anyone here tried second life?

[tofu]

Has anyone here tried that (I don't know what to call it, game?) called second life? If so, can you tell me what you do in there to have fun? I mean, sure there's a lot to walk around and look at, but that gets old really fast. So I went to a bar and tried to talk to probably 7 or 8 people. Nobody wanted to chat. So what are they doing there? Just sitting there all day??

(I hope this doesn't make me look old)

[Frog march]

I don't know I haven't tried it.

punch someone, see if that has an effect.

[Maksutov]

Second Life is great. Especially since I remember so much from First Life. I'm really looking forward to Third Life, where I get to come back as the guy who puts Bill Gates out of business!

[tofu]

oh well, I had such high hopes for it.

maybe I'll give it one more shot. It just occured to me to search around for a scifi group or something.

[antoniseb]

I read an article about it. I grabbed the link, but haven't tried it. I suspect that it would be sort of cool, and eventually you'd get to know some people and it would be a VR game for old people.

[Maksutov]

[edit]it would be a VR game for old people.

Ayuh, that's right, sonny!

[Doodler]

Second Life, as described by a friend of mine who started recently, is a chat room with avatars.

[macgyver2]

While there's a lot of crap in SL, but if you look hard enough you'll find some very good places to visit and hang out.

One that I'm sure would interest many on these forums is the new (just opened 18 June) International Space Museum. It's in the sim named Spaceport Alpha. An incredible amount of work went into it by the those involved, and they're still not done! The team that put it together are real-life educators, scientists, and space hobbyists. The rocket models are accurate in size (based on the in-world meters scale) and some of them even launch. Above the main area there is a series of platforms in "space"...one for LEO and one for each of the planets and the asteroid belt. There's a planetarium and telescope trainer (a project meant to help students in RL learn the parts of a telescope through a game). There's also a very well designed stage area for lectures and a lot of informational notecards by the exhibits. And like I said, more is in the works!

There is a decent sized group of people in SL who discuss using "games" like that for genuine educational purposes.

Also, some of my other favorite places are RenFest Island and Support for Healing. I even attend weekly talks presented by a real-life Buddhist monk. Just the other day I found a yacht club where the people race wind-powered sailboats...and they're quite realistic.

Like I said, if you know how and where to look, you can find some excellent stuff put together by extremely talented people. If anyone is in SL or is interested in more info, look me up when I'm online and I'll be happy to show you some places. My SL avatar's name is Freyr Elvehjem.

[tofu]

welcome to BAUT.

Maybe this weekend I'll try to find that space museam, it sounds neat. thanks for the tip.

The last time I logged in (a couple of days ago) I found some kind of elf place with a bunch of lord or the rings fans. It was kind of neat.

[Fraser]

I've got a character in second life. I'm Fraser Schnook. I haven't played much recently for the same reason. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do. Without wave after wave of orcs to slay, I'm without purpose.

Now that I'm learning more programming, I might try making some stuff.

[tofu]

Everybody here needs to check this out! They have 1:1 scale models of a lot of different rockets, including the shuttle, the saturn V, and even the N1.

pic

they have so much cool astronomy stuff, I don't even know where to start.

pic

I was really impressed.

[Fraser]

Maybe we should have a BAUT meetup in Second Life. Hang out at the space museum.

[antoniseb]

I've put several hours into SL now, and feel like it might be fun if I didn't have better things to do. I'd like to dabble with making 3D shapes and movements, and all that, but so far, it looks like too much work to learn how, and practice at it enough to get good at it. I may go back next week after this brutal work schedule cools off.

[Blob]

IBM Corp. has launched an ambitious marketing campaign in the virtual world "Second Life."
Big Blue has developed 12 "virtual islands," and most will be open to anyone with a Second Life account starting next week. Other areas will remain private haunts for about 800 IBM employees - including the CEO - who have cyber alter-egos.
On Monday, IBM announced plans to build virtual stores for Sears Holdings Corp. and Circuit City Stores Inc. in the popular online world "Second Life." The partnerships could help IBM expand its consulting services to corporate clients interested in the growing number of people who belong to immersive online environments, also called the "3-D Internet."

IBM's chief technologist, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, acknowledged that virtual-world business is in the experimental stage.

?

[sidmel]

Yeah Blob, know what you mean. I did some checking and you can create, buy, sell and run businesses. Buy, rent, create housing, private resorts, islands etc. There is even a help wanted for people to run virtual clubs, create designer clothes, tattoos for the avatars and all kinds of crazy stuff. There are apparently people that make enough money at this for it to be their full time jobs.

