[extropy-chat] An excellent overview of SecondLife from a futurist persective

[Hal Finney]

Jeff Allbright pointed to Giulio Prisco's essay on Second Life at:
http://futuretag.net/index.php/Slgp1
One of the articles Giulio references is this by Vernor Vinge on how
the Internet is changing things, which also mentions 2L:
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060320/full/440411a.html

I've tried out Second Life a little, using a free account.  It's a
wide open virtual world where residents can build and script objects
in a variety of ways.  Visually, it looks great, especially when you
realize that almost everything you see has been constructed by residents.
Most areas have no "zoning" though so it's not unusual to see a medieval
castle next door to a 21st century disco with flashing lights, next door
to a circus tent, next door to a Jetson's home in the sky.  Some users
object to such juxtapositions but I enjoy them; they visually illustrate
the dynamism and wide range of human creativity.

Building and scripting in 2L works great, and avatar customization
is also very flexible, but I find that the communication tools are
relatively poor.  In particular, it is very difficult to use gestures in
a flexible way.  If you want to, say, point at someone, or wave your arms
expansively, or stroke your chin, the only way to do that is to find and
(usually) buy a canned animation that performs that gesture.  You can
then bind it to a hotkey, or select it from a cumbersome menu system.
If you have in mind a particular gesture that has not been made available,
you need to use a complicated third party animation program like Poser
to design the whole sequence, and upload it.

Sounds are similarly limited to canned .wav files that can be uploaded
and called up by a hotkey.  A further problem is that people don't tend
to hear the sounds at the moment you trigger them, because they have to
be downloaded to each person nearby, so there is a several-second delay
the first time you trigger a sound.  The same thing sometimes happens
with gestures, not everybody sees them at the same time.

Another limitation is with object interaction.  While 2L has a physics
engine, it is inefficient and not often used.  Generally you can't pick
up, carry or push objects in a realistic way.  Mostly you are limited to
"touching" scripted objects to activate them.  While you can attach an
object to your avatar so that it appears to be carrying or wearing it,
this often involves some manual adjustment using the editing tools and
is generally not a very natural-seeming experience.

The bottom line is that as a result, the only real way to communicate
in 2L is by typing.  Basically it becomes nothing more than a glorified
chat room when it is time to engage in conversation.  This is what I
find most frustrating; it takes me out of the virtual world experience.
Conversations tend to be extremely static, a bunch of good-looking
avatars standing still and making typing motions with their hands
(that's the default animation when someone types).

Overall my feeling is that 2L works well as a platform for building and,
to a lesser extent, scripting interesting objects and constructions.
There are some very beautiful builds and the world is an extremely dynamic
place, with new constructions appearing all the time.  But as a meeting
place or conversational medium, it's still stuck in the 20th century.
I engaged in real time computer chat in college in the 1970s, and aside
from adding pictures of people standing around, that's still pretty much
what you get when you meet people in 2L.

Hal