One of the most popular posts I did in 2008 was my end of the year list of the 10 best places I visited during the year. Most of those 10 made the list due to the magnificent scenery that can be found. While this years list has a few outstanding scenery locales, I also picked out a few that are outstanding in other ways. If you want to see these in person, you might want to hurry, two of the places I considered for this list are gone.

Tempura Island

Originally Posted: Three Beautiful Japan Regions
A beautiful garden and castle build inspired by modern Japanese style. This place grew in popularity throughout the year. The building interiors use many special effects for a surprisingly beautiful look.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Website

Kijiji (Visiwa)

Originally Posted: Africa in SL
Probably the best representation of Africa in SL. Multiple servers filled with unique African architecture mixed with Dutch Colonial buildings.
SLURL – More Pictures – Official Web Site

Kalepa (Garden of DaVinci)

Originally Posted: Fun Fantasy Regions for SL Explorers
This build has been around a while, but I finally got around to blogging about it this year. Mixed fantasy architecture, a multi layer, and a unique “eagle” ride to help you get around, makes this a fun place to explore.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video

Mouse World

Originally Posted: Theme Parks in SL
“Mirror Worlds” are 3d computer places designed to look like real places. One of the most ambitious I found was “Mouse World” an amazing recreation of a Disney theme park. There is another 3D replica of Disney World in Google Earth as well, but this SL version has actual working rides.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Web Site

Frideswide (World War One Poetry Archive)

Originally Posted: War Memorials in SL
This late entry built by a group at Oxford University has amazed many visitors for its immersive SL experience. Audio mixed with pictures, mixed with a detailed stretch of a real WW1 trench. Lots of information here to explore.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Web Site

PAX (Where the Wild Things Are)

Originally Posted: Scenic Organic Fantasy-Historical Mostly Outdoor Regions
This beautiful inventive sim has multiple natural settings transitioning nicely. Lots of good places to take screenshots.
SLURL – More Pictures – Official Web Site

Pillars of Hercules

Originally Posted: Fun Fantasy Regions for SL Explorers
This Greco-Roman designed fantasy build has caught on as a pretty background setting to model clothing lines and take screenshot photos. There is so much stuff here, it is amazing it all fits in a single 256m x 256m region.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video

Daden Space (Apollo 11 Landing Site)

Originally Posted: Recreating the Apollo 11 Voyage in Second Life
This educational region allows you to see in detail the landing site of the Apollo 11 lander. You can even follow the paths that Armstrong and Aldrin followed and recreate some of their experiments and photo ops. An excellent example of SL as an educational resource.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Web Site

Japan Kanto (Hosoi Ichiba)

Originally Posted: Three Beautiful Japan Regions
I found this place from an impressive machinima video on You Tube. This furniture store is part of a group of Asian inspired builds that also includes Mao, a popular build of a section of the Great Wall of China.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Web Site

Mont Saint Michel

Originally Posted: Three Fabulous SL Recreations of Real Architecture
A detailed 1:1 scale recreation of a historically significant island just off the coast of France. The only difference being the kinds of stores you find in the shopping area as you climb up the islands hill.
SLURL – More Pictures – Video – Official Web Site

Virtual Society 2009, exploring, secondlife

On a web page I wrote about the history of computer animation, I charted how the industry went from cutting edge to mainstream in about a decade, wearing off the novelty, but still producing quality from time to time. I believe that is the present state of SL today.

Second Life is becoming “mainstream”.

I have said on a few occasions that SL is like a 3D AOL before the world wide web exploded. In the early days of the web it was fun exploring new web sites to see what people were posting. As the web progressed, the number of web sites exploded, and the overall quality improved.

At that time I was a reader of PC Magazine and they were doing an annual “Best of the Web” list each year. They had to stop when the web reached a saturation point. I feel like we have reached that point in Second Life.

We used to go to really original places like Svarga, Straylight, and Insilico and be amazed. Now dozens of new servers pop up monthly with similar looks to these places. It is getting harder and harder for builders to trump the latest, and even if they do get something amazing built, it gets lost in the noise.

