Because of this thread, and having heard of it before, I tried Second Life 3 or 4 days ago. I went in with rather strong preconceived notion about the prevalence of, shall we say, mature content. I've been on for maybe a total of 5 or 6 hours, and thought I'd share some impressions and screenshots.
System requirements: First off, though, Second Life needs a fast computer, fast graphics card, and fast internet connection. Really fast. From an old laptop and a dodgy internet connection, I would go into a complex area, and it would look like a featureless grey plain. Then, 10 seconds later, some gray rectangles and planes would appear. A minute or two later, the textures would load. Ouch. But, from home, with a pretty decent (new) computer and fast internet, I could run it on a 24" wide-screen in full resolution, and it was beautiful. Stunning, actually.
Content: it's like a completely unregulated capitalistic environment, and in our society, sex sells. There's a fair amount of nudity and explicit content, running from R to NC-17. And beyond. And that's what I expected. BUT... what surprised me was that there are huge areas that are just stunningly rendered. Yes, I used stunning already. But, the creative content is awesome. I spent a half an hour this morning wandering through just 2 "blocks" of the State of Caledon, and it's like a perfectly manicured community, much like a cross between Celebration, FL, Main Street USA, chic seaside resorts, fashionable areas of Paris and London, and New England charm. There are art studios where you can purchase art reproductions. There are transparency effects, and stained glass you can see through. Public parks with streaming music and statues. Grottos with waterfalls, flowers, and hanging foliage.
And all of it is in 3D. Not like VMK's "faux" 3D, which consists of a 2D image with a few things to hide behind, but true 3-dimensions. It's an immersive space.
What's impressive is that nearly ALL of it (I'm told, all except trees and some landscape textures) are all created by users. Every person in Second Life, whether a paying member or not, has full access to the development tools: creating 3D objects, texturing them, writing programs / scripts in a C / Java like programming language. All the content can be generated by any user, paying or not. (What you get for becoming a paying member is the ability to own land, and a weekly stipend of game money.) And it's just incredible.
Environmental effects: trees sway with the wind, water ripples, glass can be of various opacity, lighting varies from midnight dark, noon, sunset, sunrise, and all in-between. Light casts glows.
Avatars: body structure is completely customizable; i.e., nose, ears, facial proportions, height, everything. I haven't even touched this yet, but DW spent half an hour recreating her face on an avatar. Or, you can fully customize with wearable objects. A freebie included a metallic dragon with many adornments. Or a stormtrooper. Or a wolf or weird anime furry creature. Or, and there are lots of these, all sorts of variations on porn-star like avatars. Movements use many, many joints. You know dancing on VMK? Pfah! On the newbie help island, you can receive TWENTY-SEVEN different salsa gestures. Each one plays an ~30 second loop of different salsa dance, with movement at the hips, elbows, wrists, everywhere. There's break-dancing, club dancing, once called "Can't dance" (which looks like white-boy dancing, which is still better than me in RL), and most importantly, the chicken dance. I'm sure there are hundreds more.
Anyway, bottom line is that I'm left thinking, what awesome potential showcasing such incredible creativity. And how telling of human nature and our society that in many places, what eventually sells is sex, porn, and casino gambling. (Or even, I have heard, fantasy sex-play with avatars that look like minors. Or animals. Or "other.")
But here are some screen shots of some of the spaces I came across in just a few hours of wandering about. OK, a lot of shots.
Because of this thread, and having heard of it before, I tried Second Life 3 or 4 days ago. I went in with rather strong preconceived notion about the prevalence of, shall we say, mature content. I've been on for maybe a total of 5 or 6 hours, and thought I'd share some impressions and screenshots.
System requirements: First off, though, Second Life needs a fast computer, fast graphics card, and fast internet connection. Really fast. From an old laptop and a dodgy internet connection, I would go into a complex area, and it would look like a featureless grey plain. Then, 10 seconds later, some gray rectangles and planes would appear. A minute or two later, the textures would load. Ouch. But, from home, with a pretty decent (new) computer and fast internet, I could run it on a 24" wide-screen in full resolution, and it was beautiful. Stunning, actually.
