So long, farewell...

Back when this blog began, 750 posts ago, there were few blogs that did write-ups and reviews of great content and installations in Second Life. This has changed dramatically, especially over the past year. Today, a number of academic journals are gearing up to focus on virtual content, and they will be the appropriate venues for most of the topics we've been covering lately.

I like to think Not Possible IRL has raised awareness of quality content, not just in Second Life but in other virtual worlds where User Generated Content is possible. We've certainly showcased a lot of extraordinary talent and work.

I've had dozens of brilliant collaborators, chief amongst them Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter), who blogged at least 100 meaty posts. Alpha is not only an academic, and a spectacular virtual artist in her own right, but also an inspired thinker and writer.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the intoxicating encouragement, imagination, resourcefulness and originality of the members of my virtual working group, Not Possible IRL, all of them Giants of the metaverse.

Instead of tiring of it, my interest in great 3D immersive content is at an all-time high, so I'm not going away, just redirecting my energies in new ways.

A big thanks to all who have been so supportive, galvanizing me to look in this direction and that... leading me to uncover (and showcase) treasures (and people) under every pixelated rock and leaf. Don't stop.

I'll still be twittering my adventures and discoveries, so feel free to track Bettina Tizzy there.

So long.

The distance between virtual worlds and augmented reality is... evaporating

The four-day International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality is about to kick off in a few hours in Orlando, Florida.

For openers, the Visual Media Lab at Israel's Ben Gurion University, together with the Human Interface Technology lab out of New Zealand, have made it possible for a user to sketch things, free-hand, and see them simulated in realtime 3D.

Out of the Blue: Why I care about Blue Mars

With barely any content to speak of, no currency, audio, media, or voice, and a User Interface that allows for limited communication and camera movements, it’s not hard to understand why Blue Mars has its detractors. Despite all of its early Beta deficiencies, however, there are compelling reasons to believe that it holds great promise for current and future aficionados of 3D immersive environments.

Most Second Life residents I’ve spoken with don’t know quite what to make of Blue Mars,
but none appear to believe that it will supplant or even displace their virtual world, though I do sense a modicum of concerned solidarity and defensiveness. There’s this Capulet-Montague thingy going on… like, if you so much as praise one aspect of Blue Mars it’s a form of treason or something. Personally, I subscribe to the Romeo and Juliet canon: “Can’t we all just get along?” Or am I misquoting?

Conventional wisdom would indicate that Second Life, which – ironically – could be called a mature virtual world by comparison, with its entrenched communities, tons of content and hundreds (thousands?) of events a week, is here to stay… but Blue Mars, in its infancy, has not yet begun to demonstrate its gravitas. It will take time, money, and a growing community of dedicated developers and residents.


Would you feed this little bitty baby vitamins or Kryptonite?

In development

Every time I have a chance to speak with Jim Sink, recently named CEO of Avatar Reality, the company that owns Blue Mars, I come away feeling energized and hopeful for this budding platform. In a recent conversation, I asked him what they were concentrating on at the moment. “In order to create a vibrant virtual world community, we need to have outstanding content and we need to attract extraordinary developers. In a coming release, we’ll be offering the ability to create clothing, and we’re providing new uploading tools, too,” he explained.


Meet Blue Mars’ Ruth. Yes, these are default avatars created by unfashionistas at Avatar Reality, with a little fiddling I did around the eyes within the Face Customization editor. Please hurry up fashion designers, and make me something I want to wear

“At present, most of our energy is focused on laying the groundwork to prepare Blue Mars as a development platform. Of course, things like the UI are exceptionally important – we know how important this is to the community – and we’ve already begun to implement changes based on users’ feedback. There’s no shortage of things we need to do.”

Money makes the world go around (especially if you can cash in/cash out)

And one of the things that Blue Mars plans to do soon is launch the Blue Mars currency and, as Jim puts it, “the fundamentals of the economy.” I wondered out loud how musicians who depend on tips would make out in Blue Mars since only developers can cash out. To this, Jim had some very good news: “All developers will be able to cash out and anyone can become a developer, but Blue Mars requires more information and needs to know a lot more about you if you are going to be moving money in and out of the platform.“

Location, Location, Location (and putting a price on things)

Another impending feature will reside on the web-based Developer MyPages: Soon developers will have the ability to upload blocks of shops, set prices to items – including ready-to-use residences, clothing and stuff, and also real estate. Land! This is cool, but here I am going to dig my heels in the ground hard… there ain’t NO way I’m going to have a cookie-cutter home. Not here, not there, not anywhere. I once lived in a development and had the bad habit of driving right by my home because it was indistinguishable from all the others on the block. This just isn’t my thing. I don’t do it in real life, and I sure as heck am not going to do it in my virtual life. Yes, I’m that neighbor that annoys everyone by painting her house purple.


Blue Mars Betti in the kitchen? No, no, no! This isn't the kind of cooking I plan to do


Web to Blue Mars and back

Blue Mars has every expectation that they will be unveiling new MyPage web pages for end-users, too, from which they can edit their in-world profile, and purchase Blues, among other things.

