Second Life glitchiness continues

Map search or image not showing up after inventory problems earlier in the day.

How’s Second Life stability been for you so far in 2008?

Second Skin

Second Skin is an upcoming documentary on the impact virtual worlds are having now and the increased impact they’re likely to have into the future.

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There’s a trailer for the documentary released today and it looks like a polished production covering some of the key challenges facing society in the virtual world sphere. World of Warcraft is a heavy focus but Second Life and other worlds appear to get decent air time.

Singapore’s Mirror World shows business promise

I received a press release today from Singapore-based company ‘Virtual Worlds’, touting their Mirror World which is under development and due for launch at the end of this year. The full text of the press release is below by essentially it’s a platform that will allow creation of replicas of real-world locations for the purpose of 3D walk-throughs. It’s aimed squarely at tourism operators and its appeal is obvious. Never been to Egypt? Then do the virtual tour of key locations and decide if it’s the holiday for you.

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It looks promising but like any new development it will face the challenge of a growing number of competitors. Interoperability with other worlds is a holy grail for any option at this stage but any new development needs to take the growing movement in that respect into account.

We’ll be following this development closely and hope to do a more detailed preview in coming months.

The full text:

PRESS RELEASE

22 January 2008, Singapore — Virtual Worlds , developers of the world’s first “Mirror World” ,announces the availability of the world’s first platform for virtual tourism to industry operators today in Singapore.

From key tourism destinations, places of interest , historical sites to realistic full scale 3-Dimensional replicas of entire cities. This mirror world of our existing planet – “Mirror World” allows end users to journey through “virtual words” in the comfort of their homes – creating a brand new exciting marketing tool for tourism industry players like tourism destination operators, Hoteliers, Shopping Malls, Retail Outlets and more to showcase and sell their destinations and facilities to key markets around the world.

What sets Mirror World apart from other 3D environment developers in the market is its commitment to the recreation of reality. All images, environments, content and cityscapes are designed to be as life-like and accurate as possible to the real world. A Beta version of the software with the capability to show certain parts of the world is already available today. The technology today allows support for up to a million objects per view area as well as sound and music , complete with special effects showing realistic weather patterns and powerful animation effects. Providing the most realistic virtual reality tour of any destination available in the market today. The company is already in discussions on several projects with tourism authorities and facilities operators in the region to build 3D replicas of their existing sites. Virtual Worlds expects to completely map the globe in phases, providing a brand new exciting, interactive platform for vacation , travel planning and learning.

Another interesting factor about the platform lies in its ability to be able to import exsiting 3D drawings of existing infrastructure and buildings . That means we can do a
very rapid buildup of the location. Targeted for a world wide launch in end 2008, consumers will be able to explore parts of the world in 3D, meet and chat with friends from all over the world all from their desktop over a internet connection and most importantly win prizes to travel around the world.

“This is an important and necessary step in the development of Virtual Worlds,” said Terence Mak, Director of Virtual Worlds Asia. “Virtual Worlds has always been depicted with a fantasy, its about time we changed that thinking and use of the same technology to make the world a smaller place. Air Travel & Tourism is booming with the availability of budget airlines, consumers are beginning to be more world conscious, what is missing is a technology and a platform to showcase the World in 3D to a global audience. We hope to be the partner with many of the worlds interesting places and help them showcase what they are doing to make the world a more interesting place.”

A more global site will be announced later in the year. For more information, please visit the Virtual Worlds Site.

Update: an interview with Terence Mak can be found here.

Death Of A Skeptic Part 2

Continuing on from Part 1, Bix Ashbourne describes his early days as a Second Life resident:

I start wandering. Rude people, silent people, gregarious people, bothersome people, strange people, oddly dressed people…is this Los Angeles? So much for a different life. Armed with the in-world names of some real-life friends, I discover the search function, and ultimately, them. Kat, an in-world designer and RL computer genius and discussion board friend, comes to my rescue, showing me places to go, standing patiently while I avoid the type of nervous breakdown that only comes with information overload. Shows me some freebies, gives me some landmarks, then offers to tweak my avatar for me to de-burr me of the Noob flash. I let her in on my password, and a little while later, voila`! I am now ready to swing in SL, rolled denim pant cuffs notwithstanding.

I go back to one of the landmarks that Kat had given me, a public gathering place called The Shelter. A wonderful place for noobs, although, in retrospect, I might have chosen a more subtle experience, with less flash, motion, and conversation. I am befriended by a very sexy woman named Willa. The experience with her simply reinforces all the good things I’ve discovered, thus far, about SL, and she is alluring, the conversation flows very well, the mutual attraction kicks into high gear. After a while, the heat is on, and we TP to a new location.

