Temporary Art in Second Life

There are a couple of temporary art events going on right now worth checking out. The first is the annual Second Life Burning Man event, originally an annual event sponsored by Linden Lab, but they have dropped their sponsorship and it has been taken over by a new group at burn2.org.  They funded 6 servers for 1 month only and spent the first two weeks building, and the second two weeks (October 16-30) with all the displays on hand.

Behind me is the official “burning man” set to be set on fire on Friday I believe.  To reach this event. open your map and search for “burning Man” or follow this slurl.

Because it is no longer an official SL event, the content at the event is allowed to get more “mature” (though not adult).  I am quite certain these naked sculpties would never have been on display if LL was still in charge.  They are very well done and almost look like the fabled “mesh” items.

Speaking of which another temporary event is going on right now on the beta grid.  I kept on crashing, so I sent Rebecca for this report:

Linden Lab has launched Open Beta of the mesh content.  To test it out they have launched 26 servers with mesh content enabled. To see the content you must download the Mesh Beta Project Viewer (Mesh Aditi), then launch to the beta grid.  Once on the grid, open the map and search for “Mesh” and you will find a list of sandboxes.  These sand boxes are the only place mesh will work, and like typical sandbox regions, their content is purged every 24 hours.  The upshot is that you can see new stuff every day.

These two mesh items were huge. I’m about as tall as one of the dragon’s toe nails.  We still have no details about size restrictions or cost once “mesh” goes live.  I am also not sure how quickly it will be. I tried uploading a simple mesh, and it kept on crashing the viewer when I did.

Here is someone I met who was wearing a mesh avatar.  The person was AFK, but his avatar was moving around like an idle  avatar does.  Simple stick figures are impossible to do right now without hide textures.  With mesh you can replace body parts, thus making any kind of avatar possible.

Recreating the Apollo 11 Voyage in Second Life

40 years ago this week, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on its way to being the first manned space ship to land on the moon. In honor of this anniversary, I thought I’d find a way to recreate the mission in Second Life.

Well the first stop in our voyage is of course the International Space Museum at Spaceport Alpha. If you have never been to this awesome region (which I am sure I have mentioned before) well shame on you. It is one of the best educational regions in Second Life.  I have known people who joined Second Life, just to go see this place.

At ground level they have a display of all the famous rockets in space exploration history.  Above is a picture of me standing in front of my favorite rocket, the Ariane 01 used by the EU to launch satellites.

Apollo 11 was a Saturn V rocket, and I am sure there is one somewhere in the museum, but the only rideable rocket is a Gemini ship which predates the Saturn V. Close enough for this mission.

Before we take off though, we probably should get a spacesuit.  A quick check of Xstreet has a few available, but I managed to score a freebie helmet, gloves, and life support pack in the National Space Society region. Add your favorite leather body suit and boots, and you have a working space suit. Not authentic by any means, but good enough for virtual space travel.

So here we are aboard our ship waiting for launch. Actually launching will take us to the International Space Station display and the beginning of a tour of all the planets . A nice display, but not where we want to go.

We want to go to the Moon, so it is time to move on to the Daden Space region. This place requires that you be in a spacesuit. Pick up a HUD and stand on a teleport pad.  Yay! we made it to the moon!

Video

Finally, it is worth mentioning that NASA has some 40th anniversary activities and events planned. You can find a schedule, along with a couple of detailed lunar lander lunar rover models in the Nasa CoLab region (right next door to the ISM).

5th Anniversary, How times have changed

This month I celebrate my 5th year in Second Life. My friend Torment Thorn is also celebrating her 5th this yearand was throwing a party so I decided to attend and have it count as mine too. Didn’t feel like organizing my own party.

The party started just as Lost was coming on, and some shows just take precedence. So earlier that day I positioned my avatar at the party’s location, and while watching TV, I launched Sparkle IM from my ipod. Its an iphone app that logs into Second Life (or many other virtual worlds) and allows you to IM and participate in local chats. It was a fun way to participate in the party for a little while.

Torment and I joined on a “free promo” Second Life was offering (it used to cost about $10 to join Second Life in the early days). They were offering 500 free accounts, first come first served, and we picked up two of them. We may not be the first in SL, but we were two of the first to not have to pay to try it out. Not sure about the other 498, but we have been busy. Torment, was one of the early adapters of the role play potential of Second Life, and has run a few RP sims in the past 5 years, and currently runs Wicked.

