SL shite

Scott Fitzgerald

with an estimated population density of 87 people per km, one has to wonder what second life really offers us in terms of interaction with people from around the world. http://lev-kamenev.blogspot.com/2006/12/second-life-population-density.html

a last minute email sent to the locus sonus email list, and no "in world" publicity accounted for (from what i saw) 2 visitors in second life who visited the space during the seconde nature festival.

the only reason i can see us using second life as a tool or platform upon which to build something like this is that it has a large number of people already there. however, if that population is 1) not informed about it and 2) nowhere near the event at the time, then it defeats the purpose of using such a space.

the participants at seconde nature certainly enjoyed themselves, but it's hard to say how many of them thought of it as a "game" or as a "second life thing" and not as a sound work. wrestling with uncumbersome controls and using machines that are not designed to run the simulator did not help people experience what the work should have offered.

the second life scripting language has a large number of flaws as well tat inhibit accurate position tracking, making the environment not ideal for what we wished to achieve.

or, in list form froma conversation i was having about this :

being that 1) the controls are awful and people in the space who had never used it before did not knwo what they were doing

2) the second life scripting language is horrible, sends bogus data and is generally prohibitive

3) the one asset that second life does have, a large user base, is offset by the fact that a) there was no "in world" advertising of the event and b) population density in the simulator is so low that a "walk-in" is unlikely

4) people perceived the whole experience as a "game" and that it was more about that aspect, that it was the "game second life" and not a sound piece, detracting form the intent

Second Life is not an appropriate environment for this.

recent crap on the itp alumni list regarding sl ::

joshua goldberg to ITP

show details Mar 25 (5 days ago)

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i was taken to task for my growly tone before, but seriously, people.

SL is smoke and mirrors.

bad interface, buggy client, really STUPID archtecture decisions. for

instance:

• total mirroring between client and server. wow, how dumb.
• no .dxf imports. only using modeling with primitives. this is why

it takes brands TWO YEARS to build their presence in SL, as opposed to

simply plonking down one of their stores. what a nightmare.

SL is a bad idea made worse by the seeming blindness so many people

have to its obvious, horrible faults. i am just as enthusiastic about

virtual worlds as the next guy, but let's get this straight. there

are only two reasons why SL is such a hot thing right now:

1) you can fuck people on it without breaking a TOS, and

2) it's not a quote game unquote. game is such a dirty word, why call

this a game? it's a virtual environment.

everyone i know. and i mean everyone. who has spent quality time

trying to build an app or a community or a project in SL has turned

away in disgust. EXCEPT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GETTING MEGA GRANT

MONEY.

this is a sham, a hoax, a kerfuffle. there's no there there. SL is

nothing.

http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/03/the-wurkin-girl.html

http://www.second-life-escorts.com/

http://www.affbrainwash.com/archives/022081.php

please also note that centralized communications- every message must

go through the bottleneck that is the central server- was also the

death knell for prodigy networks.

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howardgreenstein.com/blog/archives/2007/07/like-moses-to-the-promised-land.html

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www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-08/ff_sheep?currentPage=1

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bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/marketers-twittering-but-not-about-second-life/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/arts/artsspecial/12second.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper&oref=login&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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Michael Olson to ITP

show details Mar 15

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I'd have to heartily disagree with the foregoing assessments that Second Life is overhyped and worthless. There have surely been rhetorical excesses in the media. Anything touching on "virtual reality" seems to attract idiocy in journalists.

But having taught a class at ITP on SL, I would say the following is true: Second Life was one of the first and is currently the best ^US^ MMO-style platform for 3D content creation and sharing. This year there are several competitors seeking to falsify that statement, and they may well do so, but I don't believe it has happened yet.

That is to say, if I were bent on doing some kind of performative arts thing in a 3D community ^and there are many reasons why that might not be a good idea^, I would choose Second Life.

While SL is certainly not the most stable piece of software in the world, it has markedly improved over the past year. In class we found most issues with instability and slowness were the result of inadequate graphics cards, not anything inherrent in the app itself. ^Don't expect it to run well on any integrated GPU chipsets, so laptop users beware^.

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Marianne R. Petit to ITP

show details Mar 16

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I know I mentioned this before, but I do think there are some

interesting works at the Turbulence/Emerson College Mixed Realities

exhibit (http://turbulence.org/mixed_realities/turbulence.html)