Barnstormer VR.

[athelind]

A few days ago, I finally succumbed to temptation and loaded Second Life onto my machine. My procrastination was productive: your first Basic Account is now free, without the $9.95-and-then-free-after registration cost they've had for ages.*

Second Life is amusing. A friend of mine said that he'd heard that "you can build a bunch of neat stuff there -- but what else there was to do is somewhat debatable."

That's a fair assessment... that's not entirely fair. Like FurryMUCK, SL a social arena, but it's also a place to Create  Stuff And Show It Off. Much of the socializing is filled with idling as people design and build stuff. That in itself is fascinating, though; if EverQuest and the like are "Massively Multi-Person Online Role Playing Games", SL is a Massively Multi-Person Online Art Installation.

I confess that I'm mostly there to hang out and be impressed by what my artist friends create. I've seen some extremely impressive avatar work, and the scenery is spectacular.

I think of it as Barnstormer VR.

The Barnstorming Era in aviation was in the '20s. There were a lot of cheap, surplus biplanes around, and pilots would become "barnstormers" -- they'd get a plane, keep it together with baling wire, paste, and a mechanical knack, fly around the country and land in farm fields, and offer people rides. It was the first blush of Aviation For The Masses.

Second Life is Barnstormer VR. It's well past the experimental phase, far from a mature technology, but it's one of the first really publically accessible version of the tech. MMORPGs like EverQuest don't let the users create and customize Entirely New Objects, and, while the ability to make custom "skins" and "WADs" for games like Doom have been around for a decade, it was always subsidiary to "game play". In SL, a big part of "the point" is the collaborative creative experience. Like SimCity, it's a "toy", not a "game".

Ironically, because of the fact that there are no "goals" or "adventures" built into the premise, SL has more potential to be what I consider a "Real RPG" than games like EQ, World of Warcraft, or City of Heroes.

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*SL is currently making my machine spontaneously reboot, but I think that's just overheating -- time to hit Fry's for some compressed air, or maybe just bring it into Central and say "hey, give this a cleaning. And change the oil and wiper fluid." I'd shrug it off, but my system apparently rebooted last night, when SL, of course, wasn't running at all.

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So far, my biggest problem in SL (aside from spontaneous reboots) is simply moving around. I'm just not used to this kind of keypad navigation in a 3D environment; I have a hard time moving from point A to point B, and especially in changing the "camera angle" around me. I have virtually no idea what I look like from the front....

Comments

[taral.livejournal.com]

I stopped using SL when some client-side bug caused it to slow down to molasses (<0.01fps) within about 30 seconds. I wonder if they've fixed that?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I didn't see any indication of that. I also found it was a lot happier when I ramped down my video settings, though it was rather like walking around without my glasses on in First Life.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Hm. I have about 4 other things going, but I might look in then. :)

[yasha-taur.livejournal.com]

SL has some fairly hefty requirements for the CPU AND the Video Card. If you don't have at least a 'mid-range' GPU, SL can be pretty bad. Admittedly, the requirements for SL are not out of line for a good VR game, but many people want to think of it as more like a Muck app or 'just another program'.

I am in agreement with Athelind, that at this point, I am happy to just wander around, and look at stuff. I do try to chat with others as I find them, but these conversations usually are pretty much just smalltalk and chit chat. I find that my main complaint about SL if just finding other people that I know. I have only met one person who I knew from outside SL.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

From Second Life, I Grauph at thee!

At least, I hope that was "thee" I grauphed at. It was the only "Yasha" I found.

[yasha-taur.livejournal.com]

On SL, I am Yasha Hermes. And currently, I have a lion morph avatar.

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

I've been in it since march., its home to me

[drakegrey.livejournal.com]

You know, I can't figure it out, but I am fighting hoof and nail to stay OFF of SL.

Probably because if I started using it, with my compulsive nature... I'd never do anything else other than make stuff for it, ever again.

Of course, if the mass migration of muck users that I'm anticipating does in fact happen and they all move to SL, well, the good news is my evenings will be free again. :)

--Drake

[caisifhon.livejournal.com]

Well, it has a lot of potentials, it also has a lot of downfalls. Unfortunately, all the physics and such has very strong effects on other performance on the engine, and, as well, thus far the slots for programs (like the planes) to operate are quite limited.

There's some good scripts out there and some bad ones. And some free ones. *grins impishly* I think that creating such technology that others can use is fun... and I'm working on a new aircraft that goes beyond any of my prior attempts.

I think the biggest thing for me is going out and building new things, finding new things, learning new things.

It's an evolutionary process, but in some ways more powerful. In some ways it's an exponential and fractal growth, a web of spinning ideas, always changing and turning about.

It's.. a brilliant idea some ways. Far too limited in others, but unfortunately that's the nature of anything of this type, due to processing contraints.

Say hi to Quel for me.. and I'll have to hunt you down there sometime. *chuckles*

Cais