The Virtual Polis - or city - is a virtual reality application consisting of a three dimensional, computer generated city, inhabited by a multitude of participants. They are joined together in the environment by means of telecommunications, and tele-existence is an essential aspect. Imagine a virtual city complete with people, private homes, museums, parks, stores, and entertainment centers. As much as a grand social experiment, the virtual city is also a far reaching graphical user interface (GUI) for cultural expression, electronic home shopping and entertainment, with implications for society as a whole. What sounds like science fiction is no longer so. One could largely exist in the simulacrum, conducting day to day activities from play to work. The Virtual Polis is a prototype application of distributed virtual reality.

Salient points of the Virtual Polis as a conceptual model include a distributed, three dimensional inhabitable environment, the capability of supporting potentially unlimited participants, private spaces, personal and public property, tools to alter the environment, while inhabiting it, and an interface for home shopping, entertainment and work. This inhabited city allows for investigation of tele-existence in a distributed virtual construct.