New answers and more questions regarding the upcoming virtual world Blue Mars

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I learned considerably more about Blue Mars last night, which is not named after the science fiction classic by Kim Stanley Robinson, despite the fact that its founder, Henk Rogers, is a big sci-fi fan.

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By the time he left his secure job where he’d been managing business development for the division, nearly 28 million units of Microsoft’s X-Box 360 had sold worldwide in just over three years. The global economy was imploding, and still Jim Sink packed his belongings in rainy Redmond, WA and hopped on a flight to Honolulu where he would become vice president of business development for Avatar Reality, the company that has been developing Blue Mars since December of 2006.

There, he joined interactive game luminaries Henk Rogers (creator of Tetris, Blue Lava Wireless and founder of the Blue Planet Foundation, among other things), Kazuyui Hashimoto (formerly vice president of technology at Electronic Arts) and 21 others, all working at breakneck-speed towards the Beta launch this June of a new virtual world.



Until recently, not much has been known about Blue Mars except that it will be significantly different from both Second Life® and OpenSim in that it will be powered by the bleeding-edge game engine CryEngine 2 that boasts unparalleled and nearly photorealistic graphics, and that end-users will not be able to create content in-world.

Many Second Life die-hards consider this last point to be a deal-breaker since user creativity is at the very core of Second Life’s raison d'être.

More information became available last week regarding the free-to-play and free-to-download “massively multiplayer virtual world”:

* The world was built for Vista-based machines.

* The company is confident that many thousands of users will be able to simultaneously log into a single “city.” If a particular server gets so popular that it reaches its limit and performance begins to suffer, they can “shard” the server. (More on this later)

* Software Development Kits (SDK) are available for download to registered developers for free so that they could begin creating Blue Mars-compatible content offline. Both the development kit and the preview editor are WYSIWYG.

* Despite rumors to the contrary and in regards to performance, the company stated that most 3D cards on the market today will be able to run Blue Mars, and that even ATI 4850 cards that go for about $120 after rebates can “deliver a strong performance.”

* There is no geographic continuity between places in Blue Mars. Each place or city is a node in the Blue Mars network. Each place is usually around 2x2k. Places can link to one another but you can't fly across a contiguous space above a certain size. When you move from place to place, there is a loading screen.

* “Easy to program” artificial intelligence will be offered to developers who are interested in having conversational NPCs (non-player characters/bots). Avatar-Reality has created an AI gateway to allow third parties to link to their own AI servers. They hope to catalyze the development of game AI by “providing a platform for people to integrate their AIs in an affordable high fidelity real time online environment.”

* The Blue Mars Dollar (pegged to a fixed rate against the US dollar) is a single integrated currency system that “lets developers easily and securely charge for items and subscriptions.” End users can buy packs of currency through the Blue Mars client or through a web site. They can use a credit card, Paypal, or retail Paybycash cards to buy Blue Mars currency. There are no refunds on Blue Mars currency and end users can't cash out. However, if you are registered as a developer or vendor with Avatar Reality, you can charge Blue Mars dollars for goods and services and get paid in US dollars or your local equivalent currency through Paypal.

* Gambling will not be allowed.

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I spoke at length with Jim Sink last night.

Your business model is that of providing a platform to developers so that they can turn around and create their own Cities, RP games, or sublease land to others. What about government? What are your Terms of Service? Will each developer rule his or her fiefdom? Will each developer be responsible for newbie education in that environment?

We’re still working out the ToS, but yes, developers will control and set content rules for their regions. There are two ways that developers can get started: they can manage their own City/game server in the Blue Mars network or they may choose to sub-lease land from an existing City developer, which could be a City block, for example. Avatar Reality charges a setup fee and monthly fees to keep your place online, but rather than set our fees based on land size, we charge based on concurrent user capacity (CCU.) It works like the minutes plan on a mobile phone. Our promotional pricing is available under NDA and our public pricing will be available later in the summer.



In August 2008, Avatar-Reality announced that Virtual Space Entertainment, Inc. (VSE), led by the much celebrated artist and concept designer Syd Mead for films such as Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron had become a third-party developer.

Will users have access to voice at launch?

No. We’re working on that and realize that it is important. When rolling out a complicated platform like this, we need to first make sure that it is stable and secure.