Five years ago it was rare for more than 300 people to be on at once. There were no prim attachments, no animations. To get from place to place you teleported to the nearest hub and flew the rest of the way, sometimes two or three servers. There was really cheap “first land” for people that upgraded to premium. Today Second Life has 750,000 active unique sign ins a month.

Today, improvements keep on happening. There was this press release about IBM and Conversive creating a smart “NPC” for IBM’s Virtual Green Project. Basically a computer automated avatar, at least that is what it sounded like. I decided to check it out and see what it was all about. Didn’t actually meet an NPC, apparently its only at certain times. Oh well. Looked worth exploring anyways. Five years ago no one would have even dared to do anything like this in Second Life.

In the next year, SL is changing even more. The “Adult” experiment will start this summer, when we should also see shadow rendering available in the client. By the end of the year Open Sim will likely be able to do everything SL can do. Then the tables will be turned and SL may startborrowing from OS.  (but that is next weeks topic).

Playing The Kaaos Effect

The Kaaos Effect is a cool in world time travel adventure game built in Second Life. The starting point is here, there is a players guide here, and a way to track players progress here.

Back in the early beta days of There, the company hired a story writer to create weekly “quests” consisting of 10 message bottle clues telling a story as a whole with each message giving a clue to the whereabouts of the next clue. They were a lot of fun and were one of the earliest really good game within a game concepts in 3D virtual worlds, I must have played a couple of dozen of them.

The Kaaos Effect is a logical evolution to those early quests. Designed by SL resident Kiana Writer, it consists of 10 cool “rooms” representing 10 time periods. Each room has a puzzle to solve and a “bonus” to find. Solving the puzzle gets you to the next room. Each room is also themed around some mode of communication (the game being sponsored by a French telecom)

At the starting position, enter the weird dome and click on the wrist band object. It will give you a folder. Open your inventory, and click on the “recent items” tab. Wear the HUD and matching wristband. You will need both to play.

Your “recent items” inventory is very useful while playing, there is a lot of objects you pick up along the way that you wear to use. You will also pick up a lot of pictures along the way which you will have to view for clues. Also extremely useful is CTRL-ALT-Left Mouse Click, which aims your view toward whatever object you click on. If you are new to Second Life, and don’t know this trick yet, learn it!

There is no linear progression, each player has a random path that they take. The game can be played by up to 20 players at a time, but it is a solo game, so you can’t play with a friend. Because the order you get is random, the levels do not get progressively harder, and there is no boss fight at the end or anything, winning gets you a free SL T-Shirt.

Some of the puzzles are harder than others though. There is a “darkroom” puzzle I found fun and easy since once upon a time I was into photography with actual 35mm film, even worked in a lab, so I picked up on what to do after only reading the first few instructions. But I can see it being frustrating for others.

My hardest challenge was the lost typewriter keys puzzle, it took me forever to find the stupid L key (its behind the left rear leg of the chair). On another I had to write down which Chinese stamps go with which word, since I don’t read Chinese.

Overall this is a very fun game, I loved each environment and the variety of puzzles to solve. The biggest problem with the game is that if you get stuck on a puzzle, you are stuck. The web based hints are either broken or non-existent (I’m guessing the latter) but I did finally complete it in about two hours, only failing to get some of the bonuses.

Try and see if you can do better than me.

Ireland in SL

Last year I mentioned the Dublin build at least 3 times, including listing it as a top 10 of 2008. With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, I thought I’d see what other Irish builds I could find.

Traditional Irish spirit is alive and well in West of Ireland, a series of themed shopping, museums and pubs over a group of regions run by an Irish non-profit charity Project Children. If you are looking to get into the St. Patty’s day spirit, this place should be on your list. They are hosting a bunch of live music events all month, details on their web page.

Recently going through blogs I found this article about SL in a Belfast news site. It made mention of a Belfast build a group of players built, but unfortunately the article did not leave very many clues as to its whereabouts. I believe the Belfast Construction Group build on a mainland server is what they were talking about.

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland, known for its years of religious inspired terrorism which thankfully seems to have ended after a 1998 agreement. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but still has close cultural ties with the Republic of Ireland.

Size wise The Belfast build is small, taking up only part of the mainland sever it is on, but has a decent amount of content and details. It is filled with textures taken straight from the streets of Belfast giving a decent feel as a real place.

Among the Belfast tributes on the build is a small Titanic museum, the infamous ill fated cruise ship built and launched from Belfast.

