Virtual Environments (VEs) are an increasingly important communications medium. This is especially so if we take an inclusive definition of VEs to refer to both desktop and high end VEs, 3D computer games, Hybrid TB and so on irrespective of purpose of genre. Understanding the nature of VE content and the relationship between aesthetics, content and creativity, and meaning in such media is vital to its purposeful exploitation.

To this end a brief discussion of the aesthetics of VEs can be used to gain insight into the nature of VEs as a communications medium. The aesthetics is drawn for a number of new media sources consists of:

• Agency
• Intention
• Perceivable consequence
• Narrative Potential
• Presence and Co-presence
• Transformation

This precedes a review of some of the relevant fields of research, which impinge upon VE theory and the content model discussed next.

Perceptual Opportunities are a practical content model for VEs targeted on the aesthetics already discussed. POs are aimed at both students and practising VE designers. They have the following characterisation:

The model is described and illustrated with respect to a VRML model of the Saltburn cliff lift in the North East of England.

The relationship between POs and the aesthetics presented can then be explored. In particular the central role of agency in the VEs can be related to the PO model.

In the spirit of a workshop the author, who is not a semiotician, goes on to pose some questions on the relationship between POs as the practice of meaning in VEs and the theory of meaning in VEs, for which semiotics would seem to be a likely candidate.