ABC News

Imagine a world where you could float to distant lands, find friends with the click of a button and build complex objects like houses instantaneously. Better yet, in this world no one ever starves, ages, gets hurt or dies.

Sounds like something out of Star Trek or countless other works of science fiction, right?

But several companies are building such worlds — where else? — in cyberspace.

The idea of building virtual fantasy lands online is nothing new. For past few years, computer software makers have added Internet hooks into popular video games such as Doom and Quake to allow players to log on and battle against friends or strangers.

But the latest online efforts are to produce "massively multi-person persistent online games," or MMPOG, where tens of thousands or perhaps millions of people can log on to a graphically drawn three-dimensional world.

And rather than just a place to go kill aliens or solve a medieval quest, these new MMPOG appeal to online surfers' penchant for online socializing.

"Fifty-three million online users admit to visiting a chat room in the last 30 days. That's twice the number of people that watch Friends," says Tom Melcher, chief executive officer of There Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif. "The online socializing behavior is really a mainstream activity now."

For the past four years, There has been working on an "online communication and entertainment platform" will take the fun to the next level, says Melcher.

At the annual Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, There intended to unveil its eponymous online community, designed to be a virtual, near-perfect copy of the real world.

Members of There won't have just a faceless ID or nickname. Instead they'll have so-called personal avatars — online figures with customizable features such as hair, face, body shapes and clothing.

Members can move their avatars through There's three-dimensional online world just like a character in a video game. Avatars can wave, smile, frown, laugh, run, jump and interact with other avatars and objects such as "hoverboards" and artificially intelligent pets.

And to chat with other avatars, members type on their keyboard and the words appear in "balloons" above their avatars' heads. But if members have high-speed Net connections, they can speak into a computer microphone and There's software will play the digitized speech online and make it seem as if the avatar is actually doing the talking.

Melcher says that the fun and draw of There is not just in the literal chat capabilities, but in the ability for members to also create and interact with others in the virtual world around them.

When There is commercially launched later this year, members will be able to create their own online objects with a set of simple software tools. For example, members will be able to make their own buggies that they can then use to race each other.

"Think about most games that people play and why they play it," says Walton. "They play it for the social aspect. Essentially [Sims Online] is an excuse to socialize."

Industry analysts believe such online sites could be a big hit — especially among today's kids, whose social lives seems to have migrated to the Net.

"It is amazing how huge instant messaging [IM] has become with kids," says Esther Dyson, a leading industry watcher and editor of a technology report called Release 1.0. "They have dozens of IMs on the side of their [monitors'] screens, find their buddies online and go find somewhere to hang out.

"Kids like to hang out with each other," says Dyson. "And these new rich visual [online] environments will give them a way to create [online] places that people [they know] will go to."

Still, not all are as optimistic about these new online worlds. Some analysts note that the road to these new "virtual reality worlds" is studded with potholes.

James Lin, an industry analyst with Jeffries & Co. in Los Angeles, says that online denizens will have to figure out what to make of these new sites.

"The difficulty here is that you have to educate people on what these are all about," he notes. "Is it a chat with a game function, or a game with chat functions?"

Lin adds companies such as There will have to convince consumers that these new online social watering holes are so different, that it's worth paying a monthly subscription to be a part of the action.

"Most of us are used to getting things such as chat capabilities and game playing for free on the Net," says Lin. "What it comes down to, is it worth it to pay to chat?"

Melcher admits answering those questions won't be easy. But he says the company has raised over $33 million in funding to further develop the There concept.

And he says the company is preparing to start limited free "beta testing" of the service with consumers shortly after the announcement at CES this week. If all goes well, a full subscription version of There will happen in the fall.

Not bad, considering that it took hundreds of millions of years of evolution to show signs of life in the real world .