So last week Second Life celebrated its 5th Anniversary with a huge 20 server event. I avoided it the first week, and due to multiple reports of lag it was a smart move. Above is a pic of the main birthday pavilion.

The Birthday celebration has not been without controversy. LL has made sure all exhibits conform to the PG sim standards resulting in some defacement. The roses above are seperate prims from the original painting. Another artistic statue of a nude woman had its breast prims removed. This is the result when you equate virtual nudity with real nudity.

600 exhibits on 20 servers is generally speaking a laggy mess of signage and spam for the most part. No way to see them all, so I just wandered aimlessly looking for cool stuff.

This sculpture/building on SL5B Linked was built by Scope Cleaver, and I’d consider it a masterpiece of prim artwork and architecture. It was also quite functional:

The northeast corner of the building served as a lecture hall. I stayed and listened to a presentation on how some companies are using Second Life in their business. There were about 35 attendees.

Metaverse News anniversary, censorship, event, secondlife, temporary

Online gaming is not my only interest. In the real world I have been lately interested in the phenomenon of “Peak Oil” and the eventual deleterious affects it will have on society in the near future. I don’t talk about it much on this site/blog, because the focus here is on online entertainment in general and 3D virtual worlds in particular. If you want a good breakdown on peak oil, there is this site.

My interest in this essay though is speculation about what will happen to online virtual world gaming in the event of a global economic depression which a peak oil generated energy crisis is very likely to cause. I am making an assumption that an energy crisis will have little effect on server farm maintenance or internet infrastructure, since the energy crisis’s biggest effect will be on transportation and real world mobility, and virtual world infrastructure is largely stationary.

Lets start at the beginning with the popular speculative fiction novel that started the whole metaverse craze to begin with: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In this book, the United States has essentially collapsed and taken over by corporations. Most of the population is dirt poor and living in squalor, the main character (conveniently named Hiro Protagonist) lives in a storage locker. Parallel to this horrible real world is a virtual world paradise called The Metaverse, where Hiro has a modest mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of hackers near the busiest section of the grid.

Snow Crash is fiction of course, but it leads to an interesting question: How well can virtual getaways help us deal with real world stress? People have been using television, video games, etc. to relieve stress for years. Online gaming and virtual worlds are new to the equation, but those players involved find online gaming more immersive, and as a consequence more stress relieving than more passive entertainment.

We already know the consequences of too much TV or too much video games, so its important to keep all of this in proper balance. Online gaming worlds are still mostly just diversion entertainment and can be overused at the expense of ones real life.

But lets get back to the future real life bad times. A real world energy crisis will have a negative effect on everyone. Conservation will be the key: Smaller, more energy efficient housing, less long distance travel, living closer to work and shopping centers, mass transit, etc. The real world “lifestyle” will be on the decline for all, and if that does not cause a lot of real world stress, it will at the very least cause a lot of real world disappointment.

Can virtual success in online gaming relieve the real world disappointment enough to keep us sane? I’m not the only one who thinks about this sometimes. Here is a few choice quotes from the “Metaverse Roadmap Overview”

The virtual worlds scenario imagines broad future participation in virtual space commons. Many new forms of association will emerge that are presently cost-prohibitive in physical space, and VWs may outcompete physical space for many traditional social, economic, and political functions. In the 20 year scenario, they may become primary tools (with video and text secondary) for learning many aspects of history, for acquiring new skills, for job assessment, and for many of our most cost-effective and productive forms of collaboration.

In the stronger version of this scenario, VWs capture most, if not all, current forms of digital interaction, from entertainment to work to education to shopping to dating, even email and operating systems, though the 3D aspects may remain minimally used in the latter contexts. Youth raised in such conditions might live increasingly Spartan lives in the physical world, and rich, exotic lives in virtual space—lives they perceive as more empowering, creative and “real” than their physical existence, in the ways that count most.

New identities, new social experiences.

Aided by VW interoperability, an individual may easily access a far broader set of experiences in digital settings than she or he could in the physical world, as well as a vastly larger social network. …

In a more limited version of the scenario, VWs become popular for a few social and professional interactions, and as an interface in certain social contexts, but end up filling a circumscribed role similar to that of present-day televisions, home game consoles, or personal computers. Much of what people do today in the physical world continues with little input from virtual worlds. This limited scenario came primarily from non-technologists, who thought cultural conservatism and economic barriers would be major roadblocks to the stronger vision.