Content: it's like a completely unregulated capitalistic environment, and in our society, sex sells. There's a fair amount of nudity and explicit content, running from R to NC-17. And beyond. And that's what I expected. BUT... what surprised me was that there are huge areas that are just stunningly rendered. Yes, I used stunning already. But, the creative content is awesome. I spent a half an hour this morning wandering through just 2 "blocks" of the State of Caledon, and it's like a perfectly manicured community, much like a cross between Celebration, FL, Main Street USA, chic seaside resorts, fashionable areas of Paris and London, and New England charm. There are art studios where you can purchase art reproductions. There are transparency effects, and stained glass you can see through. Public parks with streaming music and statues. Grottos with waterfalls, flowers, and hanging foliage.
And all of it is in 3D. Not like VMK's "faux" 3D, which consists of a 2D image with a few things to hide behind, but true 3-dimensions. It's an immersive space.
What's impressive is that nearly ALL of it (I'm told, all except trees and some landscape textures) are all created by users. Every person in Second Life, whether a paying member or not, has full access to the development tools: creating 3D objects, texturing them, writing programs / scripts in a C / Java like programming language. All the content can be generated by any user, paying or not. (What you get for becoming a paying member is the ability to own land, and a weekly stipend of game money.) And it's just incredible.
Environmental effects: trees sway with the wind, water ripples, glass can be of various opacity, lighting varies from midnight dark, noon, sunset, sunrise, and all in-between. Light casts glows.
Avatars: body structure is completely customizable; i.e., nose, ears, facial proportions, height, everything. I haven't even touched this yet, but DW spent half an hour recreating her face on an avatar. Or, you can fully customize with wearable objects. A freebie included a metallic dragon with many adornments. Or a stormtrooper. Or a wolf or weird anime furry creature. Or, and there are lots of these, all sorts of variations on porn-star like avatars. Movements use many, many joints. You know dancing on VMK? Pfah! On the newbie help island, you can receive TWENTY-SEVEN different salsa gestures. Each one plays an ~30 second loop of different salsa dance, with movement at the hips, elbows, wrists, everywhere. There's break-dancing, club dancing, once called "Can't dance" (which looks like white-boy dancing, which is still better than me in RL), and most importantly, the chicken dance. I'm sure there are hundreds more.
Anyway, bottom line is that I'm left thinking, what awesome potential showcasing such incredible creativity. And how telling of human nature and our society that in many places, what eventually sells is sex, porn, and casino gambling. (Or even, I have heard, fantasy sex-play with avatars that look like minors. Or animals. Or "other.")
But here are some screen shots of some of the spaces I came across in just a few hours of wandering about. OK, a lot of shots.
Wandering through an art gallery, where you can buy prints for your home. The middle wall is semi-transparent glass.
On close-up, the artwork is actually at pretty high resolution. If you click the arrows, you can switch between different works.
Night-time in a fantasy garden.
Walking towards a shopping district.
The displays are of clothing that you can buy in this shopping district. Other stores sell more... interesting clothing.
A night club. You can't really tell, but the floor is made of glass, and there are moving lights and swimming fish under the floor.
An outdoor shopping plaza; you can see another store display in the distance. The leaves are nice, and move with the wind.
When you "sit", you can often sit on something called a poseball. "Sitting" at this spot causes you to lie on your belly, kicking your feet every once in a while, while you read a book in a hammock overlooking a beach. Poseballs can do really long and complex animations of avatars. There are lots of "relax" "sit" "cuddle" "kiss" poseballs scattered all over.
I really like what I've seen of this entire community. If you check out Second Life, I'd recommend going straight to Caledon. Takes a LOT of processing / graphics power though.
Some people do really nice things with their homes. Sure puts VMK rooms to shame.
A cute Christmas display in Caledon. Outside, they have a reindeer drawn sleigh you can ride.
This was a nice "Arts in the Parks" location. If you sit at the piano, the poseball has your hands moving across the keys, making little nice playing motions. If you click on the sheet music (which you can zoom in on and read, actually), there is live streaming of piano music. There's artwork scattered about in a nice park, with a fountain, and lots of foliage.