It is at this point that I discover I’m gonna have to get a penis.

This had, until this moment, escaped me; my one real-life penis exists in a state of recluse that makes Howard Hughes look like tabloid fodder, getting a cartoon penis is not even on the radar, as I’m still trying to acclimate to the movement controls, let alone appearance sliders and what not. Regardless of this minor detail, Willa and I have a very good time, and I am not only reminded of the power of words, but have also been exposed to their power in a new context. I also come to the realization–pun thoroughly intended and application expected–that this particular activity, in the context of SL, is a veritable “interactive porn”. With the addition of voice chat, which I am thoroughly aware exists yet I do not, at this time, participate in, I can easily see how the level of satisfaction get raised several notches.

There’s a line, here…a line one can sit right on the knife-edge of…and it’s the line between organic and electronic. You begin to question the human experience in organic terms, wondering how it is one can get some satisfaction from a non-tangible, fabricated, yet near-wholly interactive experience. Here we are, lonely, stretching out across the world in our beds, our chairs, our desks, getting pleasure from someone we’ve never met but is, nonetheless, NOT a total stranger. Speed dating, with graphics. When you realize that scientists are working on developing organic circuitry and components, ostensibly with intent to make production less toxic to the environment but also opening up the door to someplace for mankind to go when the human body has become outdated, the mind becomes filled with the stuff you only read about in science fiction stories as a kid.

Love in the ether, lust as binary.

A stream of numbers now has the burden of carrying our stream of consciousness, our desires, our joy, our anger. Human, organic passion has now ramped up its dependence on copper wires, surface-mount components, blinking lights, mega-corporation call centers, and the piloting skills of UFO pilots to avoid our clunky, gum-and-duct-tape satellites. (I wonder what the alien equivalent of duct tape is. I wonder if they depend on it as much as we do. Surely, they’ve advanced enough they don’t need to carry wallets.) I can feel the detachment from RL beginning. I don’t know if I’m sad to say it feels good.

Willa informs me that she’s seeing a modest handful of avatars, and can’t find herself to commit to only one, the news of which simultaneously fails to surprise me and stings a little. So much for keeping RL and SL separate, I suppose. I do the software equivalent of a shrug, and accept what’s been thrown at me. We have one more encounter; over the course of time, she decides that she does want to be with one, and one only. Naturally, I am not it. We stay in touch, on occasion. We know a lot about each other’s real lives, have shared some deep conversations and relied on each other for a shoulder; we DO have good conversation. There’s still a small, soft spot in my digital heart for the woman, somewhere.

It’s at this point that I realize that which I already knew, but have now deemed it too late in life to do anything about; I can’t be fake about anything. I bring myself into everything I do, SL not excepted. As I wander back into the grid, I begin to realize, over the course of time, that SL is a virtual “do-over”… you get a chance to try out interactions that failed in the past, work on them, tinker with them; you can beta-test new approaches, with the worst-case scenario being having to find a landmark to TP to, and fast.

Fortunately, the face slaps in SL don’t leave marks. Let’s hope no-one scripts those.

Furries, sexuality and griefing: one viewpoint

I received an email today from well-known Australian Second Life resident Wolfie Rankin, with some fascinating thoughts on sexuality, furries and the issue of griefing. His views in full below – the only alterations are changes to spelling and capitalisation:

“Some interesting things have come to light during a discussion with a friend who’s an Officer at a large Furry Sim.

It turns out that a lot of griefers, including those in well known griefing groups, are Furries themselves.

This will sound strange, but here’s how it works.

Furry #1 has a bad fallout with his Gay lover on Secondlife, So rather than taking it on the chin, decides to seek revenge… returns to SL as an Alt, loads up with weapons, and griefs. He may target his former lover or grief the entire sim where they hung out.

Or another scenario is that he asks someone in a griefing group to do it for him.

How do we know for certain?

Well it turned out that quite a few from that certain SL griefing group also had accounts on a well known furry art page and had used similar names to the ones on that art page.

Once this information came to light, quite a few from this well known griefing group suddenly left it.

I’m not putting Furries down, as you know, I’m one myself… However, it’s well known that some Furries are also huge “Drama Queens” who whine a lot and cause the rest of us to grind our teeth. They’d be the best candidates for this kind of thing.

Also, I’m not saying that griefing groups are entirely made up of furries, that’s not true.