Repeat after me: It’s a PLATFORM

Many of us, myself included, have been calling Blue Mars “a virtual world,” when it is actually a platform for many virtual worlds, and a staging area for all kinds of new – to me - talented people. For developers, entrepreneurs, artists it is a next-gen technological solution from which you can build your environments. For end users (the jury is still out on what we are going to be called… Residents? Martians? Colonists?) it is intended to be a destination offering rich diversity and choices.



These gorgeous photos of coming new content courtesy of Richard H. Childers, president of Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE), one of the first City developers on Blue Mars

“Scurvy-inducing 3D”

Jim Sink recently tweeted, and of course, I looked, “CryEngine isn't just for realism. Check out this amazing work that would look right at home in Blue Mars.”

Games… yes! Blue Mars is flinging its doors open to members of the thriving Crytek modders community, inviting them to create their own games and content. A recent scrumptious example is Monkey Island 2, in which free-lancing 3D artist Hannes Appell first demonstrated how, with a little “voodoo,” he could enhance the gorgeous hand painted 2D concept art with a basic camera projection. Those pirates sure are mean to little froggies.



He then went on to demonstrate – just for fun - how original Monkey Island 2 backgrounds can look and feel in a modern 3d game engine, by building the sets with Maya and then exporting them into Cryengine's Sandbox editor.



Hannes is a Bavarian and now lives in Germany where he will soon graduate from the Institute for Animation & Visual Effects of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. If LucasArts doesn’t hire him after this little “experiment,” someone sure will. This video has only been posted on YouTube for 19 days and already it’s had 329,000 views and the comments beg him to “MAKE A REAL MOD OUT OF IT.” A little Blue Mars, Hannes?

Role Playing

I’m also like a stuttering deer caught in the headlights when it comes to Role Playing, but were I an elf, Trekkie, furry, or inclined to hang out in locations that attempt to accurately portray a historical era, such as Second Life’s Roman Forum or the 1920’s Berlin Project, Blue Mars’ built-in ability to control incoming content such as how an avatar looks or dresses would make suspension of belief considerably more intense.


Photo courtesy of VSE, a Blue Mars City developer

Architecture and design

I like the way h3oworldz, a CryEngine modder group, used the platform to demonstrate how valuable a "3D realtime walkthrough" a structure or set can be to demo environmental effects and scale. They would likely be interested in hearing about DB Bailey from Second Life and his success at using a virtual world to demonstrate a real life structure to ultimately sell a real life project.

Vinyl"Club from h3oconceptz on Vimeo.

Machinima

VAM United is a German group working on a science fiction movie project using the CryEngine2 game engine. They’ve created this proof-of-concept as they prepare to produce a feature-length machinima based on a “loved and acclaimed” book. I highly recommend that you watch it here for better quality, but here is the YouTube version for you non-clickers:



What will the work of the likes of Lyric Lundquist or Lainy Voom or Colemarie Soleil look like, shot in Blue Mars?

Look at this one. Tell me, with a straight face, that you can't make use of these graphics and physics to create your vids...

See also:

• August 29, 2009: This is it! New virtual world Blue Mars rolls out open Beta
• July 31, 2009: More Blue Mars – The official roll-out dates (and some musings)
• April 15, 2009: New answers and more questions regarding the upcoming virtual world Blue Mars

Tezcatlipoca Bisiani: Thoughts on SLCC

Before I attended Second Life®'s Community Convention in San Francisco earlier this month, I knew that Tezcatlipoca Bisiani (aka Andrew Sempere) was the Boston-based cross-eyed jackal avatar who conducted design research and taught computational art for IBM's Collaborative User Experience Group/Center for Social Software. I knew that he holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters of Science from the MIT Media Lab, and that he was the University of Kentucky's first Visiting Curator in Virtual Residence and that he curates IBM's art sims (Glyph Graves and Bryn Oh shows were nothing short of magnificent). Andrew first experienced Second Life as an alpha tester for LindenWorld (circa 2001), but logged off "relatively unimpressed." Seems he returned to Second Life in 2006 and soon discovered "what LindenWorld had lacked: a community of skilled content creators whose work was playful, engaging and beautiful."

In San Francisco, I discovered that his eyes twinkle, that he wears his great hair a little bit spiked and leans forward and really listens with his whole body, and that he has an air of playfulness about him that's contagious. I hope I will know him the rest of my life. - Bettina Tizzy




Andrew and Tezca - Universally interesting and interested in everything - BT


by Tezcatlipoca Bisiani

When Bettina asked me to write about my experience at SLCC I thought perhaps I'd write about the keynotes (in general very disappointing), the incredible tour of the Exploratorium courtesy of Patio Plasma (amazing, thank you!), the delicious NPIRL Dim Sum (all the food was PIRL, but honestly with Dim Sum that's just fine). In the end I think what I want to focus on here is us, and what we can do as a group to further the cause of shared 3D virtual worlds as a place for creative exploration, because much like everything else in Second Life, no one else is going to make it happen.

If there was one thing that my visit to SLCC last week brought home for me it is the conviction that Second Life is not, and never has been, about the technology. It is not, and never has been, about Linden Lab, nor any other company or organization. Everything good about this universe comes from the people in it, in all their messy chaotic glory.

