Three Fabulous SL Recreations of Real Architecture

I normally don’t do exploring posts so close together, but its been a slow news month, so why not another?

For this one the theme is real life architecture from Europe recreated with care in Second Life. I found three dedicated reproductions both inside and out of famous buildings.

First on the list is the youngest, La Sagrada Familia is a cathederal in Barcelona in real life, but in Second Life it can be found in Meloloona (more pictures).

The ornate details of the original building do not translate to Second Life, but the build is impressive enough to check out. Its quite elaborate even for SL standards.

Next up is an older and smaller mirror build of the Parthenon in Greece. I have stumbled on a few parthenons in Second Life, including one on the official Greece Tourism region. But the one built in Sculptie Experiments (more pictures) is the best I have seen.

The primary reason I favor it is for its use of 3D sculptie prims throughout. This allows a much more detailed and authentic Parthenon build.

Finally, this recreation of Le Mont Saint Michel off the coast of France is one of the most incredible mirror world builds in Second Life. If you have not seen it you really should. They actually recreated the entire island to scale. It can be found in the Mont Saint Michel region (More Pictures).

Like the real place, the hill can be climbed by following a circular path, lined with shops, which is how the rent gets paid.

It is not entirely authentic. Hidden underneath the mountain is a large techno battle zone. See if you can find it.

Africa in SL

Over a year ago, I went around the world in Second Life builds and noted the lack of builds based in Africa. I did find one decent one at the time, but felt annoyed that there were not more. It is the second biggest continent after all.

Since then some new ones have been built. I tracked them down and thought I’d share.

The first is a really impressive 4 server build called Visiwa (more pictures).  According to its website it was originally opened in October of 2008, but has expanded quite a bit since then. I saw some tacky construction signs (are these really necessary?) indicating it is still expanding.

The port in the top picture is dubbed Port Kijiji (an ancient African work for “Village”), and it is surrounded with stores, including some available for rent.

In the back are some residential spaces, also with some vacancies, if you are looking for housing in a beautiful exotic locale. Even if not this is a cool place to explore, just don’t feed the lions.

Speaking of lions, the next African location I visited was simply called Virtual Africa (more pictures). Built by a non-profit based in South Africa, its a small tourist attraction complete with 3d models of about a dozen different African animals, and a fair number of plants. The whole thing has a safari feel to it.

You can walk around, balloon around, or hang glide. There are also tents for rent, auditorium, and some informational displays.

With these real world tours, I like to try and find historical locales as well.  No problem, I found an Ancient Egypt City of Thebes (more pictures). This is a role play server, so you have to be in costume to look around.  I just decided to scope around with my camera.  If you want to visit someplace a little less role play, I found a build called Egypta occupying a quarter of a server.

Well that’s my brief tour of Africa in SL. Hope you enjoyed it.

Google Earth 5 is Awesome!

I recently launched Google Earth only to be told I need to upgrade to version 5, so I did. I reported in December that the southern half of Manhattan was converted to 3D. Well playing with version 5 a ton of other cities have been converted to 3D as well. Check out the above Washington DC. Still a lot of missing texture maps, but a lot of buildings appear in exquisite detail.  The columns of the Capital building are 3D columns.

Many other cities are in 3D. I checked out the Las Vegas Strip in 3D, and my hometown of Phoenix (pictured above) looks great.

Google is promoting the ocean detail available in the new version, but another less promoted (probably because it is still a bit buggy) is LIVE WEATHER MAPS!

Yes, with the Weather layer enabled, not only can you see global temperatures, but clouds overhead from the most recent weather sattelites. As you can tell from the first two screenshots, it is a clear day in Washington DC and it happens to be partly cludy in Phoenix today.

Those familiar with the book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson know that he describes a piece of software similar to Google Earth where the user can even track the movements of an approaching fleet of ships. Google Earth is not quite that sophisticated yet, but it is quickly getting there.

Three Beautiful Japan Regions

After circling the globe last year I occasionally ran into new “mirror worlds” worth blogging about. I thought I’d save them up and blog about specific regions and countries as they come up.

Today is Japan. You know that country in the ocean somewhere that sends us all their Manga and Anime? I’ve heard it also say that because Japan dominates the video gaming market, it can be said that Video Game culture = Japanese culture. So it is never a bad thing for us gamers to learn a little.

The first beautiful Japanese sim to check out is Virgin Island aka Hosoi Ichiba. This sim started out as a Japanese furniture store has expanded into a mini Japanese cultural center with multiple examples of old architecture and gardens.

Next is a Japanese garden center called Kenroku by Ableseed. They sell garden plants, and the land actually changes with the season. As pictured above, they are in a winter phase, but I first visited last summer when it was green. Again more traditional Japanese arcitecture. to check out.

For a bit more modern Japanese architecture, take a visit to Tempura Island. I discovered this place accidentally, while trying to find something else. Decided to bookmark it and come back later.

You arrive in a garden area with fall colored trees. and an elaborately decorated path.