Experience ha taught me that the “stronger” version is far more likely, especially when you expand the virtual world definition to include MMORPGs. Social virtual worlds are not for everybody, as witnessed by the 10% retention rate in Second Life, but “rich exotic lives in virtual space” applies just as much to a level 80 druid in WoW as it does to a mansion owner in Second Life.

One of my first blog entries on this board was about the advent of the “Virtual Third Place“. A small but growing crowd is substituting online destinations for social gatherings instead of traditional neighborhood pubs, clubs, and coffee houses. Business executives are going on WoW raids together rather than golfing together.

Not only are people seeing it as more enjoyable, they are recognizing it is also more economical, especially as gas prices rise.

As travel costs go up, virtual meetings, even whole virtual work places are going to be more and more common. All of this predicted in Snow Crash way before it became a reality.

Welcome to the new reality, with many parts virtual.

Virtual Society metaverse, peak oil, philosophy, reality, role play, secondlife, virtual worlds

So lately I have been having fun with Windlight, and focusing on how real Second Life is looking lately, but have not bothered to ask, “Is this a good thing?”

Above is a montage of screenshots from some of the most popular online communities on the web. World of Warcraft = 10 million subscribers, IMVU = 20 million accounts, HabboHotel = 90 Million accounts, 8 million monthly active users, WeeWorld = 21 million accounts, Runescape = 5 million monthly active users, Club Penguin = 17 Million Accounts, 4 million monthly active users (sources GigaOM, KZero).

What do they all have in common? None are designed to look “real”. They all purposely have a cartoon look to them. According to a recent NWN blog, this is a significant fact:

There’s little evidence of mass demand for an intensely immersive 3D virtual world; instead, indications suggest the market shrinks in inverse proportion to increasing immersiveness.

There’s several worthwhile observations you can make. First, none of them feature next gen, top-of-the-line 3D graphics. (WoW is 3D, but developed with graphics that run fairly well on older computers; also, the visuals are not realistic.) Besides Warcraft, however, none of these top MMOs are 3D at all; rather, they’re 2.5D. And while one hopes that 2.5D-based MMOs will whet the market’s interest in a more immersive, graphically rich virtual world, the exact opposite seems to be the case. (The still-popular Habbo Hotel was launched in 2000, and the cartoonish graphics are basically the same.)

Only after you drop down several million users do you start to see MMOs and virtual worlds incorporating next gen graphics that require high-end 3D cards for optimal viewing– Lord of the Rings Online at about one million subscribers, Age of Conan at about 750,000 subscribers… and Second Life at some 550,000 monthly active users.

Why is this happening? Here we enter the realm of speculation, but it seems that most people experience sensory overload with too much immersion; instead of being drawn into the intensity of the simulation, they’re repelled by it.

Before going into some of my objections to this idea, let me point out some other evidence to support it. Take for example the world of 3D animated films which I have written about. The most realistic looking 3D animated films have been Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Polar Express, Advent Children, and Beowulf. Not one of these have managed any real success at the box office, at least compared to the more cartoonish fare such as The Incredibles, the Shrek films, or Ratatouille. The more realistic films have an unfortunate creepiness to them that makes them seem weird and turns people off.

There is a theory in robotics about this effect called “The Uncanny Valley“. From Wikipedia:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely-human” and “fully human” entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is “almost human” will seem overly “strange” to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction.

One then has to wonder if it is possible for there to be a natural detraction to video games whose graphics are too real looking, and is this why Second Life may never reach Habbo Hotel like numbers?

I believe it is possible for games to become too real, but I am definitely not convinced Second Life comes close to that mark. I am also not convinced it is the reason it is less popular than the above named games.

Maybe some Playstation 3 games are getting too real looking. Maybe that is why the Wii is more popular? No, lets face it the real reason Wii is more popular is the innovative controllers.

World of Warcraft is cartoonish compared to more realistic Guild Wars, but it is more popular due to better marketing, the Blizzard name, and WoW has more immersive gameplay. There is more cartoonish compared to Second Life, and yet Second Life is the bigger of the two, for similar reasons.

