Recently, I’ve started playing around with a technology called Second Life. For those of you who have not heard of it (I hadn’t until last year sometime), it’s a virtual reality program that connects you to a mess of servers owned by a San Francisco company called Linden Labs. Second Life is a 3D world you can wander around in and interact with. There are also a whole mess of other people in there that you can meet and interact with as well. Second Life is at once a game, a chat tool, a collaboration engine, and a place for commerce… with a healthy (or unhealthy, depending upon your attitude) mixture of the Wild West added to the pot. And, when I say “Wild West,” I mean gun slingers, saloons, and whores, yes (well, the 21st century equivalent, I suppose… the gun slingers don’t really use guns so much as scripts that fling people about, the saloons are dance clubs, and the whores are… well… whores).
I started playing in the world mainly because I am interested in how a 3D environment can be used to make instant messaging more effective. Where I work, I am almost never working face-to-face with my co-workers. I either talk to them on the phone, exchange e-mails, or chat in IM. This is all well and good, but you lose all those non-verbal cues. In my case, this is especially irritating, because I talk a lot with my hands and want to point at things. One of the features of Second Life is that you can animate your avatar to express emotions, and because you are all in a 3D world, you can gesture.
Right away, I’ve learned that the shift to a 3D world changes things considerably from text chat. For one thing, it quickly becomes second nature to interact with objects and people spatially. As an example, I was talking with someone the other day, and we were talking about his projects in the world. At one point, he said, “if you look over here” and walked over to an object. I knew immediately what he meant, and I didn’t even think about how natural it was until after the conversation was over.
Another more subtle change is that you are more discoverable than in other technologies. What I mean is that you are present at a certain location in the world, and others can see you whether you know them or not. Just as in the real world, if you are standing in front of a shop someone can come up and ask you a question, someone can come up to you in Second Life and talk to you… even if they don’t know you. This is different from all the IM and e-mail technologies, because they require you to know the other person. This sort of thing has happened several times for me, and I’ve even met a couple of friends this way and found out about things I might otherwise have missed.
One final thing to note is that Second Life is much different from other 3D worlds in that the “residents” are given the ability to make things in the world. Bundled as part of the client software are all the tools needed to build anything the world can handle (with the exception of sounds and textures). In fact, most everything in Second Life was created by the residents of the world, and not the company that created Second Life. In this respect (and many others I may get into later), the world is a lot like the early web: everything created by the people using the system… with few barriers. Now, most of us probably remember the early web: it was an odd mixture of interesting and beautiful things right next to total garbage. Second Life is like that too. Some places are amazing and beautiful (the two images below come from one area I’d consider as beautiful), but in some places, you’ll just see a huge wooden block or something else equally trashy.
Anyway, Second Life is an interesting experiment for me, and I imagine I’ll keep playing with it for a while. In case you happen to be in Second Life as well (or plan to be) and want to meet up with me, my name in game is Loraan Fierrens. You can find me in the people tab in the search tool and send me an IM. At the moment, I’m in-world for considerably longer than is probably healthy.
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My avatar in a pretty area called Teal where there are all sorts of tutorials on how to do pretty particle effects. Yes, those are wings, and yes my avatar looks nothing like me. You want to make a big deal about it? Well, do ya? |
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Another picture of my avatar in Teal. This time, I’m watching one of the pretty… and ever-so-mesmerizing light shows the owner has created. Something seems to be interesting my avatar over on the left… I’m not sure what it could be. |
