Archive for the 'Exploring' category
Tiny Universe Convention
May 25, 2008 2:21 pm
Rezzable and Greenies released two ‘tiny greenies’ avatars and landed at Tiny Kingdom. Side effects for Vint? Google Translate English - Japanese and Japanese - English are now added to the ‘browser thingies that need to be open for Vint to function’. ;) That and I’m slowly getting addicted to the ‘Turning Japanese’ song from the Vapors.
But what a nice world has opened itself for me: the Tiny sims are full of lovely, humorous and amazingly cute details! A few examples? Do you remember those snow balls from when we were young? Glass balls, filled with snow and a tiny scene, which you put next to you bed. I dare to bet almost all of us owned at least one. And I also dare to bet almost all of us wished they could ‘disappear’ into the snowball’s scenery at least once. Suddenly, become a part of that little tiny world. At the Tiny Universe Convention, find Cue Fride’s ’snow balls’ which are tiny little scenes you can sit your tiny avatar in: read a book, go to the toilet, get eaten by a shark, … . Just utterly lovely! More photographs of these tiny snow ball scenes you can find in my ‘Tiny Universe Convention’ Flickr set.
Another great example is Miyaoka Hitchcock’s latest release: the cutest fan you can imagine. And it’s an actual avatar! Very strange seeing that around. If it were not for the avatar tag, you would think it’s part of the scenery, and then suddenly it starts walking. Astonishing, that one is. Behold the ‘tiny electric fan avatar’:
And then there is the way of presenting all the avatars taking part in the convention: a long tunnel you walk through, and they are all lined up as little toy soldiers with their creator tags… there is the beautiful logo that’s build in prims… ah well, just go and take a look for yourself: Tiny Universe Exhibition - Dust - 97, 146, 90 (May 25th to June 1st)
Discovering the Garden… again… and again…
May 17, 2008 7:54 pm
For those of you that own a garden, did you ever ‘discover’ something in it? Something that makes you go ‘woooow, this is awesome’? It may be little things - a beautiful butterfly, a cute little frogg - or huge things - ‘hey, did I have a three, that grows eatable stuff?! Woot!’ A friend of mine recently discovered a secret pathway to the city centre in mine. How can one miss that? Well, there’s a whole pile of crap in front of it. :p Anyway, those little things can utterly amaze you. This is how I feel each time I visit the - Rezzable, yes, Jon, I won’t forget to put that in front this time - Garden of NPIRL Deligihts.
It’s huge, and although I saw it grow and flourish, there are that many builds I have not seen yet. Or that you take for granted, as being part of the Garden, but that are actually little artworks on itself. A beautiful example are Artoo Magneto’s beautiful trees: a small detail, easily overlooked, but it makes the whole… well.. astonishing.
Another thing that I overlooked - or did not know off - is my own, Dutch music heritage. Apparently the song ‘Het Land van Waas en Maal’s lyrics are about the Garden of Earthly Delights. Would be so kewl if it could be covered by an artist who performs at Gardenstock.
So, there are a few ways how you can discover the Garden of NPIRL Delights:
- Get the HUD. Available at The Dump entrance.
- Go to The Dump and go on foot - don’t forget to take a miner’s helmet - or fly or jetpack or whatever. NPIRL ways of strolling the Garden are encouraged.
- Go to The Dump and walk through the tunnel and take a tour vehicule. Best for easy adjustment to a huge load of NPIRL virtual art. The tours give you a great overview in less than 10 minutes, so it’s a great start before you explore on foot.
Let’s end with a quote of Lauren Weyland that I absolutely love:
Alice in Wonderland never fell far enough. Gulliver didn’t sail far enough. Michael Smith didn’t imagine enough. For if they had, their authors, Carroll, Swift and Heinlein would have written about the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL Delights.”
