So here is the final five.

In case you have not noticed, I had a little fun in taking new screenshots for each place, coming up with a different wardrobe, hairstyle and animation pose for each location. Some of these required new animations (soon to be on sale at my store)

Jabberwocky
Owned By Surrealia Anatine
Originally posted: Black and Red

This is either the most beautiful 3D maze ever built, or the most difficult to navigate shopping mall ever. Based on Alice in Wonderland, the place features about a half dozen elaborately decorated rooms, connected via passages that are impossible to navigate without occasionally flying. Paths are often suit shaped tunnels, or 19th century playing cards, or old books. Don’t forget to try jumping down that rabbit hole!

More Info: Pictures The owner’s YouTube Channel

Dublin
Owned By Ham Ramblin
Originally posted: St Patty’s Day

Not only is this a fabulous “mirror world” build of a section of Dublin, it is also a great community. Plenty of activities yearly, but they also pulled off a three day St Patricks Festival (sponsored by the Ireland Tourism Board), which I had the pleasure of attending.

More Info: Video Web Site Pictures

Templum ex Obscurum (aka New Relic)
Owned By Baron Grayson
Originally Posted: Well Lit Places

Veteran SL Builder Baron Grayson wasted no time to do something with the new SL Glow Effects. He built one of the coolest spooky looking places in Second Life.

More Info: Video Website Article Pictures

Vernian Sea
Owned By Babbage Group, Shaunathan Sprocket
Originally Posted: Steampunk

Watched over by an iconic observatory, Vernian Sea is an easy place to overlook while touring around the steampunk inspired Babbage build. To many tourists it looks like a mostly empty water server, but under the water there is much to see. Take the elevator in Port Babbage to get into the elaborately decorated underwater maze, or dive into the deep and explore from the outside.

More Info: Video Web Site Pictures

Iron Fist
Owned By Tories Canetti, Sean Augustus
Originally posted: Well Lit Places

This experimental sim Features at least two places textured using pre rendered shadow lights reflections and refractions. The most impressive being the Neptune Bar. It takes some time for the small room to load, but once it does it is like entering a photograph. The technique involves creating the same room in 3DS as in Second Life, then rendering individual textures with 3DS and applying them in Second Life. Sounds time consuming, but the effect is amazing.

More Info: Article Process pdf file Pictures

Virtual Society 3D art, exploring, secondlife

This past year, I have been busy checking out as much of the whole SL scene as I could, exploring mirror worlds from around the world, and fantasy worlds from many genre’s. I have blogged about over 100 different places in the past year. I thought it would be fun to revisit many of these and force myself to choose 10 I liked the most. I’m trying to avoid places that have been around for a while (sorry Svarga) and places now closed to the public (sorry Privateer Space).

Here are the first five in random order, because trying to narrow the list to 10 was hard enough, let alone trying to rank them.

Straylight
Owned By Kriss Lehmann
Originally posted: Surreal Places

If you don’t know about Straylight, where the hell have you been? One of the most beautiful and influential “nature” builds in SL. This is the kind of place that SL vets take their newbie friend to, to show off what SL is all about. Much of what you see is for sale a the Botanical Gardens.

More Info: Video Web Site Article Pictures

Visit Mexico 3
Owned By Visit Mexico – Valiant Strangelove
Originally posted: Real Places North America

This is part of a 3 server build commissioned by the Mexican Tourism Board. I like server 3 the best because it reminds me most of the real Mexico. You have towns of cobblestone streets and Spanish Colonial architecture built along side Pre-Colombian Mayan ruins. You can explore on horseback by picking up a horse from Visit Mexico 2.

More Info: Video Article Pictures

InSilico
Owned by Skillz Hak
Originally posted: Sci-Fi Worlds

Every time I visit this dystopian urban city, it gets more and more elaborate. Shops, clubs, video walls, laser beams that follow you around. It is a just plain awesome build. Its constant presence on SL’s new “Showcase” tab says that I am not the only one that thinks so.

More Info: Video Website Article Pictures

Milano Vera
Owned By MyItaly Annemarie Perenti
Originally posted: Real Places Europe

The signature cathedral in Milan, Italy has a few representations in Second Life (you can see another on the Milano server not related to this one), but the Italia Milano mirrors a big chunk of the city, with its great romantic architecture. This definitely ranks as one of my favorite “mirror worlds”. It also has a huge community of English and Italian speakers supporting it.

More Info: Video Pictures Website (mostly in Italian)

Aggro
Owned By Verkin Raven
Originally posted: There be Dragons

The beauty of this place is in its simplicity. This single server build is designed to look like a simple mountain valley, complete with forest, mountain stream, waterfalls and snow covered peaks poking up along the tree line. In the forest a simple log cabin watches over the pristine valley. It would look like any normal mountain valley except for the rock floating in the sky the way rocks normally don’t, and also the presence of dragons. A family of dragons, apparently the cause of the nearby forest fire, are available for sale here.

