- In Hinduism, an Avatar is defined as the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of an Immortal Being, or of the Ultimate Being
- In Hacker culture:
- Among people working on virtual reality and cyberspace interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. (See The Palace, Second Life.)
- [ CMU, Tektronix] superuser. There are quite a few Unix machines on which the name of the superuser account is "avatar" rather than "root". This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who found the terms "root" and "superuser" unimaginative, and thought "avatar" might better impress people with the responsibility they were accepting.
- The Avatar is also the main (player) character in the Ultima series of games. See Avatar (Ultima)
- Taken from the word's use in Hindu mythology, in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game an Avatar is the term for a Material Plane (earthly) manifestation of any deity, outlined statistically in Deities & Demigods. Only gods of a certain rank may manifest these avatars, which may be attacked or slain by "mortals" without injuring the deity itself, who can often manifest the avatar again in a relatively short time. Some other RPGs have similar uses, and some MUDs refer to any player who has reached a certain level as an avatar
- Distinguish also the use of the word Avatar to refer to Harry Palmer's self-development system
- Avatar is a type of robots or interactive computer programs, which are designed to teach, or help to learn. Usually these are used in museums, where you can ask questions, the avatar understands them and generates an answer using a Text-To-Speech system.
- Also Avatar, a Port Coquitlam band
|