It’s very clear now, that many who go griefing and target potential gay areas of SL, have personal sexual issues… For instance, a young lad who’s having feelings, but can’t cope with the idea that he might be gay, might takes it out on others who he either thinks are gay, or are openly gay.

In other words, he’s trying to assert his heterosexuality by targeting anything even loosely considered to be “gay”

Saying that it’s done for “Lulz” is simply a thin veil hiding larger problems, when you spend hours in the day griefing SL and then making a video of it for YouTube, there’s definately something not quite right.

People who are secure in their sexuality would never worry if the bloke up the road is gay or bi or whatever”.

It’s an interesting take and there’s no doubt those sexually conflicted may adopt aggressive measures to assert one viewpoint. One of the key opportunities and challenges that virtual worlds offer is exploration of social issues like sexual identity. What are your thoughts on the issue – is the viewpoint above a valid one?

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. Wired – Virtual World Griefing Reaches New Heights. “This month’s issue of Wired contains an impressively in-depth article on the griefing exploits of the Something Awful Goonsquad. Most famously, the Goonsquad was responsible for interrupting 2006’s CNet interview with Second Life pseudo-celebrity Anshe Chung via airborne flocks of oversized penises”.

2. The Christian Science Monitor – Can Web-Based Worlds Teach Us About The Real One? “With last week’s stock market sputter and re newed warnings of a recession, policymakers and presidential candidates are hawking countless plans to jump-start the economy. These proposals are often complex, sometimes controversial, and almost always conjectural”.

3. The World Next Week – Virtual world: rogue state? “There are quirkier items on the agenda than stock market sturm und drang and terrorism at the 38th annual World Economic Forum in Davos. On Saturday, one of the presentations, ‘Virtual Worlds – Fiction or Reality’, muses on the impact of virtual worlds on different generations, and asks how this world of immediate access, limitless social skills and unrestrained behaviour influence our moral framework”.

4. PC World – Starting Your Business’ Second Life. “If you’ve got a product that’s hard to show off in person or your customer demographic skews thirtysomething, start thinking in 3-D. While skeptics write off virtual worlds on the web as arcades for young folk, research firm Gartner Inc. estimates that by 2011, 80 percent of active internet users will have an identity in a virtual web world”.

5. The Independent – Cyberclinic: Virtual Populations. “The number of people actively exploring an alternate existence in a virtual world just keeps on growing. With last year’s release of The Burning Crusade – an expansion pack for the online role playing game World Of Warcraft – the number of current users of the game has just topped 10 million; in terms of population, that puts World Of Warcraft somewhere between Serbia and Hungary. The makers of the game also stress that these figures exclude all free promo subscriptions and dormant users.

6. Science Daily – Haptics: New Software Allows User To Reach Out And Touch, Virtually. “European researchers have pioneered a breakthrough interface that allows people to touch, stretch and pull virtual fabrics that feel like the real thing. The new multi-modal software linked to tactile hardware and haptics devices have enormous potential for shopping, design and human-machine interaction”.

7. Computerworld – Vision of the future: Researchers build bionic eye. “Nanotech could let travelers check Net, e-mail or play games on floating display screen”.

8. Information Week – Linden Lab Working To Beef Up Second Life Stability, Usability. “Linden Lab plans sweeping improvements to the Second Life platform this quarter, designed to improve stability and usability, and to make it easier to connect Second Life with the rest of the Internet”. (see our own story on Linden Lab’s media conference.

9. Jalopnik – Lancia to Launch Car in Second Life, Before First Life. “Hey Lancia, welcome to 2006! It’s good to see you finally decided to approach and embrace Second Life, the virtual world game thing. The Italian Fiat subsidiary will be launching the Delta sedan in Second Life one day prior to its official unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show”.

10. InterGovWorld.com – Second Life has potential for public sector, says analyst. “Governments have been taking tentative steps towards establishing a presence in the virtual world. And while the business case may yet to be proven, there is potential for the public sector to utilize virtual applications such as Second Life, says analyst Alison Brooks”.

Weekend Whimsy

1. Practice Foreign Languages in Second Life

2. Eidolon A.I. speaks about government, A.I., humanity

3. NASA History through Second Life

Second Linden Lab podcast available

The second edition of ‘Inside The Lab’ has been released.

It’s a precursor to a press conference being held in-world tomorrow to talk tech issues and Second Life – we’ll be attending to ask a question or two and will report back. If you have a question you’d like asked, comment below and I’ll see what we can do.

