First step towards matrix. Tried Second Life today. Put friends networking, MMORPG, 3D modelling, avatars all together in a coffee jar and shake up well to get this one.

First impression

Was put on the orientation island which felt remotely like ‘Black and White’ and ‘populous: the beginning’ games, particularly when I fly around on the island. This one has a sequence of posts with tutorials on the basics of SL. Off the main tutorial land is an island with lotza interactive objects. The exit on the tutorial island puts you on an square in the sim world grid which is supposed to be your ‘home’ (which you can switch).

Money

Dance for Money

One of the obvious thing felt is the ‘being broke’ thing. I am yet to be oriented on that matter. Not bothering about that one now though. Amazing enough I saw people doing silly things like dancing in casinos (screenshot alongside) (which resembled some human farm from some sci-fi story) and even whiling away time on bean bags for earning money (these bean bags showed text bubbles telling us how much has been earned). I guess no one would let go bean bags which gave you money.

Modelling

Most of the aspects in the avatar can be edited. Body, head, face hair, dress all of them. I wonder how much of it should be parametrized is required while making the original models.

The 3D rendering is not too good. It looks like an early 2000 3D game. Most of the reality work has to be done with textures. I had a quick look at the settings, though not much was found (except the graphics card memory setting) that looked modern.

For bonafide need-a-life game addicts it is suicide to get into SL.

BTW, the linux Second Life client is 32 bit. Had to get the same version of geForce driver on my ia32 chroot and pure 64 linux installation for this to work.