Yet when Mr Checchi was obliged to beam down from the virtual world to the real one to attend a convention of the state's Democratic Party in Los Angeles on March 20th-22nd, he put on a dismal performance.

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Do spend time online making connections, but you must take a step from the virtual to the real world, if you want to land a job.

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And the fact that top-tier racing game players have proved their mettle in actual race cars when given proper training implies that there are many useful skills that transfer from the virtual world to the real one.

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Virtual World allows users to swoop into an exact replica of the real world's terrain from any angle.

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But like other social gaming companies, Zynga allows users to speed up the process by converting real dollars from their credit card and PayPal accounts into the FarmVille currency used to buy virtual goods.

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He describes a scenario in which a team from several agencies meets in the virtual space to monitor maps of agents' locations on the ground in Afghanistan in real time, communicating both with each other by teleconference and video feeds in the virtual room and simultaneously with the ground agents via mobile devices.

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