More Info: Video Website Article Pictures

Next, Part II the final five!

Virtual Society 3D art, exploring, secondlife

Just when I thought Google was getting out of the 3D business, they go and do this. They have basically digitized all of Manhattan for Google Earth.

Manhattan has been done before too in Microsoft Flight Simulator, or the opening sequence of You Got Mail, and Times Square has shown up a few times. But, this has got to be the largest and most ambitious one done to date, and could possibly set the standard for building the entire Earth this way. Take it from me, I know my “mirror worlds”.

That being said, I have seen better: Geosim Philly is far more detailed. Ditto Twinity’s Berlin build. Also there is a fabulous Forbidden City.  These three even exceed some of the best mirror worlds in Second Life. It is the sheer size and near completeness of Google’s lower Manhattan that makes it impressive. (Despite the press releases, the buildings seem to end at Central Park)

If you want to see it yourself, open Google Earth, go to Manhattan, make sure 3D Buildings layer is checked, and tilt down the view so you are not overhead. Most every building is represented, though the majority still do not have textures yet.

Who knows what they will do next. Streaming live cameras? Detailed interiors? Animated Billboards? How much is advertising space in Google Earth anyways?

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them ideas.

Metaverse News geosimphilly, googleearth, mirror worlds, Twinity

Time for another visit from activities expert Rebecca, who after reading my Winter Places post below decided to educate me some other winter activities. She asked me to meet her at Epic Conditions where she taught me how to surf. This time we went to the other side and found a ski chalet.

“Since I’m just starting out skiing in SL, Did you bring me here because the skiing is easier here?”, I asked.

“Actually the exact opposite is true, the skiing here is the hardest and most challenging in SL,” she replied. “The primary reason we are here is that they have the best skis in SL. Even better — they are free. So grab a set of skis and be sure to read the instructions, and meet me at the ski lift.”

As we rode up the amazingly steep ski lift with the very narrow ski path down below, I asked her about Second Life skiing in general, and why this mountain first?”

“The vast majority of the skiing in Second Life consists of nothing more than clicking on a ball and letting the ball take you down a guided path. Its too easy, and after a couple of runs it is boring,” she explained.

“The Epic Conditions Skis can actually be ridden and are a challenge (in part because they are on the buggy side). They use real physics and you can steer as you please.”

“As for why this mountain, some times the best way to learn is to try the hardest first. And there are actually two routes down the mountain, one is easy, and one is so hard I have yet to make it down successfully.”

“OK, sounds good,” I said, “I wouldn’t want to try the hardest first on a real mountain though.”

So we tried the hill a few times. Lots of hair pin turns even on the easy course, and the hard course has obstacles and near impossible jumps. The skis sometimes act a little wonky too. After Rebecca fell one too many times, we both decided to try another hill.

We went to a place I have been a few times, the oldest and probably still the largest ski run in Second Life. Built by the Lindens in 2004 to showcase their winter servers on the mainland, you can drop by the info booth on the Voss server and take the ski lift behind the Chateau, or just teleport to the top of the mountain two servers away on the Kanin server.

“This is one of those sit and ski places,” Rebecca explained, “There are others nice ones on Tahoa Mountain and Peach Tree Resort. But, at nearly 600 meters, this is the longest.”

“And here’s the kicker,” she continued, “the Epic Conditions Skis work here. You cant do tricks, but you can take out a set of skis and ride them to the bottom, steering and avoiding obstacles all the way down.”

She was right! We tried the sit on ball method, but the Epic Conditions method of skiing was much more fun.

Well that was a pleasant discovery. Lets celebrate with another SL winter sport: ice skating.

Like skiing, ice skating comes in two flavors too: Skate wherever you want, and let a pose ball lead you around the rink. The former requires a decent pair of skates, and the best inexpensive skates I have seen are the Skoopficiles Ice skates available at the Moopf store (and at dozens of other places) for a mere L$200.

If you are not interested in showing off and doing tricks, you can get free animation override skates at the Winter Wonderland Skating Rink, which also features the “let a pose ball lead you around the rink” type skating, which Rebecca and I also tried doing as seen above.

Over all, a fun cool time. Now for some much deserved cocoa by a fire place.

Virtual Society activities, events, secondlife, skating, skiing

So the voters have spoken and have elected my friend Bone Mosten as the sexiest male avatar in SL. I didn’t think this blue and orange evil smurf like character would have been considered in a “sexy” avatar contest, but people seem to like it.