The overall quality of SL region builds is going up, which is a good thing for us players that love to explore, but it is getting harder and harder to find places unique and original and wonderful enough to blog about. My next post is going to be the my second annual best of SL, and it will probably be my last best of list.

At the same time SL is changing its business model. Recent xstreet changes have been made which have upset casual merchants, but at the same time should help keep the copybot pirates from making a quick buck. SL is also limiting scripts people can run simultaneously, and making other changes that hurts the “freedom” in SL, but should make the platform more attractive for casual users.

All of this is following the same trend we saw in computer animation and the world wide web. We are reaching a saturation point. Second Life is no longer cutting edge, instead it has dulled a bit.

The cutting edge is in the Open Sim community, which still is working on improving the platform to match SL, and hopefully surpassing it soon.

The potential cutting edge can also be seen in Blue Mars, which recently added the Caledon “steam punk” community from Second Life to Blue Mars and is opening stores.

My current plan is to keep this blog going, but instead of pushing myself to post every week, I may post only when I find something to post about. Hopefully there will be enough to keep me busy.

Metaverse News, Virtual Society 3D Web, blogging, secondlife

November is best known for Thanksgiving, but Veterans Day is also celebrated on November 11th, the anniversary of the end of World War 1.

Which is a good lead into one of the best educational sims I have ever seen The First World War Poetry Digital Archive (More Pictures – Link to website) built by a group from Oxford University.

The link will take you to a starting spot, where you can get a free WW 1 uniform or a nurses outfit. This is not a RP sim so you don’t have to dress up. I decided to dress as a soldier anyways. I know a female on the battle field is not historically accurate, but what the heck. The region is very sound heavy, so make sure you can hear things. There are a lot of historical recordings, many of which you hear as you click on objects.

Follow the arrows to the “This Way To The Trenches” sign and click on the object there, and you will be teleported over a build of a trench. As you fly over and pass through a biplane dogfight, you hear a description of the history of trench warfare. When you finally land, you can follow the trench or try and run across the battlefield dodging mortars and mines. Click on the soldiers and hear personal accounts from the trenches.

This is a truly awesome use of Second Life that is immersive and educational, and everyone should check it out.

Meanwhile, on the boards was a request for links to recreations in SL of US historical places. The list assembled on the NMSUA website is already extensive, and worth trying some links.

The first link is for a place I knew existed but never visited, an SL recreation of the Vietnam Memorial Wall (More Pictures). The place takes a while to load as the wall plates are in high definition so as to show you the list of soldiers killed in Vietnam. If you never been to the real wall in Washington DC, this is a good substitute. Turn on your video and see images, songs, and a robot voice reading all the names on the wall, something you don’t get at the real wall.

Virtual Society education, exploring, secondlife, war memorials

Three other blog posts generated a fair amount of feedback over at SL Universe this week.  First was a protest over in world copying promoted by the Shopping Cart Disco blog.  Second was an article at the Pixels and Policy blog about how real life gender affects second life play. Third was a proposal by Hamlet Au at NWN about integrating Facebook and Second Life in an effort to get more players into SL.

My response to all three was decidedly negative.  Even though these three separate issues have little to do with one another, they all deny the whole vision and purpose of Second Life as if they are a part of a concerted effort to turn SL into something it is not.  Have we lost the vision of what SL is supposed to be?

The bulk of my venom is over the second and third posts, but I should begin and end with the first.  I did not participate in any protests over copyright issues.  Not that I am opposed to copyright protection or removing counterfeit goods, or punishing those that violate copyright in world.  I am opposed to changing the rules of SL to accommodate copyright protection.  I have explained why in previous posts.

Every now and then we get an article about how people play avatars that are nothing like who they really are. Men pretending to be women, women pretending to be men, adults pretending to be children, children pretending to be adult, humans pretending to be animals, animals pretending to be human.  You get the picture.

My response is always: That is why it is called SECOND Life. Yes, there are fake people in SL. In fact the vast majority of players look nothing like their avatars in RL, whether it being a few inches taller, or 20 pounds lighter, all the way to playing fantasy alien species.

