Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com/products/avatarlab/index.html

Atmosphere lets you enter a new dimension of creativity and communication with rich, true-to-life, 3-D worlds where you can interact with others in real time. Atmosphere is available for free download from Adobe. And Avatar Lab is the only way to create completely personalized Avatars to explore Atmosphere worlds. Avatar Lab has been designed specifically to integrate with Adobe Atmosphere giving you an easy, yet powerful way to create custom Avatars to explore the thousands of multi-user 3-D worlds created with Adobe Atmosphere. Download Avatar Lab now at the introductory price of US$69. * Avatar Lab is the ONLY software package dedicated to creating animated, interactive Avatars for Atmosphere! * Easy step-by-step creation process makes building, customizing and publishing Avatars a snap. * Create an endless collection of Avatars using modular, mix and match heads, hands, torsos, hands, legs, and feet with user selectable animations and behaviors. * Avatar Lab's Face Room includes powerful photo-based modeling tools so you can import a photograph of your face and create a matching 3-D head model for the ultimate customized Avatar. * Further customize your Avatar by adding hair and props, and by customizing colors and materials. * Publish your new Avatar directly to your web location in Adobe Atmosphere format via Avatar Lab's FTP tools. * Start cruising through Atmosphere 3D worlds with your new custom Avatar in minutes. * Import animation or models from Poser and Poser Pro Pack to add even more content choices for Avatar creations.

Besides the fact that it might be fun distraction and entertaining has anyone come up with an application for all of this? How might this be useful in education, business, advertising, etc...?

by building a somewhat outline of what your home/office would look like before you build it. or selling a house use atmosphere instead of photograph tours. but that is all i have come up with so far.

from what I've seen of atmosphere, its merely a gimmick at the moment. On a DSL connection it is WAY too slow, and I'd rather look at a series of high res photographs rather than the disgustingly primitive polygons of atmosphere. As for building an office or home with atmosphere, anyone would be much better off using infini-d, never mind a higher end program like studio max. As far as I know, the atmosphere software itself is still freeare, so ya'll might wanna give it a shot. I wasn't impressed though, but maybe that's just me. It's prety neat, but that's about it.