The most popular online games are not popular because they are less realistic, they are popular because they have been around longer, or are marketed to kids (a huge market for the 2D worlds), or they are free or very inexpensive to play.

Take a look at the best selling stuff in There, IMVU, and SL: the more realistic stuff consistently sells better, because it looks better. QED

The ultimate point is this: Realism is not an important goal in a sucessful virtual world, or any computer game for that matter. Players appreciate realism up to a point, but if the realism comes at the expense of some players with older or less powerful computers, its not worth it.

Metaverse News 3D animated films, clubpenguin, guildwars, habbohotel, IMVU, philosophy, realism, secondlife, There, uncanny valley, virtual worlds, worldofwarcraft

There is a new trend in building popping up in Second Life. Many of the latest builds are paying more attention to lighting.

The primary features of these lighting trends is 1. making use of the new “glow” settings for objects, and 2. creating custom textures that fit the lighting in the space they sit.

When done right this can lead to some spectacular spaces. The one pictured above is a build called “New Relic” the latest in a series of fantasy builds by Baron Grayson and Sue Stonebender. This one is rather scary, with creepy sound effects and the occasional wolf crossing your path.

Another new build that uses lighter and darker textures to simulate sunlight and shadows is called “The World”, and this one is a fun place to explore as well. It has a decidedly “old world” charm to it. Lots of interesting scenery in a small single server build.

Even more spectacular builds with cool lighting effects can be found on the Iron Fist server. Built by Dedric Mauriac, JeanRicard Broek, and Dusan Writer, they use a technique of building a 3D model in another program that renders in a far more realistic way than SL, then capture the rendered textures and import them into second life where they build an identical 3D model.

The results are quite spectacular, like walking into a 3D photograph. Even the glasses on the bar cast shadows and bend light like real glasses.

These three builds are definitely worth checking out. Word is obviously spreading as all three had other explorers too.

Finally it is worth mentioning, that some of these lighting effects may become the norm some day. I found this post over at NWN about hidden unimplemented code in the Second Life client to cast sun and moon shadows. It has not been implemented yet due to the need of a hefty graphics card to make it work, but could be in the future.

Virtual Society exploring, lighting, realism, rendering, secondlife

The number of Second Life builds based on TV, Movie, and Video games is rather extensive. I could spend about a month researching it, like I did for the world tour, but I thought I would just post about the cool sites I know about now and later maybe I can add a few more.

Lets start with a classic. The Blade Runner Build at Devil’s Moon. This build has been around for a few years, and used to house a popular club. Now it only houses the main store of Abramations primarily, although the wet looking streets (the streets are patially transparent, and a mirror build of the streets can be seen underneath) are still there.

Less famous is a life size replica of Serenity, as seen in the TV show Firefly and movie Serenity. This is on a mainland server, and is fairly detailed. There are numerous Star Trek and Star Wars themed worlds including multiserver RPGs. A good place to start on the former is the Star Trek Museum. I have previously blogged about the incredible Battlestar Pacifica RPG sim.

Another incredible sci-fi build is the Privateer Space build. This server has multiple levels, each a different planet environment to explore.

While Sci-Fi is a very popular theme in SL, its not the only one. One of the sillier builds I have come across is one based on Bedrock from The Flintstones.

Speaking of silly, the ship from Mystery Science Theater 3000 has its own replica build as well. Turn on your media player if you dare to be subjected to a really bad movie.

Finally, if you are a fan of the game Vampire: Bloodlines, somebody has managed to build a decent copy of the first level of the game. Check out the Vampires Santa Monica build.

If the above picture looks at all familiar, you might have been playing my Dating Simulator, and reached this picture:

Yes I used the same game as a background for the Dating Simulator club.

Virtual Society Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Dating Simulator, exploring, Firefly, Flintstones, interactive, movies, MST3K, museum, Privateer, secondlife, Serenity, Star Trek, surreal, tv, Vampire: Bloodlines, videogame

As a follow up to my last post on There vs. Second Life, I want to briefly explain my own history and interests in these two games. Everybody’s tale is different, here is mine.