The truth is there are plenty of fake people in real life as well, the fake people in Second Life are a much more interesting fake.  In real life we pretend to be something other than ourselves, because societal norms tell us we should.  In Second Life what we pretend to be is a personal choice, a creative representation we choose to project.

As I have pointed out before, there is a large part of the general population that doesn’t get this.  They believe that our online persona should be real, that the virtual world should mirror the real world, they are offended by even the idea of “role play”, and they are likely to show up more often in social networks like Facebook.

I did finally get a Facebook account and use it to talk to family and old friends.  I don’t bother with all the other crazy stuff that goes on there like Mafia Wars and Farmville.  So yes I understand that SL’ers may be ok with social networks.

I’m not so sure a typical Facebook user would be that interested in Second Life.  Advertising SL or integrating Facebook in SL will not work.  The TOS policies in FB are decidedly anti role play, and they will occasionally suspend accounts of people using fake names or 3D rendered profile pictures.

Bringing in the Facebook crowd means bringing in the kind of players that reports people wearing child avatars for being under age; that think it is cool to “out” the gender benders; that take offense at furbys and goreans and nekos; the type of people that don’t understand “role play” and generally cause problems for those that do.

These kind of players don’t last long in SL anyways. If SL wants to attract future loyal players, they need to hit sci-fi and comic conventions, SCA and Renaissance fairs, war reenactors, and other places likely to attract the role playing types. I’ve met lots of SL players who are into all of this stuff IRL as well.

Second Life is a world designed and built for role players of all types. That is what it has always been and needs to remain.  Concerning yourself with real life identities is a waste of time.  Trying to “mainstream” Second Life is counter productive and wont work.

Linden Labs needs to stop marketing Second Life as a place to make money, especially since only about 2-3% actually do. They also need to stop marketing as a social chat environment as there are dozens of better places to chat.  It is far more effective, I believe, if SL were marketed as a fantasy mecca, as a place to create your world. Its what those misleading ads for Evony and IMVU do, and they have attracted millions of players.

Which brings us full circle to those concerned with copyrights and stuff.  SL was not designed to protect copyright. Many real life 3D artists don’t bother with SL for that reason.  I figured this out a long time ago myself. If you release something cool in SL, it will get copied and stolen, and spread around.  Somehow this idea that SL is a place to make money has caught on and has turned into an entitlement, they are demanding that the Lindens protect their investment with draconian rules to limit play for non-paying players, or to limit what can be uploaded and by who.

From a role play perspective this whole thing is silly anyways.  I build my character, make or buy clothing, make or buy housing and enjoy the world.  If I want to play the role of “fashion designer”, I design avatar clothing, and have fun doing it, and if I make money too, great!  It means I can play the role of successful fashion designer.  If others are making cheap knock-offs of my product line, well that’s the life of the virtual fashion designer.

Worrying about what others are doing with your stuff just leads to stress and burnout.  Aside from filling out the occasional DMCA ticket, people shouldn’t waste their time over it.  This is all antithetical to the whole spirit of Second Life.  SL was designed as a fun diversion, a fantasy escape, with as much freedom as possible, not a big business platform that needs to be scrutinized and regulated.

With the recent departure of some key players, Second Life seems to be at another crossroad point. In these times, there is always this serious risk that things could change enough to destroy what has been built.

It is time to remind people of what the whole purpose really is.

Virtual Society philosophy, role play, secondlife

I normally don’t do exploring posts so close together, but its been a slow news month, so why not another?

For this one the theme is real life architecture from Europe recreated with care in Second Life. I found three dedicated reproductions both inside and out of famous buildings.

First on the list is the youngest, La Sagrada Familia is a cathederal in Barcelona in real life, but in Second Life it can be found in Meloloona (more pictures).

The ornate details of the original building do not translate to Second Life, but the build is impressive enough to check out. Its quite elaborate even for SL standards.