At the far end of the path is a palatial estate, not uncommon in Second Life, but the more Asian look to the palace is different. I could not help but go in and check out the interior. May I just say “WOW”!

The palace interior uses a few old tricks. Glowing effects on lights, semi transparent floor with a mirror build underneath, objects textured with built in shadows. The resulting feel of the room is one of the most truly “luxurious” I have seen in SL.

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Previously featured Japanese places: SICK, Kyoto

Google Does Manhattan

Just when I thought Google was getting out of the 3D business, they go and do this. They have basically digitized all of Manhattan for Google Earth.

Manhattan has been done before too in Microsoft Flight Simulator, or the opening sequence of You Got Mail, and Times Square has shown up a few times. But, this has got to be the largest and most ambitious one done to date, and could possibly set the standard for building the entire Earth this way. Take it from me, I know my “mirror worlds”.

That being said, I have seen better: Geosim Philly is far more detailed. Ditto Twinity‘s Berlin build. Also there is a fabulous Forbidden City.  These three even exceed some of the best mirror worlds in Second Life. It is the sheer size and near completeness of Google’s lower Manhattan that makes it impressive. (Despite the press releases, the buildings seem to end at Central Park)

If you want to see it yourself, open Google Earth, go to Manhattan, make sure 3D Buildings layer is checked, and tilt down the view so you are not overhead. Most every building is represented, though the majority still do not have textures yet.

Who knows what they will do next. Streaming live cameras? Detailed interiors? Animated Billboards? How much is advertising space in Google Earth anyways?

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them ideas.

Real Places in SL: Four Continents

With a couple of exceptions I will note later, Second life is pretty much dominated by Europe and North America. So I thought I’d finish with the rest of the world in one post.

Africa builds are pretty rare. I can point you to Casablanca Morocco pictured above as the best for virtual tourism. Other than that, I found a couple of role play sims, one based on Egypt, one on Kenya, and a few housing sims with a South Africa theme.

Casablanca is a mostly Islamic city, as you can tell from the architecture in the picture. As I toured the four continents, there are builds with symbols from all the great world religions.

Moving into Asia there is a fabulous build of a scale replica of the Jewish Temple, as it existed 2000 years ago in Jerusalem, it includes a self guided tour and a search for the “Lost Arc”.

Heading Northeast of Israel, and jumping over the Middle East, we come to a previously talked about build Astana, Kazakhstan.

The best India build I could find on the Bollywood server. There are some good examples of Indian art and architecture here.

Over the Himalayas, and on a mainland server, I found a rather large shopping mall based on the Forbidden City in Beijing China. It covers land on two different servers.

Next on the tour is Seoul Korea. As any MMORPG player will tell you, Koreans love online games, and can be found on almost all of them. It helps when nearly 90% of the population has broadband. So it should not come as a surprise that a large 10 server Korean build based on Seoul Korea is one of the most popular in Second Life.

Finally, off the coast of Asia is one of the most often imitated styles in SL, the Japanese style. I found lots of Japanese style neighborhoods all with uniform rental houses, not that interesting from a tourist perspective. It took a while to find an interesting Japanese build with some variety, and I found a 3 server Kyoto Japan build that fit the bill. The picture above of me in front of a Shinto Budda statue was taken there.

Back in a place where they speak English, or a close approximation there of (kidding), I visit the continent of Australia which like Africa is pretty slim pickings. Sydney, Australia is represented a few times, the best one being conveniently on the server of Australia. Here you will find scale models of the Opera House and the famous bridge, and hourly fireworks displays for no apparent reason, except fireworks are fun.

So between here and our final continent there is a lot of ocean, and thousands of Southern Pacific islands, reresented in Second Life by thousands of Southern Pacific island builds. Its kind of the default build in the game. Seen one you have seen them all.

So why not sail to South America in style in the largest ocean liner in Second Life, the SS Galaxy? If you have never been, its a fabulous ship, three servers big in all, and 7 decks high.

Final continent is South America, and in Second Life, that means Brazil, or more specifically Rio de Janeiro Brazil. After Europe, America and Korea, the Brazilians have made SL their home too. So much so that I have run into more Portuguese speakers than any other language outside of English.

A lot of that is due to a company called Mainland Brazil, which has partnered with Second Life and makes it easy for Brazilians to transition into the game, including selling Lindens for Brazilian reals.

Two builds, both dedicated to Rio de Janeiro, get fairly heavy traffic from the Portuguese speaking crowd. First is Brasil Rio server which has a beach theme. Second is Rio de Janeiro which has a popular in game dance club. Both feature mountain tram rides (above) and hang gliding (below)

Well that is it for the world tour as seen in Second Life. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Real Places in SL: Europe

Before we start the tour of Europe, there are a couple of important points that we American SL explorers often forget. First, there are more Eurpoean players in Second Life than American players. Second, a lot of the following builds were built by European players for European players.

In a way, it just makes things more realistic. Go to a European themed server and you are likely to meet Europeans there. Want to practice your German? Go to a German SL hang out and use voice speak. I believe that is one of the coolest things about SL that there is.