I'm not suggesting that we ought to give up trying to influence our infrastructure, but whenever I used to speak about Second Life to people less familiar with it, I found myself in an uncomfortable position as apologist. Why was the server so slow? Why was the interface so difficult to use? What about those flying penises? No doubt you have fielded dozens of these questions yourselves, and to be fair to Linden, things are much better than they were, But I for one have always found these questions incredibly frustrating. They're not the right questions! Instead ask me this: Why would an otherwise sane and healthy adult professional work a full work week and then spend hundreds of hours logged into a virtual world? Why, exactly, do we care so damn much?

In its specifics, the answer is as varied as each of us, but in general it all ends in relationships, and community, and the sheer joy of building a world with people of like mind. So these days, when people ask why I spend an inordinate amount of time in this odd artificial universe I have an answer, and if you read nothing else in this post, read this: it’s you (or most of you, anyway). It’s the community that includes many of the Linden staff, and also independent scholars and musicians, professors, painters, physicists who run hands-on museums, ad executives, business professionals, students, mathematicians who explain hyperbolic space with aplomb, magicians who perform even when their hands get stuck in car doors, writers, IT directors, teenagers, illustration students willing to share their avatar making secrets, weekend Goths, vampires, old, young, straight, queer, able bodied and not, sushi experts, world record holding skydivers – even the griefers who rent party busses and cover corporate headquarters in chalk slogans.

This is so true that even a week later I’m still thrilled by it. To be sure there is the happy conference bubble (short time frame, beer and free food make many things possible), but even accounting for that, the last thing Eshi Otawara said to me, standing outside of Lori's Diner before heading out for the day, rang true: It's about the sense of touch: "We can be anything we want in Second Life. Friends, even lovers, but in-world we can't hug." Unexpectedly for me, this became the proof I never knew I needed, confirming what I’ve known only with my eyes and my brain for the last few years: SL is real. You can touch it.

Second Life is now in the downward slope of the Gartner Hype Cycle, and rather than being upset about this, I think we should rejoice: it took the dot com bubble bursting for the real value to emerge, and now that the novelty has worn off, those of us who are left standing can get down to the business of showing the world what really matters. Unfortunately this also means that we should see less direct support for our work, because Second Life in general, and our corner in particular, is so small from a business perspective that it amounts (in the words of Clay Shirky) to a rounding error. Moreover, our job as creative content creators is to push the boundaries of the universe, and the goal of any profitable company is to trend towards commodity users. It's not that we're at cross purposes exactly, but we certainly serve a different set of ideals.

Again, I don't think this is cause for despair, but it does mean that we need to become ever more self reliant, and the onus on outreach is on us. If you are part of a professional community and you believe in virtual worlds, focus your attention on bringing your community to us - we can only be strengthened by connecting to the real world. You don't need to tell the world how amazing SL is, instead tell us the amazing things your RL communities are doing with SL. Inspire us. If you are an artist, work on connecting your in-world practice to those on the outside. Share your world, don't leave it locked inside a server somewhere. Go and get the audience, don't expect them to just show up.

If you want something to happen technically, focus on supporting the open source communities that are trying to make it happen. Support the development of unofficial viewers. Think carefully about the need for Second Life alternatives, content portability and free reliable backups, not because you want to boycott Linden in a fit of pique, but because you care about this community and realize how fragile it is to hang on the future of a single corporation. Start truly respecting your work, because it really shouldn't be surprising (as I learned at SLCC) that someone like Ina Centaur pays her actors union wages. She said it herself: they are a professional theater company, why wouldn't I?

Above all continue to push the boundaries of the universe in surprising and exciting ways because that's really the reason we're all here. And when someone asks you why you spend so much time online, or inquires as to the business value of virtual worlds, answer them loud and clear: It's all about the people, and the community, and what we continue to build together.

Avatar movie is ahead of the curve, and you usually are, too, Vanity Fair

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

This is a gentle rant brought on by Vanity Fair magazine's twitter: "@VanityFairmag Don't Be Fooled by Avatar's Lame Trailer http://is.gd/2s7YX #Avatar" a couple of hours ago. For like forever, I've been known to say that if I only had access to three magazines to keep up with the state-of-play, smarter, faster, better-informed intelligentsia, I'd pick Vanity Fair, Businessweek, and Utne Reader, and that selection still stands, but it's teetering. Vanity Fair, don't make the same mistake that Chris Anderson and his Wired made in 2006. I forgive you, but hurry up and realize that avatars are ahead of the curve. Like you. In fact, your readers are mostly going to embrace their avatarhood and evangelize about it within the next three years, and that "lame" Avatar trailer and movie are going to have something (if not a lot) to do with it.

~*~

It was 1997 and opening night. I recall whispering in the dark to my companion that if Kate Winslet's aged character "throws that damned necklace into the sea, I'm going to have to leave the theater." And she did. And I did. To this day, I have never seen the ending of James Cameron's Titanic, the all-time highest grossing film at the box office. So yes, I have questioned and even suffered visceral adverse reactions to Cameron's work.

Yesterday, I watched the teaser trailer for Avatar, slated to hit theaters this December. I've spent the better part of the last two years traipsing around virtual worlds as an avatar, so I'll confess that the poor trailer was in trouble even before I hit the "play" button. My overlayed cynical filter was as thick as the bottom of a glass Coke bottle and I fully expected to loathe it.