I understand that Blue Mars was built for Vista based machines. I’m working off of Windows XP. Will I be able to run it? And what about Mac users?

Yes, no problem for XP, but Cryengine doesn't run on OS X, so no support for Macs. Boot Camp works if you want to dual boot, and server-side rendering services like Online should help expand our market to netbooks and Macs.

What about integrating the web to your world, such as HTML access? Any unique offerings in that area as compared to Second Life?

We can’t render HTML pages natively, but there are multiple ways to work with the web. You can display Flash-based content and the data can go in both directions, so you can update a page out world with content that is going on in-world and vice-versa. When people want to draw from a database, in other virtual worlds it has to go through the hosting service. In Blue Mars, the client can connect directly to the data source and doesn’t have to go through our servers. For example, a movie that is screening in-world is not streamed by Blue Mars; that movie is pointed to an external server. Video will be handled using Scaleform, a flash compatible middleware package that we use for all our UI.

What about scripted objects? What language will you use? Can developers introduce their own scripts?

Yes. LUA-based scripting and our own Casual Games API to give developers a head start.

You say that Blue Mars will be scalable for thousands of simultaneous users per region, and that you have the option to shard a server if it gets too popular. Please describe, in lay terms, what “sharding the server” means?

If it got to the point where 10,000 simultaneous users got to be too much for that region - and we won’t know until we get there - we will probably want to mirror that region (make a duplicate of the region).

How easily will people be able to rejoin their friends if a region gets sharded? What if people are having sex or giving a presentation, teaching a class, or waiting for a purchased item to be delivered? Will they be separated from their friends? And while we are on the topic, will you allow sex in Blue Mars?

We haven’t decided yet on the sex question. As for sharding, it wouldn’t work like that. The developer could instance the entire server and call it “New Honolulu.” You would add that server to a list of several Honolulus. We would never split it and take half the users one way and half the other way. We will also integrate messaging tools so you can join your friends in the different shards of the single server.

We’ve heard about developers, RP gamers, and shoppers from you, but are you also targeting business?

Businesses tend to be excited about Blue Mars for a few reasons. A lot of people in real estate have all these terabytes that are stuck on their hard drives. Instead of creating a new way to build 3D assets, we’ve created import tools. Using a CAD program, they can bring those terabytes into Blue Mars with very little effort and then show off model homes and model communities in an interactive environment. As for advertisers, much depends on building a critical mass of active users.

How about educators?

We will be providing a safe and controlled environment with deep scripting and monitoring support that will give developers the ability to test and track actions and choices made in their region.



You tout robust security and content management. How will you protect developers? Content theft is a significant issue in Second Life and OpenSim.

Anyone who would say you never have to worry about content theft doesn’t know about history. What you do is build methods for the eventuality of dealing with it. Everything is encrypted in our world, and we’ve made it very difficult for people to reverse engineer the system. Say you create a new dress that you want to offer at your store. Every item, when it is uploaded into the system, gets a unique registration stamp and a time stamp. Even if someone just copied an item “visually,” the original creator can submit their code and comparing it against the time stamp, we can determine if it is in violation of the system.

Will there be an approval system for each piece of content before it can make it into the system?

No approval process.

What, in your view, is the special allure for Second Life content creators, assuming of course that they are already competent with the Blue Mars-compatible software and not just working with prims? Will they have to cozy up to the game developers to adhere to their planned environments? Let’s say you make a living creating furniture in Second Life. How might this translate to Blue Mars?

By the end of this week, there will be two editors that Blue Mars provides: A full-development environment that is completely free, though we are limiting the number of people we’re offering it to at this time. We are also releasing a streamlined sort of “sandbox” that would be ideal for a furniture creator. They can take the model that they created in 3ds Max or Maya, for instance, import it into the sandbox editor, and see exactly what it will look like in Blue Mars.

From the get out, the platform has been created with an ear to content creators and artists. “Why can’t we just continue to use the tools we normally use? I don’t want my stuff copied.” They want a reliable system to monetize their work and a universal payment system. Most digital content creators don’t work in prims. They didn’t want to create proprietary content with creation tools like prims or have to relearn how to create content.

After June, we will be providing templatized shops. Developers will sub-divide land and sublease it. Create a space, fill it with your furniture and offer things for sale. Most people will want to set up shops somewhere that is popular. We will probably be offering a limited number of sub-divided parcels to give to developers and operate a test “Demo” City in the beginning where we can roll out new features and offer a limited number of spaces in that city for people to experiment.