As you may be able to tell on my There Magic page, one of my primary activities in There was exploring. This interest started all the way back on my first day in There, June 24th 2003 (yes almost 5 years ago). One of the things I bought on my first day was a black hoverboard “The Fed”, and I started riding it everywhere. At the time the world consisted of five islands: Caldera, Ootay, Tyr, Saja and Egypt. All with lots of cool professionally designed spots by creative artists like Don Carson.

I spent nearly a year exploring There, and finding new creative stuff, even a year later I was finding stuff I had not seen before.

In April of 2004, I made my second attempt at Second Life. (I signed up once for a 7 day free trial, free accounts did not exist, in November 2003, and did not like how buggy and slow it was, and my video card would not render the graphics right.)

Second Life had no professionally designed content, and the vehicles sucked. True you could fly from place to place, but it just wasn’t as cool as hoverboarding in There. The content that was there was boxy looking and repetitive. I got bored fast.

It was the next month, May of 2004, I joined my first MMORPG, City of Heroes. I spent the better part of the next year playing that instead. Meanwhile, There started having financial trouble, threatening to shut down.

August of 2005, I finally became a “Premium” member of Second Life. By that time, the community had grown enough that I could return to my favorite virtual world activity of exploring.

I still jump into There occasionally to see new stuff, but as you can see from my postings over the last few months, exploring new and cool stuff in Second Life is a never ending activity. Multiple independent companies of artists are building cool 3D environments to explore, with new ones coming out daily.

It makes mathematical sense: There started out with tons of material at release, way above what SL had. The amount of new material getting into There’s grid though is limited by the approval process. Only so much new stuff can get in, hence growth is linear.

Second Life started with zero at release, but gave players the tools to make whatever they wanted, and add whatever textures they wanted, no approval necessary… just a 10L fee per file. Growth in SL has been exponential. It did not take long for SL to bypass There as far as content goes.

But the approval process in There has another advantage: New material introduced into the game is generally of higher quality. So even though Second Life had more content, the majority was crap.

Thats why it took so long for Second Life to become this explorer’s game of choice.

And just like I gave There explorers the There Magic page as an exploration resource, I also give you Second Life explorer’s the best resource with my Second Life Blogs page. Just skim through the entries, chances are you will find an article about a cool new build you have never been to. It’s what I do.

Happy Exploring!!

Virtual Society exploring, secondlife, There, virtual worlds

Those of us into social virtual worlds have been debating this for 5 years: Which is better, There or Second Life?

For the longest time, the answer was, “It depends what you want to do.” Building was always better in Second Life, communication and “toys” (pets, cars, guns, hoverboards, etc) were better in There.

In the past year, the rules have changed. Second Life has voice now, just like There. Ingenious developers and more versatile port-a-zones, has improved building in There to the point that it is comparable to Second Life.

There still has a better sales system, but Second Life’s new search capabilities allow you to search for specific objects for sale and find where they are being sold.

The new Windlight graphics system and Havoc 4 physics system in Second Life has pretty muched wiped out any advantages There had in those departments.

Toys still work better in There, but There still has no scripting capabilities, or custom animations. There still needs to approve all submissions, resulting in higher costs and a few days of waiting for it to come in world. It is these differences that still separate the two, and which have led to the #1 difference: Demographics!

Today, There and Second Life are following two different paths. The average age of There players is getting younger and younger, while Second Life attracts a decidedly more mature demographic. Average age of There residents is 22, average in Second Life is 32. There’s minimum age is 12, Second Life is an 18 and over world. There’s corporate sponsors include teen oriented clients CosmoGirl and MTV. Second Life has much more diverse clients.

And so five years later, we have a new answer to the question. Which is better, There or Second Life?

The answer is, “It depends on how old you are.”

The demographic breakdown of all virtual worlds has been researched by the fine folks at K-Zero. It basically breaks down this way: Kids and tweens love the 2D virtual worlds like Neopetz, Club Penguin, Gaia Online, Habbo Hotel, and Whyville. Adults who are not playing MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft, have pretty muched all flocked to Second Life as their virtual world of choice.

There and its sister world Virtual MTV, are quickly becoming the virtual world of choice for the teenage set. It is quickly becoming the world of choice for those online players who have outgrown the 2D worlds, but want to hang out with people their own age.