But I didn't hate it. Turns out that I can hardly wait to see it, and it made me want to learn more about the plot, the script and how and where it was produced. It looks as real as the island of Kauai does, which stands to reason because that's where most of it was shot.

I don't play games in virtual worlds. As Metanomics puts it, I'm all over the serious aspects of three-dimensional persistent, immersive, massively multi-player online "games," such as art, architecture, business and education. I've put up with an awful lot to be an early-adopter avatar, including lag so bad that my "character" couldn't move, umpteen flying penises and banana phones (annoying griefing devices employed by sophomoric idiots), communications so shoddy that my text chat never made it to the person or people I was trying to speak with, and hundreds upon hundreds of *crashes,* to mention only a few of the ways that I have been inconvenienced.

Things are picking up for avatars though and at a high rate of speed. Stability, scalability, tools for user-created content, communication, and collaboration are all vastly improving. The number of choices an avatar has on how to spend a quality hour consistently overwhelms me in much the same way selecting an art film to screen in Manhattan does. And just this week, industry analysts at Piper Jaffray released their forecasts for virtual goods, indicating that 2009 US revenues are expected to hit $621 million (134% over 2008), and $2.5 billion in 2013. Global revenues from virtual goods should exceed $2.2 billion this year, and climb to $6 billion by 2013. I'm old enough to remember when total online (2.0 web-based) revenues were lower than that, and how so many detractors doubted they'd rise significantly for decades. Heh.

Just two days ago I finally got around to downloading the client for the new virtual world Blue Mars that's in private Beta until... sometime real soon now (maybe in a couple of weeks?), and I can only say that I was overcome and dazzled by the life-like graphics, the rolling ocean foam, the exuberant vegetation and shadows that behaved the way real shadows do. In fact, it looked a lot like the trailer for Avatar.


Virtual Space Entertainment is just one of the developers rushing to create content on Blue Mars' gorgeous CryEngine2 platform

So wait, Vanity Fair. Please tell us why the Avatar trailer is lame?

More Blue Mars – The official roll-out dates (and some musings)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I don’t think anyone expects it to be a Second Life® killer – hundreds of thousands of avatars have too much invested there in friendships, land, content and businesses already - but Blue Mars is the first solid contender to enter the skirmish for dominance in the user-generated content category of virtual worlds. And yes, I did just say user-generated content, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Jim Sink, vice president of Hawaii-based Avatar Reality, the company that owns Blue Mars, shared with me last night that they plan on rolling out their first registrations to the “many, many thousands of players” on their waiting list on Monday, August 3, and open Beta for all is scheduled for August 31st. So this is it.

I reported on most known aspects of the coming free-to-play platform in depth three months ago but I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought since then. It has already won me over on several counts:

• Gorgeous and photorealistic graphics thanks to the ultimate game engine available today: CryEngine 2.
• Serious control over what enters your City. Three little words: No Flying Penises. Likewise unwanted scripts, “prims,” and inappropriately (or offensively) dressed avatars. These safety features and checks are boons to businesses, educators, event organizers, Role-Playing Games and advertisers.
• Deep control over your content. Since every item that is imported into Blue Mars gets an encrypted and dated watermark, IP dangers to creators such as copybot dissipate dramatically.
• Scalable to thousands of simultaneous users per region. - Can’t attend that Coldplay concert that’s taking place 3,000 miles away? Why not hear and see them stream live into Blue Mars?
• Marketers will be keen on the fact that player activity can be tracked and reported on in real-time.
• Using a CAD program plus Blue Mars’ import tool, you can bring in your 3D assets… an intriguing opportunity for anyone who wants to demo objects, large or small.
• A simplified and easy-to-use interface in the universal language of symbols.

Musings and mumblings on USER GENERATED CONTENT

Blue Mars loses important points in areas that are critical to me, not the least of which is the fact that amateur content creators will have no place there. On the surface, quality control isn’t a bad thing, but when I consider that so many – MOST! - of the creators I most appreciate in Second Life came from non-artistic backgrounds only to discover that they could make marvelous things, I begin to mourn the loss of that particular magic. On the other hand, and to be fair, I wonder what professional artists will begin to work in virtual worlds (that I can inhabit) because of this environment.

And I’m unhappy that my Mac friends can’t join me there unless they are using Boot Camp, and I want to fly everywhere, thank you very much. No bloody waiting at virtual bus stops for me!

I’m “iffy” on what sounds like extreme homogenization. While the robust safety and marketing features appeal to me, the endless variety and idiosyncrasies that I mostly find charming in Second Life will have no place in Blue Mars. Or will they? The funny thing is, it turns out that what I dislike about Second Life is also what I like about it. The ugly content makes me value the beauty all the more. But you know what? I bet Blue Mars will have its share of yucky, or mundane and mediocre bleah stuff, too. After all, just cause it’s pro doesn’t make it pretty, does it?

And here is something I really want to share with you…

Jim spoke about user-generated content in Blue Mars last night in such a persuasive way. He asserted that ANYBODY can be a registered developer. He stressed that Blue Mars’ tools are free and so are 3D model creation tools like Blender and Google Sketchup.