Correction, it was his human avatar that won the contest. Guess that makes more sense. Well I like the “smorph” one too.

Congratulations Boner!!

Boners a great guy, recently out of art school. He writes a nice blog too.

Virtual Society avatars, event, secondlife

Occasionally I veer away from posting about life in the metaverse to talk about not too distantly related other stuff. This is one of those posts. I recently set up a modest home theater system consisting of the following components: An Apple TV and an HDTV. Going through the offerings on Apple TV, it occurred to me that this is the future of entertainment!

Well not necessarily Apple TV per se, but something close. XBox360 offers a few download services including Netflix viewing and soon hulu.com content, Playstation 3 launched its own movie download service this summer, and Blockbuster will be offering a stand alone movie rental box soon too. Eventually, there will be many options to choose from on all of these services. (Not to mention upcoming meta services like Boxee, and PlayOn which can add any streaming services like hulu.com to any of the above mentioned boxes)

The primary goal being this: Access to every movie and TV show ever made anytime you want.

This is pretty much what every customer wants. There already exists services similar to this in other countries. In the US, the closest is Verizon Fios or AT&T Uverse, both of which are expensive services only available in limited areas. They both offer “On Demand” TV supported by high speed fiber lines (25-50MB), but even there, there are limitations based on what I consider to be archaic “tiers” (i.e. if you want HBO on demand you have to pay for HBO channels too).

With access to any TV and Movie anytime you want, the whole notion of “Network TV” has to change. It will most definitely hurt network TV, but cant kill it. There have a lot of things threatening to kill AM radio, and yet it is still alive and kicking. In fact the AM radio model is where Network TV is destined to go: Non stop talk shows. (Think about it, those court shows and game shows on daytime tv are just glorified talk shows too.) All the news channels (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.) are there already. NBC just announced a five hour reduction in its prime time schedule for (you guessed it) a talk show.

Initially, wide spread on demand is going to kill many networks, or cause some consolidation, but the long term trend (as successful models emerge) is that we may end up with more networks.

While network TV may survive, it is going to go from a majority slice of the entertainment pie to a minority slice. Inevitably, in order to get eyeballs, networks are going to start streaming live on the internet, giving access to anyone with a high speed internet account. As bandwidth and streaming technology improve, the quality of streaming will match the quality of cable or satellite TV, seriously hurting these services.

With on demand, there is little need to own DVDs, but the same can be said of mp3s and CD sales, and yet the CD sales continue. People like software they can hold in their hand. That will not stop anytime soon.

Movie theaters are already hurting, especially since the viewing experience in theaters is not much better than most home theaters these days. But, people still like to go out and watch movies with a crowd. Theaters are trying to offer things they can’t get at home like bigger screens, and 3D movies. The big 3D movie offerings over the past year (Beowulf, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt) have not done any better than 2D movies however, so I am not so sure if that can save theaters. Meanwhile, they are now experimenting with live sporting events in 3D, the first ever being the Raiders vs Chargers game on December 4th, 2008. Will we go to theaters to watch sports in 3D?

Regardless, mass media, and how we get our entertainment, is going to change in the very near future.

Media appletv, future, Media, movies, tv, xboxlive

It’s December (in case you don’t know) and that means winter fun. I thought it would be a good time to explore the best wintery places in SL. This turned out to be rather hard as a searching for “Winter” in SL and b.places.com turned up dozens of frozen sims to choose from.

The first I checked out was Winter Wonderland at D’alliez Estates (about half of the snowy places are called Winter Wonderland so you have to be specific). This is a charming Christmas village, which is likely to disappear after Christmas, so you might want to visit soon.

I met Santa there and sat on his lap. “Hey Santa, this place is great,” I said, “Do you know of any other charming wintery places I could visit?”

He said, “Sure I could take you to another charming village, but I have one request of you.”

“Whats that?”

“Wriggle.”

So after giving Santa a lap dance, he took me in a balloon and dropped me off at another great spot. Dinky Bears Christmas Village. This place is a lot of fun, with rides, animated characters, and just a fun place to look around.

One of the reindeer showed me around the village via toboggan sled. Gotta love it.

After having a bit of fun at those animated settings, I decided to look for more realistic places with a winter holiday theme, and ended up stumbling upon a server build called Winterland Classic Christmas. This is basically a mid 20th century main street build covered in snow. Explore around the whole server, there are things to do all over this place too.

Finally, one of the most beautiful winter themed builds I saw while exploring was Spellbound Woods. Here is me checking out a heard of deer. There are also polar bears and other cool stuff, all for sale of course. If you are looking to decorate for the Holidays in SL, this is one of the places you have to check out.

Virtual Society christmas, event, exploring, secondlife, winter solstice