PS. Yeah, the belgian weather is back and it is sure as hell rainy. More SL playtime for Vint again! ;)
Talking heads… euhm… sculpted faces
May 4, 2008 12:21 pmToyota Metapolis - Toyota’s very own virtual continent
April 17, 2008 5:00 pm
Toyota is one of the car brands not scared of experimenting with virtual worlds. Where they first hired Million of Us to bring their ‘Scion’ in Second Life, and later on launched that same Scion in the virtual world There with some help from Metaversatility. August 2007, Toyota’s marketing manager Adrian Si stated their total investment in virtual worlds to be a “strong six-figure one”. By now, this must be a whole lot more, as Toyota presents - in cooperation with Co-core’s MeetMe - their own virtual world.
With the cute avatar in the wheel chair, it almost seems like Motorability has found it’s spot in Toyota Metapolis too! ;)
Their own virtual world? Well, not completely. More of a continent. Toyota Metapolis is based on the MeetMe server technology and software. But Toyota got it’s own - what you could compare with a - continent: to get there, you need to either log into it directly, signing up at the Toyate Metapolis website, or start in MeetMe and take the shuttle to the Toyota area. So although you can move back and forth between MeetMe and Toyota Metapolis, the Toyota grounds are a complete living area, with car shops, a museum, residential areas and even a garage to park your car collection.
For now, Toyota Metapolis exists of:
Of course, a Mall where you can buy Toyota cars. Not only can you buy them, but you can also take them for a test drive. The cars even have Toyota’s Japanese car based information network ‘G-book’ implemented. Over time, they will sell 255 different colours of the car - wtf?! -, hoping to make it a collector’s item. Clicking the cars will get you more information on them. If you wish, you can get the Toyota catalogue mailed to your - real world - home.
Next up, is an Event Hall. Toyota will use this one for presentation of their latest cars and live music events. Streaming video of those and live sound is available there. They boast about being able to accommodate 1000 avatars at once, Miss Forager said the press release translated as ‘1,000 avies at 1000m2′. The first event will take place on the 12th of May. You will need a ticket to get in, which can be acquired by entering a prize draw.
The Museum is totally dedicated to Toyota. There you will find the latest developments, prototypes and next generation concepts for Toyota vehicles, as well as a display of their older models. The museum symbolises a ‘crystal tower’ towards heaven, which stands for Toyota’s willingness to learn, envision and progress. Here is mentioned that taking the cars for a test drive in the museum, or changing their colour is not yet possible. This is scheduled for Spring 2009.
Toyota’s Community Areas are split up in four main areas: Cars, Eco-park, music and beginners. Each theme zone will have it’s own games and events. Of course, in the beginners square, you can get - virtual - help. Nock started off with posing a typically Second Life question: ‘How can I make money?‘
The Residential Areas aren’t as sophisticated as we are used to, but at least they thought of it. To you to your room, get to the right building, and enter your room number on the key pad that pops up. You can’t move there from MeetMe though, you will need to create a new user ID/avatar at the Toyota Metapolis portal.
The Garage. I think this is a virtual first: building a giant structure, just to let your residents park - and show off - their cars. A user can own one up to three parking slots. Use the garage to get some spare parts for your car - even Toyota’s break down once in a while - or give it a paint job. And surely, you can drive from the the residential area to the garage. Just, not yet. The Garage area is scheduled to open in November 2008.
Being a Second Life resident, the possibilities of this seem fairly limited. We are used to living where we want (or where we can afford rent), rezzing whatever car we want (if we own it), using whatever transportation we want (you can’t think of anything that we can’t drive!) but… if they succeed in building a community of people that are interested in Toyota and not that demanding as it comes to virtual worlds freedom - they can go and visit virtual Tokyo at MeetMe - then surely, I think, they can have a more interactive place for them to meet than they could ever at a web forum and worlds like this may have a future. But please, over time, avatar portability! ;) I’m going to stick with Fiat for now, though.
Hat Tip to the cutest avatar on the Grid: Nock Forager
Avatars United! Facebook for virtual personas.
