Between 2005 and 2007, I worked for a company named VR5 Online which, among other things, specialized in research and virtual environments. One of the events we put together was a public concert in a virtual environment we owned called The City of Nidus, and featured a full outdoor stadium with effects and lighting, as well as was simulcast across two internet radio stations.

At the time, the concert was a "reverse" birthday gift from myself to the community, since it was also my birthday and I wanted to have a spectacular party. And so, the first full scale virtual worlds concert in ActiveWorlds was put together in 2006, well before it was popular to do the same in other environments.

While it's not as advanced as stuff we see today in 2009-2010, it was high end for the time and really pushed the limits of what the ActiveWorlds environment could handle. Shortly after that concert, ActiveWorlds released version 4.1 of their system which had particle effects, movers and all sorts of abilities we didn't have for the first concert, so we immediately revamped the entire stadium with a fully controlled stage with glass dome and animated effects, added controllable fireworks displays with sounds over the stage, and even roman candles by the fences of the stadium. There were a plethora of new effects for the second concert, including multicolored laser light display over the stage from the first concert.

for the first concert, we were pushing about 50 to 75 simultaneous users in attendance at the location, while at the second concert we topped out at around 100 - 120 simultaneous users at the concert, not including those listening to the netradio simulcasts.

It was by far one of the best concerts in the history of the ActiveWorlds virtual universe to date.

I've heard that there would be a concert simulcast within an AW universe system at some point coming up, with a maximum capacity of 5,000 simultaneous users. All we can do today is look back and smile because we know where that all began

Link to the Concert Footage: [link]