Hmmm. Nowadays, many leading Second Life content creators are working off-world and importing their sculpties already. And what’s more, it’s been almost a year since I spoke with Aminom Marvin about the next big thing in virtual worlds that support content creation: 3D mesh objects. We’ve been speculating and hoping that Linden Lab will introduce them later this year. Well, it is almost “later this year” now. So how is all this different from people working off-world and importing their content into Blue Mars? And why would we moan and groan about an environment that actually protects creators’ intellectual property in ways that Second Life is technologically incapable of? I have so very much to think about.

I’m thinking… I just may have to have a foot in both worlds. THREE LIVES. Oh boy.

Wherein I attempt to describe what I am looking for: NPIRL content guidelines

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

By the time each Thursday rolls around, I'm frantically trying to catch up with all the first-rate landmarks and notecards and emails I've received, rich with hot tips on new and undiscovered content and ideas that just might be worth sharing with the 2,600 members of my Second Life® groups Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL.

I send at least one in-world notice a week - usually late on Fridays - featuring some 3 to 20 items that I've culled from hundreds of these suggestions, and I'm often asked what my selection criteria is. In addition to intriguing building tips, info on other virtual worlds, and advocacy for the rights of content creators in Second Life, my main focus is on creations that are Not Possible in Real Life.

Are my selections opinionated, discriminating and highly subjective? Yes, they are. There are many other ways to discover information and calendar listings on the topics relevant to your particular interests in Second Life, so this is my personal attempt to provide you with a distillation of what I think is cool, trendsetting and even groundbreaking, always within the context of Not Possible IRL.

Am I an academic, schooled in the arts? I am not. Jay Newt of Brooklyn is Watching once called me a theme park mistress and I can subscribe to that. Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL are not art groups, and for that matter, this blog is not an art blog. They do feature and include art, but that is not all we are about.

That said, what follows is an attempt to describe virtual content that is Not Possible in Real Life or NPIRL. These guidelines were drafted with only prim and/or script-based content in mind, as I don’t believe – but I’d like for you to prove me wrong - that there is such a thing as NPIRL music. How that music is generated, however, can definitely be NPIRL (Komuso Tokugawa and Dizzy Banjo, I’m looking at you!).

Theatre and live performances often enable suspension of disbelief via real-time special effects and situations (think DanCoyote Antonelli’s ZeroG SkyDancers, CARP's Metropolis, Gazira’s Hammering the Void, and Grace McDunnough’s Musimmersion, for example).

Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) CONTENT (architecture, art, landscaping) is a generous combination of the following:

* Surreal, fantastical

* Indulges our sense of make-believe (can do strange, wonderful and surprising things; makes us laugh)

* Can fundamentally affect our behavior, perception and even our self-perception

* Physically impossible in Real Life, or could only be created at enormous/unrealistic expense (defies the laws of gravity and physics in general)

* Immersive

* It almost goes without saying that NPIRL creations in virtual worlds are three-dimensional. While photography and other 2D images may portray NPIRL content, they are difficult to render in-world and for this reason, I enjoy them best on the web. I am an avid user of both Flickr and Koinup, where so many of you post images taken in virtual worlds. I wish more machinimators would join the Not Possible IRL YouTube group, though their group management tools there are very poor.

NPIRL FASHION is garment-based and not a biological part of the avatar. In addition to clothing the avatar, it might do strange and wonderful things, or make us do strange and wonderful things. It can defy the laws of physics or expose the avatar’s body to extreme heat or cold or exploding particles or sharp things. It might include elements (such as clouds, or sunshine, or snakes, for instance) that could never be used in Real Life.

NPIRL AVATARS are fantastical, surreal, or funny, or surprising, but they all have one thing in common: They are definitely Not Possible in Real Life. They aren't human, or dogs, cats, horses, etc., unless they are exceptionally unusual (a unicorn, for example). While nekos, faeries and elves are NPIRL, their appendages must look integrated, credible and not like props.

I want to especially thank the members of my working group Not Possible IRL for their guidance and inspiration, and the extreme explorers and content creators of the vibrant Impossible IRL community who have sent in priceless tips and ideas. All this is possible because we've pooled our efforts and share an intense appreciation for the 3D platform. I adore you!

Cubist Scarborough and The Manual: Second Life edition

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I hope you have a little spare time, dear readers, because I am about to lead you down a rabbit hole, a veritable treasure-trove of ideas so rich and varied that I have not yet been able to unearth them all myself.

As personal blogs go, Ian Truelove’s (Cubist Scarborough in Second Life®) is almost buoyant with optimism and analysis of all the inherent possibilities and joys of virtual worlds, and that’s very good news, because he’s an educator and he’s teaching 100+ students at a time, often introducing them to Second Life for the first time. He is Principal Lecturer (Technology Enhanced Learning) at the Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design, in the Faculty of Arts & Society.