Will you have a web-based sales model like Second Life’s Xstreet?

Not at this time.

What about artists? How will they benefit from creating sculptures, for example?

If it is just a matter of a public space where they can share their work, they can lease the space from a City developer and put their content directly into that City. They deliver their data file to the City director and it will be up to the City developer to determine how frequently the content updates will take place, which will not be as frequent as they are in Second Life (real-time). Some might do it every day, while others might update every two weeks. Each city is condensed into a pack file that includes all the geometry and textures. The file they deliver comes in a single pack.

I realized then that we were thinking about two entirely different things. Jim talked about a coming Art Competition that will launch on April 20th. He spoke of fashion, furniture and other practical items that might be exhibited - in addition to paintings, sculpture and particles - with each participating artist receiving a 3m x 3m x 3m exhibition space in a shared virtual gallery to display their work. I described how the mixed-realities Brooklyn is Watching gallery/art-critique space in Second Life had begun with a small land parcel, thinking that all of the art would be rezzed directly on the ground, only to learn that the artists would ingeniously go underground or have their art pieces begin at ground-level and soar as far up as 3,500m in the sky. I told him about ZeroG SkyDancers and how the choreographed dancers wear cascading costumes that are many times larger in size than the avatars wearing them as they move about the sky. (More on art later).

Oh, you won’t be able to fly for the most part.

Won’t be able to fly!?

If a developer wants it, their avatars will be able to fly, but the standard locomotion is not flying. You can get into a vehicle and fly but the framework for people to locomote isn’t flying.

So each developer would have to introduce the animations and fiddle with the physics? What about teleporting?

Teleporting is a balancing act for us. Teleportation to any place at any time is a mistake for a developer. It reduces the potential for the social fabric of a place. You don’t want to make people walk everywhere though. If I want to get from point A to B there are several options beyond walking or running. If I need to move two kilometers away, it is silly to have to wait for a bus. If you have a home, you will be able get there. People will experiment with a lot of different methods.

What news have you for musicians?

People will be excited to use Blue Mars for music, a place for self-expression and community. You want to be able to create events that will draw a crowd and not have the appeal of the event be diminished by the crowd itself. The Blue Mars platform scales to support thousands of simultaneous users per region, so if you are spinning music or creating a place for people to congregate, this won’t be a concern.

Will real-time jams between musicians from all over the world be possible?

They will.

Any advantages for virtual architects?

CAD will be importable, but of course, the further you are away from 3ds Max and Maya, the more steps you will have to take. Keep in mind that you don’t need the plumbing geometry for a real-time rendering. The bottleneck isn’t the polyganol count, but the textures that are the problem. The rendering will be perfectly accurate.

I understand that you will have real-time analyses of player activity. How will marketers be able to use this excellent information?

Each City developer will set some policies. We’re not sure yet how the implementation will run out but we do know this: If it happens in world, it can be tracked and reported on in real time. How many people sat down in Toyota’s new car, for instance, along with any demographic information the users are willing to share.

That raises a number of questions regarding user privacy. Can we assume that you will protect each user’s personal information?

Yes.

Speaking of demographics, what about men playing as women, or folks who prefer not to be gender-specific? How will that play out?

It will be a matter of how they registered. We aren’t going to verify gender.

What about alts (alternative accounts)? Will you allow that?

We haven’t decided yet.

Will developers be able to limit what users can take from their City to another, or what can be introduced to their City?

You can limit what can be introduced. If you are Sony Pictures and creating a virtual Monaco and it is a black tie-only space, when a user gets there, the system can prompt that user to let them know that this is a black tie-only area and provide information about the only costumes that will be available in that region. You don’t want people running around in Speedos in your James Bond world.

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UPDATE: Soon as you're done here, you might want to skedaddle over to Dusan Writer's blog where he has an interesting discussion going and his initial analysis on Blue Mars... plus he called me a Goddess! Well, he can't be right all the time. :)

"bfa after Durer - the Ern Malley piece"

Posted by Alpha Auer

There it stands, deceptively innocent, on the corner of Pavig and Littletoe's parcel at Popcha - a flat white panel; a beautiful drawing on one side, a beautiful poem on the other. Aaah... I have to work my way very carefully around this one, mind my steps... The wise thing to do would be to contact the artist and get the inside scoop and then proceed to write this post based on what I have learned.