Five years from now?…

But here’s an interesting thought, what will the answer be five years from now? I have reason to believe that both programs are going to seem dated by then. Some game enthusiasts say they look dated now. Graphics and physics technology is improving every year. Newer virtual worlds have an easier time adapting to new technologies.

My own guess is that neither There or Second Life are versatile enough to adapt quickly to new technologies, but between the two, Second Life has adapted better. In fact, I believe Second Life and Linden Labs has already gotten a foothold in the future 3D internet.

I believe the future 3D web will be built with a version of the Second Life client and a version of the OpenSim server. The people at RealXTend have the right idea:

• Combine SL’s Prim system with a standard 3D mesh system (used in There as well as major 3D programs) from OBJ files.
• More versatile Mesh/Skeleton/animation avatar system like the one used in Poser.
• Standardized Python scripting or other standardized language.
• Leave all 3D rendering to the client/computer side.

The result is a 3D system far more versatile/flexible/upgradable than Second Life currently is. It also opens the door to 3rd party server hosting providers.

Could Makena (operators of There) start their own competing service based on this technology? Sure, why not? Long term, There cannot compete with its current, already dated technology. Starting a new service with improved technology, and phasing There players and clients to the new service may be the way to go.

That is the future: A 3D Internet with standard client and server software.

But in the mean time, there is lots of room for diverse virtual worlds to find their audiences.

Metaverse News reviews, secondlife, There, virtual worlds

After doing a few blogs on real places in SL, why not do a few unreal places. To get you in a surreal state of mind, I included a bizarre Machinima video called Chameleon.

Now for a few surreal links. I find places that qualify as Surreal all the time, and don’t always bookmark them. So I’m going to start off with a few that I have bookmarked.

The place that inspired me to start this post is a place called Culturegion, a server filled with strange sights and sounds. I liked the Sound Art display the best, make sure you turn on the radio and video when prompted. This goes for the whole island as there are “hot spots” of sound and music.

One of my all time favorite surreal builds is on the Svarga Server build. This one is a must see if you never have been. I like to take new people here to show them the potential of Second Life, and this is as good as any to show off.

Before Svarga was opened, the cool build of choice was The Lost Gardens of Apollo. Still a fantastic and beautiful build. A few other beautiful builds along these lines:

Botanical Gardens at Straylight
Creative Fantasy at Serenity Falls
Dragon Moon Resort
T&C Designs and Gardens

Surreal does not necessarily mean artistic and strange. Surreal can also mean reality taken to an extreme or hyperreal. So here are a couple of examples of that.

Above is an example of an industrial wasteland called Hobo Island. Train cars, grafitti covered walls, broken overpasses, and a complex sewer system are here to explore.

On the opposite extreme would be a build I acidentally discovered called the Palace of Yaximixche (website) which probably ranks as one of the most pretentious builds I have ever come across. And why not, if you are going to build yourself a house, may as well make it a big one.

There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of surreal builds out there. Watch for more of these from time to time. Next up are a few TV, Movie, and Video Game themed builds.

Virtual Society 3D art, exploring, fantasy, Rezzable, secondlife, surreal, video

So a month ago I did three entries about builds in Second Life based after real places, visiting every continent except Antarctica. Surprisingly, no one has built a server based on Antarctica yet. Seems a shame I think it is a great subject for an educational sim.

I did find a mini-island build of Antarctica on a server that from the sky looks like a map of the world. Its called Over the Rainbow and it is a cute little build.

I found this place by accidently discovering a cool little blog http://www.slthingstodo.com/ by Jenn Heinrichs. She has almost daily entries, so I added it to my exclusive Second Life Blogs aggregator page.

She is also blogging about real places in SL, and the list is almost exclusive of mine (she has listed 2 of the ones I listed). Here’s a bunch more I plan to check out:

Costa Rica
Gijon, Spain
Kenroku, Japan
Krakow, Poland
Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
Antiquity Texas
Frankfurt, Germany
Barcelona, Spain
SL Israel

Why not finish this mini-world tour with a Worlds Fair!

Modeled after the Great Exhibition of 1851, is a brand new build called The Great Exhibition of Second Life. Be greeted by a lifesize T-Rex skeleton, and check out some unique historical themed displays. I’m keeping this place book marked for any future historical period costumes that may creep up, they have a huge collection.

Virtual Society exploring, secondlife, world