Cubist makes three-dimensional holograms of people's Real Life faces. Here is one of himself


Ian (Cubist in Second Life) is watching you everywhere on the Leeds Met sim

His blog reads like a private journal at times and is chock full of insights and deliberations he has with himself and has siphoned off onto the web in a way that we might all consider and possibly benefit from… simply one of the best uses of a blog I’ve run into in a very long time. Ian expounds on the dichotomy of dealing with people in public and private spaces, both in Real Life and in Second Life. He defines and deconstructs the virtual studio. It’s a fascinating stockpile of thoughtful documents pertaining to education, Second Life, OpenSim and a project between Oxford, Leeds Metropolitan and Kings College London called Open Habitat that took place earlier this year and set out to explore how Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) can be used in Higher Education.


Ian's sculptures make it possible for you to get inside his head

Ian also designed the accompanying Open Habitat magazine that serves as a repository for vast quantities of data that the universities collected working with art and design and philosophy students, including surveys, blogposts and chatlogs.

But what I simply cannot wait to share with you is a document called The Manual: Second Life edition, a collection of micro-projects created by lecturers from the School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University that Ian adapted for Second Life as part of the Open Habitat project. You’ll find different versions, including a cut-out one with instructions for folding it, a text version, and even an iPhone version here.


The Manual: Second Life edition, in Second Life

While Ian asks that we keep all 81 tasks together with the CC license text, he did allow me to share a few of them with you, just this once, to give you a taste:

# 5 Find some gesture animations and practice using them somewhere on your own. Work out a physical comedy routine and perform it to your friends.

# 6 Find a freebie stall on the mainland. Grab 12 small objects that have something in common. Arrange all of your objects into a sequence.

# 7 Build one or more of the following:
The beginning of the world
The end of the world
A self-portrait that includes your full body
Something that happened at breakfast
An image from a recent dream
Something that has yet to happen to you

# 8 Start a cult. Establish rituals. Create a meeting place. Meet.

If this isn’t a formula for discovery and enjoyment of one’s virtual life, I don’t know what is. I believe every single newbie in Second Life should be handed a copy.

You can visit the in-world version of this document and take the notecard form of it by teleporting directly from here.

Something wicked good this way comes, and it is happening today

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

All those survey numbers and spreadsheets are beginning to register what most Residents of the bustling city that is our Second Life® already know firsthand: Virtual worlds for more than games are popping with potential for the serious stuff… business, education, science, and the arts. The naysayers are still out there, Twittering about how they don’t even have enough time for their first life, etc., etc., but they are off-world. They aren’t here to witness how this 3D world is getting stickier than molasses.

While the Real World is staggering in a recession economy, this virtual world is humming merrily to the tune of $120M in user-to-user transactions during the 1st Quarter of 2009, up 65% from the same quarter last year. Moreover, according to a recent in-world business study, 20% of Second Life’s businesses earn all their income in Second Life, with approximately 2,000 full time businesses in operation.

At the very heart of this bubbling stew is an organization called Metanomics that explores the serious uses of virtual worlds in the company of tout le monde: the executives, educators and artists that are making it all happen. It’s a virtual talk show. It’s a forum for hundreds of conversations going on simultaneously at a dizzying rate of speed, both in voice and in text chat. In fact, I defy you to attend any of these sessions without perceiving… without recognizing that something really important is going on: potential and yes, even success.


The new set and studio for Metanomics - Photo by Keystone Bouchard

Something wicked good this way comes today, and it’s big. For as long as I can recall (and I rezzed in January of 2007), the leadership of Linden Lab, the company that owns and operates the platform of Second Life - and governs it, too – has gone into hiding whenever the Residents of the world they created convene. But changes are afoot, and the citizens have been in agreement lately… dare I say it? Linden Lab is starting to step out. The Lindens are actually becoming involved with, and becoming a part of the Second Life community.

Oh, they still infuriate us with unsurprising regularity over one thing or another, but I can’t begin to tell you how welcome their participation is. The more we communicate, the better things get… and stickier… and more fun. And successful.

So it is with mild astonishment that I find myself typing the following words: Today, May 6th at 1:00pm SLT, a real first… M Linden (aka Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab), will join host Beyers Sellers (aka Robert Bloomfield) for the kick-off of Metanomics' new season at its sparkling new studio and set created by acclaimed award winner and architect Keystone Bouchard (much more on that structure soon).

Something wicked good this way comes, indeed.

Teleport to it directly from here.

Artists consider Adult Content ratings in Second Life, and I reach my own conclusions

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Let me first say that I understand Linden Lab's motivations for rating (see "Upcoming Changes for Adult Content and sections of the Second Life® grid. In fact, about three months ago, I decided to rate my own sim PG in support of my desire to make it newbie friendly. Newbies already have a lot to deal with when they arrive, and rezzing next to a couple that's copulating in the woods (I still don't get why people do this in very public spaces, but eh) is, in my view, too much of a test, not that I enjoy coming upon these situations myself.

However, I do prefer environments that provide for the greatest level of individual freedoms within a framework of accountability, and I always worry when any entity takes it upon itself to tighten controls over what is right and wrong. I do believe that Linden Lab will rue the day it ever decided to walk this lawsuit-happy path. Notwithstanding special viewers and other automated processes, they are going to devote copious amounts of precious time and resources in arbitration.

