations of the world. I can’t bring in new presentation tools or fun animations created by some random resident. I can’t hold a post-meeting networking/sky-diving session (unless I build it myself)."

Still, he notes that Qwaq has plenty of potential (and, obviously, ultra-chic hard consonant assonance), being "one of the most usable" of these kinds of worlds he's tried. Let's keep it on our radar, shall we?

[Via Really]