Next up is an older and smaller mirror build of the Parthenon in Greece. I have stumbled on a few parthenons in Second Life, including one on the official Greece Tourism region. But the one built in Sculptie Experiments (more pictures) is the best I have seen.

The primary reason I favor it is for its use of 3D sculptie prims throughout. This allows a much more detailed and authentic Parthenon build.

Finally, this recreation of Le Mont Saint Michel off the coast of France is one of the most incredible mirror world builds in Second Life. If you have not seen it you really should. They actually recreated the entire island to scale. It can be found in the Mont Saint Michel region (More Pictures).

Like the real place, the hill can be climbed by following a circular path, lined with shops, which is how the rent gets paid.

It is not entirely authentic. Hidden underneath the mountain is a large techno battle zone. See if you can find it.

Virtual Society exploring, France, Greece, mirror worlds, secondlife, Spain

I like doing these themed exploration posts. Most of the time I have two similarly themed regions, then seek out a third to round out the post. Every now and then I find three regions that kind of go together, but not in a simple to explain way. These three are organic, semi fantasy, semi historical, mostly outdoors shopping regions. Couldn’t think of a shorter way to explain it.

In that same spirit, I decided to take on a pseudo fantasy-historical look to tour around these regions.

First up, sounds like a movie plug. Its a place called Where the Wild Things Are like the upcoming Spike Jones movie. The region itself is simply called Pax (More Pictures). As I pop in I find myself in a thunderstorm. This mostly natural outdoors build seems to have its own geology, a forest growing along a recently created lave bed. OK, so that does not happen in real life. Its a pretty build to visit.

Our next stop is a fantasy themed world with a steampunk underworld called 6pi (More Pictures). Not sure what the meaning is (when I tried googling it all I got was 18.8495559…), but it is a nice build anyways. Above is me in front of the main shopping area taking up about a quarter of the region. The simple coloring and elemental plants give it a fairy tale kind of feel, like it is a nice place to hang out. Another half a region is mostly a natural plant build with a small village that sees to have popped up.

The fourth quarter of the build is easy to miss as most of it is buried underwater. It looks a bit steampunk, with its pipes and rusted color, offset with glow effects, some of which are quite nice.

Finally, on this tour is a tropical Pirate themed build called La Cuesta (more pictures). The region consists of a bay, a dock, a shipwreck or two, a cottage, and an inn called the Groll Inn.

After a long days journey visiting three islands, I decided to check myself in.

Virtual Society exploring, fantasy, pirate, secondlife, steampunk

There has been a fair amount of drama on the whole adult continent Zindra front. The move of all adult content to a new continent has brought land speculators, complaints, AR griefing, and other nonsense. Time to take a second look.

On September 15th, Linden Labs has drawn the line. All adult businesses must be on Zindra or an estate server set as “adult”. Rule breakers will no longer be seen in search and could be forced to move.  Furthermore, SL clients not enabled with code to handle adult permissions (1.23 or higher) will no longer be able to see adult islands on maps, or see any shops or groups that are adult in nature.  LL is still vague about their guidelines to prevent people from working around them, though there are 3rd parties figuring it out.

In the June essay, I mentioned two possible scenarios of where Zindra will head: 1.) A sanctuary away from alt griefing and kids pretending to be adult, or 2.) an adult oriented ghetto.  Many of the more established successful businesses have relocated to private estates rather than Zindra. Because of this, its looking more and more likely that the second scenario will prevail.

A quick tour around Zindra today is like a big mall of mostly crap. A good 90% of adult merchants do not know how to make a good store build. Lots of bright tacky colors, or way too big textures that cause load lag. I went to some of the busiest businesses and either found a lot of bots / camping chairs, or builds in private skyboxes.

That to me is a virtual ghetto.

Ironically, after exploring the main areas of Zindra, my favorite build I found was designed to look like a ghetto (More Pictures).  Its actually a group of builds in the same area with the same “ghetto” aesthetic.  Lots of naughty poseball furniture and toys, mixed with sexy clothing shops and booth and apartment rentals.  It is the most interesting build, or group of builds, I found on the whole continent. (Pictures in this article are from that build)

The as yet unanswered question is how will this segregation of adult businesses affect the rest of Second Life.  Adult rated regions currently make up almost 5% of Second Life, and the stricter enforcement (especially on estates) is going to make that percentage rise. Traffic will change, as will land prices, but how and how much are unanswered as of yet.

