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

I made an unusual change to the Date Simulator, it has been on the online version for a while, thought I’d release the changes  to the offline version.

I added “On mouse over” and “On mouse out” text to every link on the pictures which displays either an action (in italics) or a quote (not in italics)  underneath what Ariane says.  The idea is to give it a more comic book feel, while also making things easier to read and navigate on small browser windows (i.e. mobile phones).   Some mobile browsers still don’t work, unfortunately, but it works well anyways.

You may notice that sometimes the text below and the text on the link does not match, this is intentional. In some places the text below is random which you can change by moving your mouse over the link, the text on the link remains generic.  If the text below does not make sense, look at the link text.

Except for a couple of minor bug fixes, there is no change to game play from version 6.0.

Media, Metaverse News Dating Simulator, updates