Tateru Nino over at Massively is still working on her coverage of this story. "I can't find three people in SL that can all agree on what's allowable in a PG sim," she told me. She shared a few more very fascinating insights in a Not Possible IRL group IM immediately following the announcement, so I'm especially looking forward to her post, which may come as soon as tomorrow.

I was immediately curious to hear what people in Second Life's art community opined on this topic so I did a quick roundup.

New media superstar Gazira Babeli was busy making some interesting changes to how the Odyssey sim will appear on the map when we spoke (we'll have to wait for the next system refresh to see it). Gaz and I agree that this is going to consume a great deal of Linden Lab's time and resources. "That means decadence. Resources lost in details always result in decadence," she said.

Artist and lead creator of many of the grid's most popular sims, including the Greenies, Pavig Lok: Part of me says "about time" and part of me says "best option available" and part of me says "dammit the unicorns and fae have gone from our world, curse you loss of innocence!"

Artist and founder of Second Life's art-critique mecca Brooklyn is Watching, Jay Newt, responded to my email this way:

"It's a really interesting question. It seems to me a little like the movie rating system, and I like the movie system, because it is voluntary. There is the category "unrated" and you know that that means: "who the hell knows what it is going to be." I wish they would make these categories for SL content voluntary in that way so you could advertise your content as fitting into one of those categories or you could elect not to participate in that particular categorization scheme and then people would know that they are just taking their chances coming to your sim.

I also think that SL artists will likely get upset over this because of what they think will happen as a result and the truth is that none us of us knows what will happen as a result. It could be that most places will list themselves as "adult" just to have the freedom to do what they want, even if they aren't about sex or violence, and there will be no stigma attached to that label...

We're all jumping ship from SL as soon as there's a large enough community on some un-regulated open source distributed server system anyway, right? :)"

Hyperformalist and producer/director of ZeroG SkyDancers DanCoyote Antonelli offered an intriguing perspective: "If any company leans on the US legal system in their Terms of Service and are protected by US laws, they should also follow through and support the right to free speech provided for in the US Constitution. Want to be protected by US law? Then provide US rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Leading fashion designer and artist, Eshi Otawara: "If the concern is children, this still will not stop them from entering Second Life and pursuing their curiosities. It's the responsibility of the parent to supervise their child. As far as adult content being 'offensive' to adults, I am sorry to say- there is far more of both natural and less natural human activity that offends a lot of us on a more profound level then adult content ever can. But in those cases it is socially acceptable so those who don't agree must conform or keep quiet in the least.

"For me, this is just another step that Linden Lab, unfortunately, must make - to protect the company from the people whose state of mind is so unfortunately fragile they cannot handle functions of their own bodies and who are indoctrinated into false pretensions that assuming what is commonly and unfortunately for human kind referred to as 'purity' vs. embracing the human nature provided to them at birth by whatever/whom ever one chooses to put faith towards makes them somehow more in control of anything. For the rest of us, there are always contentedness, laughter and hope Darwin takes care of it in the long run."

Finally, artist and co-founder of Arthole, the often-controversial arts center that will surely be affected by these new rules because it sits on the mainland, Nebulosus Severine, wrote back a very thoughtful response.

"As you know, I have some very strong opinions on the upcoming changes in SL that would restrict a lot of so-called Adult content. The way LL is handling it is still so unclear to me, and I keep going back and forth from optimism to pessimism.

I don't have to worry about all aspects of this new policy. I am already payment verified, so my presence in SL won't be limited; that is at least some relief to me.

However, I have already taken preliminary steps in considering what will have to be done with Arthole. Arahan and I will be talking soon to figure out what to do. I know he and I both agree that we must have absolute creative freedom to address any subject matter with our art. As we frequently choose controversial topics, I think the safest bet would be to move Arthole to an Adult piece of land.

However, this will limit the access of several friends who, although adults, are not age-verified (for their own personal reasons), and wouldn't be able to come visit Arthole, if it does end up on Adult land. That is really frustrating and heartbreaking.

Not to mention that I have had the same piece of land in Kress for nearly 4 years. I suppose a move isn't that big of a deal, but it's still an inconvenience to say the least.

When it comes right down to it, I believe that LL is censoring SL. I've read their arguments to the contrary, and I don't trust their supposed reasoning. And with their proposed definitions of what "Adult" is, it seems as though they'd have an easier time making a new PG continent and keeping THAT all together. The Mature rating is effectively useless, too. Why not divide the grid geographically into "Adult" and "All Ages" and keep it simple?

Seriously... "illicit drug use" will be considered "adult"? I have never been to a live concert in SL that did NOT have an avatar (or three, or ten) smoking on a prim joint or tripping on scripted 'shrooms.

Anyway, I could go on and on. My bottom line is that I distrust and despise ANYTHING that would seek to restrict freedom of expression. I consider censorship to be one of the biggest violations of human rights. I know LL is a private company, but the more that censorship is imposed on people in any community, the more people start to just accept it as a fact of life, and THAT is dangerous," concluded Nebulosus.
~*~

"Why not divide the grid geographically into 'Adult' and 'All Ages' and keep it simple?" suggests Nebulosus. This sounds appealing, smart and effective doesn't it? And cost and resource thin, right? Oh, wait! Isn't that what is already in place? Which leads me to conclude...