As I did with China and Japan earlier, I like to find some variety in these cultural regional tours. After two contemporary Irish builds, I sought out something historical. I wanted to see if I could find a historical Irish build. That seemed like a tall order at first, until I realized that all I needed to find was a “Celtic” role play sim. Chances of finding such a build in SL: 100%

And so it did not take me long to find Eternia a place with medieval castles and combat based on historic Ireland. For the picture I would be considered inappropriately dressed. These RP sims prefer historical dress and provide freebies to visitors. There is a LOT of sculpties in this build that took a while to load, but results in a more organic feel to the landscape.

And there you have Ireland in SL

Theme Parks in SL

Why are amusement park rides in Second Life just not that interesting?

My friend Rebecca has a theory, “Second Life rides are not that interesting, because Second Life is itself just an amusement park ride.  In the game, you are in full control of what you see and where you go. In-game rides take that control away from you.”

And here I thought it was because simulating a roller coaster is not the same as riding a real one. The only appeal to building a roller coaster in Second Life is in the “can it be done?” factor. The answer is no it can’t, apparently. I have yet to see a working roller coaster in Second Life, that actually operates like one. But that’s beside the point.

Are there any exceptions to the rule? Can pretend rides in game be cool? I asked Rebecca.

Rebecca took me to Svarga, a place I have been before. We went for a ride on the hornet tour that flies around the island telling you about the stuff there is to see there.

“Now this is a cool ride,” she said.

“Well it helps that it flies around one of the most beautiful islands in SL,” I said.

“That’s exactly the reason, in fact that is the only reason it is a cool ride. You can’t feel the jerkiness or smoothness of a ride, nor can you get the rush of wind in your face as you ride. So the only reason a ride is cool is if the environment it is in is cool,” she explained.

Going on rides in SL is like a mini movie. Riding through interesting environments is fun, pretend riding for riding sake is lame.

To illustrate the point further we took a trip to Koreshan Amusement Park. This place has a creepy run down look to it, that is also campy and retro. Its an entertaining place to explore.

There is also something else kind of ironic about this “amusement park”… none of the rides work.

“Who cares if the rides work or not,” said Rebecca, “its more like a theme park with amusement park as a theme. Theme parks have themes, amusement parks have rides. If rides in SL are lame, then a theme park with no working rides is better than an amusement park.”

Somehow that actually made sense.

So I had to ask. “Are there any ‘theme parks’ with working rides that are worth checking out?”

Rebecca had this sinister look on her face. “Yeah, I can think of one.”

She took me to a place called “Mouse World” that looked oddly familiar, but I could not place it.

“I think I have been to this region before, but I can’t find a bookmark,” I told her.

“Yeah, this place has this affect on people,” she said.

We started out taking a ride on the Pachyderm Ride, which just went in circles, but we could go up and down with some buttons. Yeah it was lame, but the surroundings were “Magic”. like some kind of magic kingdom or something.

Some of the rides were broken, like the Jungle Cruiser. Others were closed for renovation, like the Hunted Mansion. But Thunder Mountain Railway was working, as was Void Mountain.

“I got it!” I proclaimed, “This place is exactly like Dis–”

“DONT SAY IT!” Rebecca Yelled.

Well, anyways we spent a fun evening at Dis… uh, Mouse World.

______

Previously blogged Theme Park Carnival of Doom

And the sexiest male avatar award goes to…

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.

Holiday Wonders in SL

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.

Election Night in Second Life

Went to a great Election Night party in Second Life sponsored by the So there Forums. Lots of fun, and most of us were rooting for Obama. A great celebration followed him getting over the top.

Time to plan an Inaguration Ball for January I believe.

Halloween Places in SL

Hey, its October, its Autumn, and the traditional Halloween festivities are under way. So I thought I’d post about some of my favorite scary themed places I have run into in SL. There are of course some classics like Transylvania to check out, but also some new masterpieces like the above New Relic which I mentioned before.

You might start your Halloween by looking for costumes. One of the more adventurous places is Grendel’s Children which has all sorts of interesting avatars.

There are plenty of “Haunted” places to choose from. Halloween events are an annual event at Octoberville, a haunted town. Check out Rezzable’s Carnival of Doom sim, for more campy spooky fun. Then there is the very popular haunted house Bentham Manor to visit.

Halloween is a very popular theme in Second Life. I have not even mentioned any of the hundred goth themed places, or any of the role play sims.

Happy Halloween everybody!