Below is a map of the main section of Zindra as it now exists. Compare it to the map I made in June and see how much it has changed.

Metaverse News, Virtual Society adult content, censorship, exploring, secondlife, virtual sex, zindra

Over a year ago, I went around the world in Second Life builds and noted the lack of builds based in Africa. I did find one decent one at the time, but felt annoyed that there were not more. It is the second biggest continent after all.

Since then some new ones have been built. I tracked them down and thought I’d share.

The first is a really impressive 4 server build called Visiwa (more pictures).  According to its website it was originally opened in October of 2008, but has expanded quite a bit since then. I saw some tacky construction signs (are these really necessary?) indicating it is still expanding.

The port in the top picture is dubbed Port Kijiji (an ancient African work for “Village”), and it is surrounded with stores, including some available for rent.

In the back are some residential spaces, also with some vacancies, if you are looking for housing in a beautiful exotic locale. Even if not this is a cool place to explore, just don’t feed the lions.

Speaking of lions, the next African location I visited was simply called Virtual Africa (more pictures). Built by a non-profit based in South Africa, its a small tourist attraction complete with 3d models of about a dozen different African animals, and a fair number of plants. The whole thing has a safari feel to it.

You can walk around, balloon around, or hang glide. There are also tents for rent, auditorium, and some informational displays.

With these real world tours, I like to try and find historical locales as well.  No problem, I found an Ancient Egypt City of Thebes (more pictures). This is a role play server, so you have to be in costume to look around.  I just decided to scope around with my camera.  If you want to visit someplace a little less role play, I found a build called Egypta occupying a quarter of a server.

Well that’s my brief tour of Africa in SL. Hope you enjoyed it.

Virtual Society Africa, exploring, Historical, mirror worlds, secondlife

One of the thing I do in Second Life is shop. I have been to a lot of stores in SL, but never bothered to blog about them, because most are so unoriginal. You got your box stores, your boutique stores, your fancy upscale stores that look like they belong on Rodeo Drive in LA, 5th Avenue in New York, or any of the other famous upscale shopping locales.

But this is Second Life! Why do you have to be normal?

I recently stumbled on to a few stores that were far more interesting as places to explore than as places to shop, and being the 3D adventurer, it makes me want to shop at these places more.

Being a “shopping” themed exploring guide, I decided to get a new outfit. Something wild but fashionable, but not formal dressy fashion, and ended up with the above outfit. Half the outfit comes from the first store pictured above The Abyss (more pictures) The store consists of two buildings and a walkway surrounded by a post-apocalyptic nightmare world. Lots of gothic and art deco looking buildings leaning at angles like they are about to fall over. Its a very cool.

The second completely original shopping experience belongs to The Boudoir (more pictures). The Boudoir City region looks like a french village on most of the server, but the skyline is dominated by a completely bizarre and completely original building. The bottom half has stone arches similar to a gothic cathedral, the top half looks like a post modern disaster you imagine seeing in East Asia.

As original as the exterior is, the interior is an equally impressive decorated store, looking like something you might see in a French opera house, or a Las Vegas casino. It makes you want to spend some money.

Finally on the stores that impress list is an odd fantasy combat store called Alruneia Sentry (more pictures). Being somewhat traditional in my tastes, there wasn’t much I was interested in buying, but the place looks gorgeous and unlike anything I have seen before.

The rez  point for the region will drop you at the store, but fly on down to the surface and explore there too.

Lots of glowing plant life and flying neon whales to keep your eyes busy. There are lots of hidden corners to explore. One was a “grotto” cave filled with water and  things to see both above and below water. I had to check it out but did not want to ruin my new clothes. So I just took them off.