April 16, 2008 12:33 pmOn a side note: 43 left to go
Nadine Nozaki was as kind to invite me to the next facebook… for avatars. Having a strictly ‘no human’ policy, it seems like fun: Avatars United is a community for game avatars only. You cannot upload real life photos nor include information on your avatars description that could reveal your real life identity. You are welcome however to upload photos of your real life friends’ game avatars. It is also possible to link more than one avatar to your account, to make sure you list your alts - be they in Second Life or another virtual world. Basic facebook functionality (groups, events, …) is there, although, I did not find any API’s (yet?).
Avatars United Mission Statement
Avatars United (AU) is a community website bringing virtual characters from all online worlds together. The project is built in recognition of the fact that strong bonds and close friendships actually can be tied within virtual spaces. AU has furthermore gone one step further in recognizing virtual personas as personas in their own right by building a community for avatars only. Anyone involved in any type of virtual world is familiar with addressing people using their avatar names even after having gotten to know them. With tools to communicate with, find and track old virtual friends and share experiences from virtual realms AU wishes to stand out as a community highlighting the social aspect of life within virtual worlds.
Discrepency between WoW and SL presence
Currently 21 out of 558 avatars are Second Life residents. Is this because not enough SL avatars stumbled over this yet? Or, as we have a lot of ‘personal avatar’ blogs, networks, groups, on the web already, we actually do not need another networking site representing our avatars?
- World of Warcraft - 396 avatars
- Eve Online - 34 avatars
- Second Life - 21 avatars
- Everquest II - 13 avatars
- Star Wars Galaxies - 12 avatars
- The Lord of the Rings - 12 avatars
- Ultima Online - 11 avatars
- Guild Wars - 10 avatars
- Everquest - 9 avatars
- Entropia Universe - 6 avatars
- City of Heroes - 6 avatars
- Dark Age of Camelot - 5 avatars
- Tabula Rasa - 4 avatars
- Lineage 2 - 4 avatars
- Age of Conan - 4 avatars
- Finfal Fantasy XI - 3 avatars
- Dofus - 3 avatars
- Vanguard: Sage of a Hero - 3 avatars
- City of Villains - 2 avatars
- Lineage - 0 avatars
IMVU, There and Kaneva not represented
Strangely enough, it seems IMVU, There, Kaneva and the Sims 2 avatars are not welcome. It’s not one of the possible picks when signing up. And is this any - direct - competition for Myrl.com, a website aimed at connecting avatars from different virtual worlds - Second Life and There at the moment - solely and offers more networking functionality?
Avatar Rendering Cost - ‘heaviness’ of prim hair not a myth?
April 13, 2008 2:21 pmWhen Tateru over at Massively wrote about ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’, a new feature in RC 1.20’s Advanced (former: ‘client’) menu, she asks a good question: ‘Will we see products one day labeled like this? “Purse, scripted, 8 prims, 90ARC“‘
One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost.
So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn’t quite affected by things the way we thought it was.
You activate the showing of ARC numbers the following way: Advanced > Rendering > Info Displays > Avatar Rendering Cost.
Curious about my own ‘rendering footprint’ - opposed to my ecological one - I did some ARC testing, browsing through the different ‘avatar versions’ I use often. Impressive is, that different hairstyles could mean a change of +5000 ARC units. And that my Greenie avatar came out pretty well. I should take a look a Quickly Alter - which is just one, huge sphere - too.
Next test: put 60 avatars with ARC 8000 on a sim and compare that with 60 avatars ARC 400 on the same sim? I think that - although this is an important factor and fun data to toy around with - we must surely not ’stare’ blind on avatar lag. How our avatar looks, for most of us, does depict ‘who we are’ in the virtual world. With big events the Avatar Render Cost will be far from the sole factor determining the amount of ‘laggyness’: optimal build quality, draw distances, scripts, sim class, state of the grid, … are not to be forgotten about. But yes, Miss Tateru, I would like to know the ARC of a hairstyle before I buy it! ;)
Meeting Maraschino Susa
April 6, 2008 5:34 pm
I actually just hopped in-world last night because I was worried about Gwen being worried about the waves. Having been ‘out’ mostly during the day, little did I know that it wasn’t just the waves. Thus I rezzed were I last left, the Rezzable Liberty Sandbox. Very close to something that looked like it could definitely run me over. Yikes! I send an IM to the creator to ask to not park his vehicule on me, please. Which was answered by an IM if I could help him test the back seat. Ah well… .