Why change a system that just needs to be implemented properly?

Is this just busy work that will result in the same-ole same-ole put in place just to hush some fundamentalist and ultra conservative groups, at the great expense of art facilities like Arthole?

See also: What will happen to art?

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.

...

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.

...



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.

...

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. :)

Blue Mars limited Beta to begin in June

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Blue Mars, the upcoming virtual world that will use the bleeding-edge game engine CryEngine2, is slated to begin its limited Beta testing in June, according to Jim Sink, Avatar Reality's vp.



The virtual worlds community is concerned that Blue Mars has been built for systems running Vista (!) and that only select developers will be able to create content in-world, but we are hoping against hope that we will be able to persuade them to make some significant changes before launch.

If a picture tells a thousand stories, what does the new Koinup slide show do for us?

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Our friend and partner at Koinup, Pierluigi Casolari is a darn good listener and community builder. Earlier this week, I DM'ed him via Twitter, asking if we could create and post slide shows on our blogs. This morning he DM'ed back to say that he and his wizard tech team had whipped up a widget just for us. All you have to do is set up the slide show with your own pics in Koinup and then go to "share this" for two dozen options. Now I can show you - all at once - my Bond-ish pics taken at Juria Yoshikawa's retrospective, presented by Atlanta, Georgia's Kennesaw State University (teleport directly from here).


Koinup is an inclusive social networking site for all Virtual Worlds that permits storage and sharing of imagery: photography, Machinima, and "storyboards." Among the Virtual Worlds you'll find images of on Koinup: Second Life®, World of Warcraft, Lively, The Sims, IMVU, vSide, Kaneva, There, and more.

This is what Second Life should be like (and sometimes is)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Tezcatlipoca Bisiani sent me a video this morning, along with a note that reads, "This is what Second Life® should be like, (and sometimes is)."

For those who have never been a part of a virtual world... and for those of you who have and are sometimes frustrated by the technical inefficiencies, here's an inspiring glimpse at what content creation is like when everything rocks and rolls.


World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Oh, those intrepid gravity challengers! - Part III in our Gravity in Virtual Worlds series

by Bettina Tizzy

In my next blogpost and below, I will share some of the latest innovations on the grid (there's something for everyone in this mix) that are certain crowd pleasers, but first, some death-defying feats from the other side of the mirror!

For one year now and from time to time, this blog looks to Real Life for inspiration, even going so far as to extend an invitation to people we admire to join us in our Virtual quest. Recently I came across some startling photographs and promptly contacted the unique personality behind them to learn more.

Apparently some of us are more preoccupied with weightlessness than others. Chinese artist Li Wei risks life and limb to create his performance art in high places. Mr. Wei, who uses the human body as his canvas and has often been referred to as the Chinese Evel Knievel, combines acrobatics and boundless energy to produce images such as this one that depict him balancing impossibly on another's head...



Meanwhile, in Second Life®, people in the Hobo group have been known to amuse themselves by stacking their avatars in a virtual and rather tall totem pole...


Hobo Pile-up (I'm sort of in the middle, lulz) - Photo by Candy Cornwall, provided by Derek Sienkiewicz

Using mirrors, scaffolding and steel wires (and nerves!) to effect these images, Mr. Wei can be seen flying in and out of windows...



Tossed around by petite women...



... and skylarking with crowds.






Many thanks to Li Wei for graciously allowing us to publish his stunning photography here

"I am fascinated by the unstable and dangerous sides of art and I hope my works reflect these aspects," said Mr. Lei. If he can do all these things in Real Life, what might he accomplish in Virtual Worlds? What daring aerial and acrobatic ideas of his have remained in the vault that could be fully realized in our pixelated space?

In fact, what looks to be formidable in Real Life often comes across as quite tame and even useful in Virtual Worlds. Nearly two years ago, JenzZa Misfit and her partners launched what would become a blockbuster product in Second Life called the Rendezvous. While the tool can only be operated on some lands (rez-enabled) and only one avatar can control it at a time, the Rendezvous broke ground in that avatars were able to interact with each other in a new and important way: for the first time, couples could fly and walk together holding hands, swim side-by-side, and more (it's decidedly PG, by the way).



JenzZa Misfit: "Flying together allows two people to experience a Peter Pan and Wendy' experience that is hard to describe. Moreover, it allows them to see and hear things together."


A significant benefit to using the Rendezvous (now in version 3.0) is that couples can fly low and slow, thus making it possible for them to share things on the ground at a realistic pace


A new version of the Rendezvous will appeal to groups of friends and business people: five people can fly together - Rather cosmopolitan, don't you think? -Photo by Dirk Talamasca

I still have a number of novel products (in Beta or just on the market) to share with you and for those wishing to enhance or celebrate ZeroG behaviors in Second Life. Stay tuned for the next installment in this series.


See also:
+ Overcoming gravity (and reality) - Part I in our Gravity series
+ I can fly, but meh - Part II in our Graivty in Virtual Worlds series
+ Here's a nifty source for photographs focusing on weightlessness: the Flickr group Floating People .
+ Climbing walls, sky dancing (in HD!), and weightless sex/showers - Part IV in our Gravity in Virtual Worlds series