But I am not wise: I am following the somewhat dangerous adage that if a visual work does not offer me enough to draw me in, based solely upon what I see, then it is probably not worthy of too much consideration to begin with. Perilously conceited of me, in our day of endlessly long art catalog introductions and reviews which instruct as to precisely what it is we are meant to see in a work of art and also how exactly we are meant to look at it. But nonetheless, I will follow my own nose: This double sided panel seems to tell me things and provoke thoughts that in all likelihood fall outside the intentions of the artist - and if that is indeed the case, then so be it.

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The Ern Malley incident is a poetry hoax which occurred in Australia in the 1940's, involving the poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart, and played upon Max Harris, the publisher of the modernist Angry Penguins literary journal. Harris was indeed taken in by the beauty of the 17 poems that were sent to him by someone named Ethel Malley, proclaiming that these were poems written by her deceased brother Ern Malley. Thus, Harris enthusiastically promoted the poems in his journal, completely unaware of the fact that Ern Malley was an invention of McAuley and Stewart's. They had written the whole of "The Darkening Ecliptic" in an afternoon, writing down the first thing that came into their heads, lifting words and phrases from the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Collected Shakespeare and a Dictionary of Quotations: "We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman's Rhyming Dictionary." Their ultimate aim was the discreditation of late modernist poetry, of which Max Harris was a huge proponent.

Although initially successful to the point where Max Harris was in fact completely discredited for not having been able to discriminate between hoax and reality, the passage of time revealed that the fictitious poetry of Ern Malley long outlived the poetry of either of the hoaxers. Robert Hughes wrote: "The basic case made by Ern's defenders was that his creation proved the validity of surrealist procedures: that in letting down their guard, opening themselves to free association and chance, McAuley and Stewart had reached inspiration by the side-door of parody... The energy of invention that McAuley and Stewart brought to their concoction of Ern Malley created an icon of literary value, and that is why he continues to haunt our culture."

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The front of the panel shows a fine pencil drawing which brings to mind the panoramic engravings of cities during the late Gothic and Renaissance periods. And indeed, this one here is a very fine re-interpretation of Duerer's watercolor of Innsbruck. However, an Innsbruck constructed of organic shaped sculpties which are sandwiched between the panels and indeed bleed out into the back. Forms that are referenced from a medieval city's skyline but quickly proceed to acquire a life of their own - emergent, fluid forms of growth reminiscent of the biological drawings of Ernst Haeckel. But the fact that the template drawing generating such imaginative craftsmanship is none other than "Innsbruck 1495" leads us straight back to Ern Malley, since the first of the 17 Malley poems is entitled "Duerer: Innsbruck, 1495". And sure enough, the flip side of the panel reveals the poem itself:

"I had often, cowled in the slumberous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters —
Not knowing then that Dürer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men’s dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
the black swan of trespass on alien waters."

...

So, what is the secret message that revolves around Ern Malley which Pavig Lok would have me be riddled with? The piece is hermetic, which to me is one of its main attractions. I really do not want to know, I would prefer to live with the mystery. And I would really much rather go down my own path of musings which the piece has provoked in me, follow my own train of thoughts. Good art - really really good art, powerful art does that to you: It inspires you and so help me God, right now I am most definitely inspired!

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A fictitious character, whose poetry outlived that of his two creators. And this brings to mind yet another creator of fictitious identities, the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, with his countless heteronymic identities, creating a world of imaginary people, circumstances and places. The self that generates many selves. Some closer to what we perceive to be our real selves, some more shrouded in fiction. And who is to say what is more real? Reality or fiction? What is more valuable? The somewhat stilted verse of the twosome that created Ern Malley or Ern Malley himself, who unhindered by formality and convention proceeded on to a level of creativity, which was beyond the scope of the "real" persona of its instigators.

I am of course, talking about avatars and alts - the many many selves that we create out of our one self. The lives we create that proceed to develop acts of creativity that seem to lie beyond the scope of the imaginations of our everyday, Real Life selves. These days I am heavily involved with my 5th alt: No Real Life look-alike/act-alike Alpha but a being quite unlike myself, somewhat confusing to behold even to me, her creator. And yet who is to say which one of us is more real? Or indeed carries the greater potential for creative realization?