After a short ride, I sneaked behind him into the elevator, what made me the first avater to visit is home! Yeey! I sat down, and was utterly amazed when he rezzed the most cute cat I ever* saw, which was reading something way above my head. Astrophysics, quantum mechanics, … whatever. I now have that cutie in my inventory, of course! Quickly the others rezzed: a cat fishing in a fish boal, a cat playing with a ball of wool, … .
Fascinated, I took the next logical step: asked if Mister Maraschino Susa has a shop or anything. More cat stuff! Mr. Susa told me he sells them at his gallery, together with SL versions of his RL paintings. Aha? Paintings? Cats and paintings!? Woot! Seems that Mr. Susa was more interesting that I at first - ‘racepod’ and an elevator - had thought. Then, I made a huge mistake…
Being rather sure Miss Veyron would like this too - cats, fast flying things and well painted nudes - I offered her a TP. Before I could say ‘I’m lagged’ Maraschino was taking Veyron for a ride, and I was left alone with the cats and the paintings. My thoughts at that moment? File bug report! ‘MISC-1254: Veryon always runs of with the guys I like. Please FIX ASAP!‘ Were it not for driving into sim-walls the two of them would not have returned to keep me company and they would still be out there somewhere… . Pffff. ;)
What I actually wanted to say? Check out Mister Marashino Susa. And his paintings and cats. All three seem very interesting!
* Except for October Hush, Chloe Streeter, … . ;)
The ‘First Life’ MMO - Review
April 3, 2008 4:05 am
Traditionally Outside receives extremely high ratings by those who like to see others play it, and these people are in many cases comfortably ensconced Inside themselves. Outside was released many years ago, it was in fact the first massively multiplayer game, and yet it has always managed to avoid the double-edged Retro tag. In its favor, continual user updates have kept Outside current; there are always new things to see and do Outside. Participants are permitted, to some extent, to modify their own areas of Outside, which is a large part of the fun of the game. However it seems that in the end one is modifying Outside largely for the sake of it, and having done it, there is a distinct feeling of “now what?”
In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world.
That aside, how does Outside actually rate? The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability), the graphics are beyond comparison, the rendering of objects is absolutely beautiful at any distance, and the player’s ability to interact with objects is really limited only by other players’ tolerance. The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do.
In terms of game play the game sets few, if any, goals: the major one is merely “survive”. What goals a player sets, are often astonishingly tedious to actually achieve, and power-ups and gear upgrades, let alone extra weapons, are few and far between. Some players choose accumulation of money, one of the many point systems in the game, as a goal, but distribution of this is often randomized and it can be hard to tell what activities will lead to gaining points in advance, and what the risks will be.
Other players choose to focus on accumulation of personal abilities, the variety of which greatly exceeds the capacity of any individual to accumulate; again, the game requires players to engage in years of grinding to achieve any notable standard with a skill or ability. Players are issued abilities and characteristics largely at random, and it is entirely possible for a player to be nerfed beyond any reasonable expectation of being able to play the game, or to be buffed to the point where anything he or she does is markedly easier. Unfortunately over time, player abilities tend to degrade, unless significant effort is made to keep skills up. This reviewer cannot emphasise this enough: Outside requires a huge time investment to build up player abilities, exceeding any other massively multiplayer game on the market by some three orders of magnitude.
Players are encouraged to focus on social interaction, which can be engaged in in a variety of ways. In fact it’s extraordinarily difficult to solo anything whatsoever in Outside, apart from basic skill and knowledge accumulation quests. One of the major forms of social interaction in the game is based largely around the addition of new players to Outside, and is both complex and, in comparison to the storyline-driven romance quests of, say, Baldur’s Gate or Mass Effect, they are immensely difficult. Dedicated players of Outside, however, report that the romance quests are among the most rewarding the game has to offer.
