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Second Thoughts on Second Life
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 04:18 pmDespite my critical comments in the last post, I thought I'd give Second Lİfe another chance. I agree with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rodneyorpheus's comment about the creakiness of their software architecture, but after a few graphics tweaks, reducing my stated bandwidth to under half what it actually is and running full-screen rather than windowed, I manged to get rid of 90% of my lag. My RPG character explains the remaining 10% as neural damage from a cheap Bulgarian eye-job.
Ah yes, I have a character now, not to be confused with my avatar. That is one good thing about SL: it has layers. Most places, if I go in, I'm me, but on one island, I'm an ex-bodyguard who can't shoot straight because said neural damage means that when he turns his head, the world follows later, and he was fired from his last job for accidentally shooting the client. This small part of SL is devoted to a free-form "dark" role-playing game. Personally, I find these kind of games not in the least dark, but rather sweet and re-assuring. Ah, vampires. Ah, cyberpunk Molly-lookalikes. Ah, a cutesy-wootsie cat-person with welt-marks. Erm yes, in addition to all the Goths, there a lot of BDSM types (and again, I generally find people into BDSM rather sweet and reassuring, though of course there are exceptions - if you're a dickhead, no amount of whips and chains will make you less of a dickhead). This is the bar where I've been hanging out:
Other than that, there are a fair few educational sites that look like they might have potential. And even the endless shopping and modding sprees that Second Lifers seem to spend all their time on didn't seem quite so silly when I realised that an avatar is basically a Barbie doll that you dress up. This could be why most of the people I see in SL are female, even accounting for the probability that a lot of those female avatars are owned by RL males. There must be a lot of guys out there who weren't allowed to play with dolls when they were boys and are making up for lost time. Even I spent a lot of time customising my look - hell, I even started looking into arcane stuff like textures and meshes, and dusted off Blender for the first time in years before remembering that what I was actually supposed to be doing was planning a course on Virtual Worlds, not extruding. One the other hand, it would be nice if the basic controls produced something better looking and more varied (again, Guild Wars shines in this department).
So, taking all the points that have been mentioned into consideration (as my students love to write), I'll probably be wasting some more time in SL.
rodneyorpheus's comment about the creakiness of their software architecture, but after a few graphics tweaks, reducing my stated bandwidth to under half what it actually is and running full-screen rather than windowed, I manged to get rid of 90% of my lag. My RPG character explains the remaining 10% as neural damage from a cheap Bulgarian eye-job.Ah yes, I have a character now, not to be confused with my avatar. That is one good thing about SL: it has layers. Most places, if I go in, I'm me, but on one island, I'm an ex-bodyguard who can't shoot straight because said neural damage means that when he turns his head, the world follows later, and he was fired from his last job for accidentally shooting the client. This small part of SL is devoted to a free-form "dark" role-playing game. Personally, I find these kind of games not in the least dark, but rather sweet and re-assuring. Ah, vampires. Ah, cyberpunk Molly-lookalikes. Ah, a cutesy-wootsie cat-person with welt-marks. Erm yes, in addition to all the Goths, there a lot of BDSM types (and again, I generally find people into BDSM rather sweet and reassuring, though of course there are exceptions - if you're a dickhead, no amount of whips and chains will make you less of a dickhead). This is the bar where I've been hanging out:
Other than that, there are a fair few educational sites that look like they might have potential. And even the endless shopping and modding sprees that Second Lifers seem to spend all their time on didn't seem quite so silly when I realised that an avatar is basically a Barbie doll that you dress up. This could be why most of the people I see in SL are female, even accounting for the probability that a lot of those female avatars are owned by RL males. There must be a lot of guys out there who weren't allowed to play with dolls when they were boys and are making up for lost time. Even I spent a lot of time customising my look - hell, I even started looking into arcane stuff like textures and meshes, and dusted off Blender for the first time in years before remembering that what I was actually supposed to be doing was planning a course on Virtual Worlds, not extruding. One the other hand, it would be nice if the basic controls produced something better looking and more varied (again, Guild Wars shines in this department).
So, taking all the points that have been mentioned into consideration (as my students love to write), I'll probably be wasting some more time in SL.