...

Thank you Pavig Lok!

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You can teleport to Pavig Lok's "bfa after Durer - the Ern Malley piece" directly from here.

Mr(s). Bones

This is the story about Mrs. Bones (in SL: Marla Kutanaga; rez: 1/26/2008), someone who's photographs I enjoy on Flickr.

For the most part, Mrs. Bones seems docile enough...


Black Swan: After work by Mrs. Bones

... but apparently she flairs up on occasions.


Take that, Mr. Banjo by Mrs. Bones

Mrs. Bones has a counterpart: Mr. Bones (in SL: Ole Etzel - rez: 3/17/2007), and he is a pirate. He came to my attention when I viewed a number of rather unusual machinima, in which he is the protagonist. Here is the second Episode of "Mr. Bones: Dangers of Navigation."



I finally decided to get to the bottom of this bony situation and contacted my Flickr friend, Mrs. Bones.

How did you come to be Mr. Bones, or Mrs. Bones?

"After usin some human AVs first me already found mr. bones-AV as a new-bee. never changed again! :) in between it just ME! just added some stuff like beard and so on. perhaps me sailin-carib-holidays also played a role in decision to stay bony for evah! v_0

Mrs. Bones is rresult of some scary experiments done in a dark night at Tableau-Sim. She z combinin some bones, canimal-clothing and a bit of mushroom-AV + chainsaw of courrse, yarrRRrr! But as seen often in film-biz she has recorded some early b-movies..."



"Her first appearance as actress (from minute 2 on it not what you want show kids! it just like hollywood-way to become big in biz! but therefor 100%-NPIRL, haha! ;):

In both cases it wasnt the plan to promote the whole thing. Is just me that likes to look like that in mah beloved SL - accidentially recorded for youtube. #)"

Do you have an aversion to flesh? :P

"After me first crazy month in SL i couldnt see all these muscles and flesh anymore. Fleshy tanned brad-pitts whereevah you go! Me feels much safer inside me invisible-prims!"

What are your plans for Halloween?

Mrs. Bones: Me will hide inside the dog-rose in front o' me door and throw candies at likkle children heads! Grrr!
Mr. Bones: Halloween at sea is always hard, thinkin about close family-members you left behind. Me hope is to find a drifting pumpkin perhaps.

Regarding Machinima... Mr. Bones/Mrs. Bones had this to say:

"i started to record machinima because an other user motivated me to do it while me was young in SL. also a little banjo-melody me wrote needed a video and SL seemed to be best place to record widout lotta money. the plan was to improve from movie to movie and also show it to me rl-friends that have no idea what big possibilities you have in SL besides dancin at clubs and have digital-... wid each otha.

Mrs. Bones closed with these fine words:

"what has to be said: npirl is wunderbar - that means wonderful, awesome, great or simple say: me lovez it! yarRRrr! me often meets ppl who wantz that everythin in sl looks like in rl. that often freaks me out a bit cuz me loves idea of not-possible-in-rl-stuff!

ahoy so far - yours,
Mr(s). Bones

fineprint: did i mention i LOVE SECOND LIFE!"

And we love you, Mr(s). Bones! I'm certainly looking forward to watching the future adventures of the Bones family and ahoy to you all!

The Era of the Bots begins in earnest today

Way back on January 19th, NPIRLers had an Alpha preview demo of Easy Babcock's (aka Rohan Freeman; rez: 5/15/2006) Sine Wave Actorbot System, and today this service goes on the market. In the simplest terms, Sine Wave has created a new bot system for use in virtual worlds that enables robots (avatars other than yourself but logged in under a separate account by you = your alts) to work as performing actors and sales bots on your behalf.


Easy Babcock is the avatar sporting the racing flag texture

The cultural and practical ramifications of this are considerable. For one thing, history has shown us that once a technology becomes possible, you cannot sweep it under the carpet... or as someone once said about Napster, "You can't put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube." Bots will have their naysayers, and certainly I have been among the loudest to condemn the slovenly and cheating use of alts running off libSL to boost traffic numbers and thus the appearance that a parcel is popular.

I also admit discomfort at the idea of interacting with a bot, but after several discussions with Easy, I am steeling myself to think of them in much the same way I do about my computer, my car, and phone. Actorbots will be there to serve a specific purpose, I tell myself. I certainly would like to have one or two in Real Life to tidy up the house, or rub my tired neck and shoulders after a long day at the computer.