Get a slice of virtual world history for free

My Tiny Life was written back in the 1990’s by Julian Dibbell and is about Julian’s experiences as a resident of the text-based virtual world LambdaMOO, which is still running today.

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Julian has made My Tiny Life available for free download and it’s one hell of a read. I was heavily involved in a MOO environment in the early to mid 1990’s and my experiences were similar in a lot of respects. Dibbell’s book further reinforces the ever present fundamentals of virtual worlds, whether they be text or visually-based – in the end it’s all about the people controlling the avatars.

As Dibbell writes: “He knows that new technologies like this one have a history of sowing metaphysical derangement in the minds of those who first behold them”.

Death Of A Skeptic Part 1

We’re thrilled to be able to introduce a new writer at The Metaverse Journal. Bix Ashbourne is in real-life based in the USA and after some chats in-world I suggested he might like to document his experiences as a new user in a virtual world – in this case, Second Life. Below is Part 1 of his journey from skeptic to virtual world resident.

Dec. 14th, 2007.

Bix on a crash

Winding down on the shittiest year of my life. Sitting up in bed on a Friday night, I began to seriously start wondering about this Second Life thing. I figure, I’m already alone….the internet is dead…no one on my chat forums…what the hell. All I gotta do is look. Might be good for a laugh.

For the past year or more, I’ve been poo-pooing this SL thing. Real life is difficult enough, so what the hell do you need a second one for? Can’t get the first one dialed in, a second one oughta be just the ticket to encouraging a chemical dependency of some sort, most likely from one of the major drug manufacturers. Just wait ’til the tax folk find a way inside.
But, it’ll be something to do, I reason, ’cause despite a backlog of projects, I’m bored out of my skull.

I poke around. I get a feel for the process, the environment, the vibe. I start wondering, out loud, to my friends on the chat forums, about this place. The very same people to whom I openly made fun of–in a well-meaning if not somewhat self-righteous fashion. And who must surely at that moment, be kicking back with a drink, chuckling to themselves about the burgeoning RL casualty developing on their LCD’s.

Dec. 15th.

More searching. More musing. More acceptance. More cheese and crackers. More chicken on the grill. The possibility of muscular atrophy in my lower extremities is very distinct.

Dec. 16th.

Early in the afternoon, I make my first tenuous steps at the website. The name…who’d’ve thunk that would be so difficult? Apparently, someone at Linden Labs thunk it, because I didn’t get the first names I really wanted, and was treated to a dizzying array of surname options. After much deliberation, some snacks, and a pot of decaf, I settle on a name. I’m pretty good with it.

I take the plunge, and launch.

Thank god for Orientation Island, structured so that you don’t ever feel the briny tentacles of the etherbeast slithering into your awareness, forever altering your tangible interactions with the outside world. I grab a torch. I fool with my appearance (to hell with love handles and who really wants a coin purse for a package?). I crash into things. I ogle some woman changing her features before my eyes. I crash into another woman while ogling the first one. I stare blankly at people chatting me in French. I watch other people pop out of the sky, all bearing a strange resemblance to me. Hey…get your own damn androgynous look, thank you very much. I get some stuff dialed in on my body. I quickly learn to loathe the rolled-up cuffs of the Noob’s jeans.

Apparently, I dialed in well, as a fetching young avatar named Nathasja took a shine to me, and struck up a conversation, along with a few other things. We talk sweet and sexy, having to move every few minutes due to people who can’t get enough of causing people hassle, or acting the obnoxious drunk at a gathering (like the guy that swooped down on us and screamed for sex on the grass, then told us to go fuck ourselves after an awkward pause); we were about to achieve a breakthrough, of sorts, when we got bludgeoned by an inferiority complex piloting a plane. Thrown way out of our way, and into two different spots, I never heard from her again.

I look at the clock. Hello? You can’t be serious. Oh, but it is, the clock as serious as Dallas newsmen on a November day. And, as if to sense my disbelief and grabbing some salt for the wound, the sun began to poke through the wooden blinds of my bedroom shutters. Over 12 hours later, and not an ounce of energy lost. What is this strange technology, that can infuse energy into a person without so much as hearing a whisper from the butler that delivers your third wind?

I finally log off. My laptop breathes a heavy sigh as the fans can finally shut off. As I pull up the covers, I am awake and exhausted. This is going to be a long day. I can feel the bags under my eyes being crafted by the ghosts of former Samsonite employees (I think that’s what they do in the afterlife, create eyebags…I always wish they were a little more stylish, had fewer pockets, and weren’t so damned rugged.)

This is going to be a long day.

Go to Part 2

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