Virtual Society exploring, secondlife, shopping, virtual economy

Most people that play Second Life, run into this problem eventually: You want to build stuff, and cant afford a lot of land, so you go to a sand box region, and when you go, its laggy and overcrowded.

Why is it even necessary to build stuff in world anyways? We can make our own textures and animations offline using other programs then import them into SL. Why cant be build objects in a third party program and import them?

There is a solution with OpenSim. You can create a free, lag free personal sandbox island on your own computer and build what you want.

I heard horror stories about setting up an Open Sim server of my own. Unfortunately, instructions to set it up are often overly technical and have the format “if you want to do this, then A, but if you want to do that then B.” A lot of tutorials want you to compile the latest source and set up another database, none of which are really necessary.

All I want to do is set up an Open Sim sandbox on my own hard drive. I’m not looking to connect it to a grid, or invite my friends to connect to it. I just want a free place to play and experiment. How difficult is that?

Its not difficult at all. Here is the process in five easy steps:

Step 1: Download and install the latest Open Sim build. Don’t bother with the source code binaries, (which you need for the very latest version) the latest ”installer” download is likely to be a stable build, and will keep you from having to install three other programs needed to compile the source code. Forget all that, just download and install.

The download page is here. You may have to scroll down a bit to find the “installer” section.

Step 2 : Open the directory you installed the program to, and find “opensim.exe”. Right Click and “create a shortcut” and move it to your desktop. (Vista users only: Right click on the shortcut you just created and go to Properties, then the “Advanced…” button, and check “Run as Administrator”). This is needed to get all the permissions right. Every time you launch the shortcut you will also be asked to “allow” the program to run. Its a very minor inconvenience.

Step 3: Run Opensim for the first time. The scary part is that it will look like a DOS command prompt which you may not be used to. Don’t worry its easy. It will ask you to fill out a bunch of initial settings. You need to make up a first name, a last name, a password, and a server name. The rest of the settings you can just press enter to use defaults.

Step 4:  Close Opensim by typing “quit”, then find “opensim.ini” in the same directory. Open the file in notepad. This file is one of many important ini files where you can make changes to your opensim server. The list of settings here can be overwhelming. It is formatted in an old DOS way where all the possible settings are listed and the ones not in use are commented out with a “;” character in front of the line.

All we need to do is go to the “Physics” section and add two semi-colons, and take two others away. Put a semicolon in front of “meshing = ZeroMesher” and take one away from “meshing = Meshmerizer”, then just a few lines down put a semicolon in front of “physics = basicphysics” and take one away from “physics = OpenDynamicsEngine”.

Don’t forget to save the file when you are done.

Without these changes, collisions with objects that you build will not work. The default basic settings are for testing purposes only. The settings we enabled will make interaction with objects identical to the way Second Life handles objects.

Step 5: Right click on your Second Life shortcut, and create another shortcut. Right click on this new shortcut, rename it to whatever you want, maybe something clever like “Local Life”. then in the “Target” section add the following info the the end of whatever is there already:

-loginuri 127.0.0.1:9000 -login firstname lastname password

The last three things should of course be whatever you made up in step 3.

That’s it, you are done! All there is to do is launch. Double click on the shortcut you made in step 2, when it is done loading stuff and it says it is ready for logins, double click on the shortcut you made in step 5.

The first time on you will probably see a puff of smoke on top of a small round dome shaped island. Going into inventory under Body Parts you can create then wear a new shape and new skin. If you still see a puff of smoke press ctrl+shift+R to rebake your texture.

There you are on your new island. There are no shops to buy stuff and you will have to load all your own textures, build your own stuff, and basically start from scratch. But at least there will be no lag. For help you may want to consult the opensim wiki page.

Have Fun!

I may eventually write about getting an Open Sim specific client, loading and saving builds, importing stuff to and from Second Life, upgrading the database on your home grid, bring others on to your sandbox, and connecting your build to the OS Grid, but these are more complicated, and I have not even figured them all out myself yet.

For now I have a sandbox to play in and build stuff… FREE!

Metaverse News, Virtual Society opensim, secondlife, tutorial, virtual real estate