If I were selling clothes, or skins or shapes, or a myriad of other things, I'd certainly want a few of these to show off my wares to their best advantage, especially since no prim count would be added to my land.

For me, and for several others who attended Sine Wave's Actorbot demo, a critical ingredient to the acceptance and success of this enterprise would be our ability to visually distinguish - instantly - between a bot and an avatar that is being actively driven by a human. Linden Lab is simply going to have to step up and make a few important cosmetic changes to address this new phenomenon.

Take a look at this piece of Machinima, where all of the actors are bots. Keep in mind, too, that they all could be enacting any animation that is available in Second Life, and as far as animations are concerned, no one makes better motion capture (mocap) for in-world use than Sinewave; their dance loops are unquestionably the most widely used and popular on the grid.


Here, six freestyle footballers... all actors are bots. Easy estimates it would have taken three times as long to shoot this had they been real actors

Easy explained:

"The system sits on top of libsecondlife for logging avatars in via our servers, and giving them complex routines to perform. It is designed so that anyone can log their own alts into Second Life via our servers and give them jobs - mannequins, salesbots, Machinima performers, live performers, game NPCs, etc.

The bot navigates by moving from prim to prim. We could allow them off-prims and might do that at a later point, but they are set up so that you can only log them in on land where you have build permissions. This way, people can't use them for griefing.

I think their biggest use is in bringing otherwise static environments to life. The bot can also receive money and give objects. A bot can be used for 1. Creating sessions - so that when it's dealing with one person it doesn't try and interact with someone else; 2. Changing outfits on command, and 3. Allowing users to trade and swap the routines they create, so people can build complex sales routines and so on, and everyone can build on them.

In terms of pricing, the cost is $5L per hour that a bot is logged in, which basically covers our server cost, with no upfront fee."

During the demo, Damanios Thetan asked if it is possible to add an API option, "so I can have IM's sent to it, being resent to a URL using REST, where the external server gives the response?" Easy responded, "We're integrating them with CRM systems and so on - we will make an API open."


Click to see large

Not surprisingly, one of the first questions that came up was if the bots could be used by the virtual sex industry. Easy replied, "I haven't shown anyone in the sex industry yet - but I guess there are all sorts of interesting things they will do with a bot like this. Again, I guess it's about how well the operator sets up the bot."

In terms of different applications, he gave us a few examples. "We're working on a satire show. We're getting Real Life impressionists to do sketches, which we will then be capturing in our motion capture studio and broadcasting in here on 'spawn on demand' comedy bots.

"We first used them for a live concert we did with a band called Orbital. We had 800 avatars wanting to come, so we did the show across 12 sims. Of course, the band couldn't be in every sim - but their bots could. You can build a bot to render all sorts of dialogues with other people, and the interactions you create will be completely unique to you."



Osprey Therian asked, "What limits what we can do with them?" Per Easy, "The primary limit is that we tether them to prims - so people don't use them for abuse, and we monitor the servers, so if someone creates a loop for spamming or griefing we shut it down. Bot transparency is an interesting issue!"

"For us, Second Life isn't about 3D per se. 3D just creates space for people to meet. It's the people that count. Bots are an extension of that. We can't all be everywhere, all the time, but our bots can." - Easy Babcock

How will we tell the difference between a bot and a "live" avatar?

Easy explained: "Our bots are all hard-wired so that if you ask them 'are you a bot,' the have to say 'yes,' and tell you the name of the person who's account they are logged under. We've been lobbying Linden Lab to give them different coloured hover text and yellow dots on the map, too.

Some expressed concerns about "live" avatars pretending that they are bots, to which Easy responded, "We can't stop people pretending that they are bots; we can only stop bots from pretending to be people. :) Let's face it, till now, bots are used mostly for behind the scenes stuff and not to the good of the grid. We want to change that and make bots a valuable part of the Second Life community."

Perhaps some people might even appreciate the companionship of a bot.:P I loved what Tooter Claxton had to say... "I have met some of them. They were very nice and patient and didn't mind listening to me talk for three hours about my toe nail clippings collection. It's nice to be able to share your thoughts with people sometimes."

You can visit Sine Wave Actorbots System's HQ by teleporting directly from here.