This paper introduces the activities of World8, an international working group on virtual reality, and demonstrates the group's developed VR applications in architecture. Group members come from eight universities around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Chile, Canada, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. The main objective is to develop a research framework for collaboration between architectural schools and a software developing company. Specifically, the group is looking to create new applications for VR visualizations of urban settings with dynamic agents such as human and vehicular traffic. Models developed by these members are explained, and the project is reviewed based on survey results. © pum, 2009.