Anyways, lets start our tour of Europe by flying from New York to Dublin Ireland, recent host of the St Patricks celebration mentioned a few posts ago. Staying in the British Isles the next stop is a London England build on Knightsbridge server (above).

Across the channel is the famous Amsterdam, Netherlands build, I reported on earlier here, and neighboring Belgium is represented by an officially sponsored build of the city of Bruges, Belgium.

Paris is represented by a few builds in SL, but the only one I consider to be great is the Paris in 1900 build. This is not a role playing sim, but they ask if you can dress appropriately if possible. They have a life size Eiffel Tower 400 meters high (above), the cloud level in SL is 250 meters, hence the obscured view of the top. There is also a life size Arc de Triumphe, Champs Elysees, Moulin Rouge, and a difficult to get to Notre Dame Cathedral (the 5 server build has no flying allowed).

Heading to the south of France is a build based on Cannes. Cannes is famous for two things, the worlds largest film festival and topless beaches. This particular build focuses on the former, but since when I was visiting I was the only one there, I decided to indulge in the latter. This very nice build does not have much of a beach though.

Looking instead for a nice European beach elsewhere, I stumbled onto a beach in Marbella, Spain. Not a topless beach (its a PG server) but a fantastic two server build worth checking out.

Like France, Italy is another country heavily mirrored in Second Life. The above picture is from the official Tuscany build which has about 3 layers to it, one of which features Pisa. An even bigger (4 server) Italian build is based on the city of Milan. A couple of other nice Italian builds can be found on Centro Italia and Armidi servers, though these are primarily shopping builds so no famous landmarks. While still in the Mediterranean check out this two server Sicilian build.

North of Italy is Austria, and there is a small build of Vienna complete with buildings you can enter (above).

You can’t visit Europe without visiting Germany. I tried searching for Germany and came up with nothing interesting, but if you search Berlin I found a few competing builds, the best being New Berlin, which also has its own website http://berlinin3d.com/.

North of Germany is the Scandinavian countries, represented with a Wonderful Denmark build.

Finally, we finish Europe heading east to Moscow, Russia, with a very nice build of the Kremlin and Red Square.

While my focus has been on cool builds of real places, a couple of official builds should be mentioned. I previously noted that Sweden has a virtual embassy in Second Life. The country of Greece also has an official group of servers to promote itself.

The rest of the world will be coming soon.

Real Places in SL: North America

So I have done a few entries about builds based on real places. I really like these kinds of builds and thought I’d try tracking as many as I can find down and posting about the best ones. I found enough to do this in a few entries, so I’m breaking it down by continent, and I am starting with North America.

Far and away the coolest real life build in North America that I found is a brand new one based on Campeche Mexico at Visit Mexico 3. This is part of a three server build exploring the Yucatan Peninsula. The southern half is a quaint mexican village, the northern half is a scale build of a mayan temple complex (above).

The Visit Mexico build is sponsored by the Mexico Tourism Board, and includes quite a few things to see and do. Here’s me on a horse in front of Chichen Itza. While visiting these servers, turn on your audio. These servers have original music piping through.

Heading north to the United States, there are a few cool builds. The above pictured is New Orleans on the Big Easy server, where charity events are occasionally held. Bordering that is a server dedicated to Biloxi Mississippi.

Another town that is sponsoring their own cool two server build is Galveston Texas, a town built on an island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Leaving the Gulf, and heading to the Pacific ocean, there is a miniature San Diego California called Diegoland to check out. Also a nice build of Venice Beach, complete with roller skate paths, murals, and an ugly lifeguard tower, that is pretty much the staple all along the California coast.

Flying over most of the US we come to New York City, which has inspired a few nice builds. I previously mentined the incomplete Times Square build. Also worth checking out is Central Park (above), part of a three server build with a lifesize WTC and Statue of Liberty in the other two. The best New York City builld though is probably Washington Square Park, which like Times Square includes a subway station underground. Another really nice one is the NYC server build.

Finally, a trip through North America would not be complete without a visit to our neighbor to the north, Canada. Doing a search, led me to discover a very nice Toronto build called Canada Post – Maple Leaf on a mainland server.

Before ending this part, check out the Iowa server. Lots of straight roads and mostly empty, just like the real Iowa. There are some bits of Americana worth checking out though.

3D Virtual Times Squares

Above is a video demo of Times Square built in Multiverse which is now available as a demo of the Multiverse platform.

Its not the first time Times Square has been represented virtually. If you have Second life you can click here to go to times square, or if you have Google Earth you can click here.

There are also panoramic photo viewers of Times Square like this one or this one, or you can go to Google street view

Virtual Singapore in "Amazing Worlds"

A new 3D Virtual World Company called Amazing Worlds specializes in 3D Tourism. I’m not sure what they have in mind, as the last two entries in this blog demonstrate better ways to do tourism in 3D. They are testing a "Singapore" 3D environment, and here is a demonstration video:

Not that impressive so far. My visit to Virtual Kazakhstan was more immersive and more informative. This is obviously still in the alpha stage. Maybe they will get better with time?