The game world is immense, perhaps unfeasibly so. The sheer amount of resources that went into development of the Outside environment is staggering to consider. Outside is a world of tremendous size, containing examples of every known real-world terrain type and inhabited by every known real-world animal. On the other hand it is somewhat lacking in the traditionally expected, more interesting, zones where the developers would be given the opportunity to show off their skills in varying the physics and graphics of the game. There are, for instance, no zones where gravity varies to any significant degree.
The respawn rate of objects and players is ridiculously slow. A dead player can expect to wait for years to respawn, and will be set back to zero assets and a tiny, nearly helpless form. Death is hardcore, and resurrection all but impossible. Outside is not a game for the QQers out there!
In terms of the social environment, almost anything goes. Outside has a vast network of guilds, many of its players are active participants in designing the game’s social environment, and almost any player will be able to find company to undertake their desired group quests. On the other hand, gold-buying is rife, the outskirts of virtually every city zone in the game are completely overrun by farmers, and the developers have so far proven themselves reluctant to answer petitions, intervene in inter-player disputes, or nerf broken skills and abilities. Indeed this reviewer will go so far as to say that the developers are absent from the game entirely, and have left it to its own devices. Fortunately, server uptime has been 100% from day 1, despite there being only one server for literally billions of players.
On the whole, Outside is overrated, and many gamers will find themselves forced by friends and family to play it against their will, but it still deserves a high rating. I give it 7/10, and look forward to improvements in future patches.
User Aeschenkarnos in a comment on Metafilter.com (Found through Robbie Kiama’s twitter)
Motorability, The United Spinal Association in Second Life
March 30, 2008 2:25 pm
When I asked whatever happened to Motorati (the Pontiac sims) a while ago, I got told it was baptised ‘Motorability’ and handed over to the United Spinal Association. Wondering what the hell cars had to do with spinal cord injuries - except for causing them - I did not really see the link.
Reading the article on Jody DeVere’s blog made it all a bit more clear:
Major sponsor and coordinating efforts by the car culture community on United Spinal’s Motorability Island is Jody DeVere ( aka Avatar Patty Streeter in Second Life), President of AskPatty.com – Automotive Advice for Women and a member of the board of directors for United Spinal Association.
DeVere’s son Joseph was involved in a tragic car accident in 2005 which resulted in paraplegia. This event created a big passion in her to help provide non-traditional recreational and quality of life programs for disabled Americans.
Yesterday Amanda Shinji offered me a teleport to the island when the big launch - it’s officially live and open now - was in progress.
Upon arriving, I felt instantly sorry for the slowly rezzing guy in the wheelchair - UnitedSpinalDonation Lane, sitting all by himself in the corner. I thought ‘Hey, let’s make new friends.’ and IM’d him. He was rather busy with tons of IM’s, so I guess I was the one being pathetic. Especially as after offering me some wheel chairs, he left me on my own to figure out how to use them. My apologies to all the people me and my wheelchair bumped in to! Driving stuff in Second Life isn’t as easy as it looks.
To visit the Motorability initiative’s homepage, go to motorability.com. I’m definitely going to explore their knowledge center soon. And I wonder if they have cars that allow you to drive your wheelchair in them and then ride them.
Second Life server system 3D, by Jopsy Pendragon
March 23, 2008 10:24 pmAfter the fear first kicked in and then the non-discussion started somewhat here on Wired Faerie’s Inventory System Changes - Take 2 and also a bit here where I listed Katarina’s outline I decided to check out Cala’s link. Jopsy Pendragon build a - simple - in-world 3D representation of how the whole Second Life server thingie works. I did not learn much new - although I never imagined asset servers would be pink and contain that much missing textures - but it’s cute to look at.
Funny thing is, that when visiting Teal, Loki Popinjay was there too. Great minds think rezz alike? ;)
Update: Dandellion has an opinion too! Go and be prosperous read. ;)