[Doodler]

There's some interesting science fiction stuff in there as well. The place I got dropped is a science fiction museum that had a fully modeled Klingon Warbird and a Defiant class ship. Pretty wild, but pretty sterile.

[MrClean]

I visited SL to get in on a press conference from Scott Sigler after his Podio book "The Rookie"'s first game. Went there, signed on and figured out how to get around the day before. Then I tried to get back for the conference but thanks to a wife that decided that was her time to become interested in checking something from the family computer instead of her laptop which granted, was doing work downstairs, I was too late to get in on the conference. But I did get in afterwards and I gotta tell ya, it's weird having a conversation with your favorite authors. Especially when you figure out that they're just normal people like you and me AND can be quite silly at times.

But past that, my computer is just barely capable of handling that kind of simulation but more than capable of everything I need to do with it. I find that as with any other video game I've played, it is a great waste of time. Everybody has there own hobby and if that's your idea of fun, have at it. I've got model airplanes to design, build and fly. After staring at a computer screen most of the day for a living, I enjoy getting away from it at night.

[captain swoop]

Why would I want to. I am too busy living the first one!

[Blob]

There are rumours that Google is planning to build its own Second Life virtual world based on Google Earth. Many of the components needed are already in place, with the latest version of Google Earth having added the ability to build and share rich 3D content using the company's SketchUp 3D modelling software...

Read more

Related link:
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=52849

[Vermonter]

I've only seen Second Life when SomethingAwful references it. Then again, SA has pretty much made a passtime of harrassing some of Second Life's more...underground members. To say the least, I'm not very inclined to go running around that world.

[Blob]

Hum,
yeah that is a bad aspect to the owners of SL, but its still at the very early evolutionary/development stage.

i read somewhere that it was comparable to Graham bells first phone - fun, but only a beginning, whats around the corner could be a startrek clam mobile.

[Blob]

A guide to Second Life’s space frontier
Take a tour of virtual rockets and space destinations in the 3-D online environment known as Second Life.

Read more

Virtual-space gurus build final frontier
The colonisation of virtual outer space hints at the shape of things to come, for NASA as well as less traditional players on the final frontier.

Read more

IMAGE (594kb, 1024 x 728)

[ISShunter]

As mentioned above, it does seem that Second Life has potential to be educational at the museums, and in my opinion the international spaceflight museum and others I've been to already provide a great public outreach service. I would guess that 90% of the virtual world is garbage, but it's also filled with people who wander by the spaceflight museum and who otherwise would never have the opportunity or take the time to visit a real life equivalent. There's no travel required and no admission to pay to tour the exhibits, so people who had no strong interest in the matter tend to wander through simply because they haven't seen it yet, and I've seen a number of people walk away with a stronger appreciation for both manned and unmanned spaceflight. In light of that observation, I've begun hosting impromptu virtual sidewalk astronomy sessions in second life using my real telescope, a virtual model I made of it in second life, and a glorified webcam. Dobson might not agree with the virtual approach, but it does inspire people nonetheless when they see the rings of saturn, up-close craters on the moon, or solar panels on the space station on a live feed.

[Paracelsus]

I think either 'Vanity Fair' or 'GQ' had an article on SL a couple of months ago. The article is a scream--definitely worth reading!

[EvilEye]

I joined it a couple weeks ago, and I couldn't even get over the wall to put clothes on. (I got stuck between a tree and the wall)

I gave up.

[Paracelsus]

I joined it a couple weeks ago, and I couldn't even get over the wall to put clothes on. (I got stuck between a tree and the wall)

I gave up.

ROFLMAO!!!!

That's probably what would happen to me if I joined.

Or I'd get stuck with the wrong genitalia or something.

[Lianachan]

Sorry, I'm having enough trouble getting to grips with real life.

[amok]

Personally I'm not much of a fan of SL or most other massive online games (i prefer strategy games myself), but sadly it looks like sometime in the near future I might be forced to use it for work

I do technical support, and during our slow times we routinely scour the internal networks for juicy bits of information on upcoming stuff that the company is working on (cause lord only knows we only ever get told what we have to support until After it comes out). Found something called 'second campus' which is an educational addition to SL. Create a virtual 'Student' to attend lectures, even study groups with people around the world. Still in production but a pretty interesting idea. I work for a very large online university and it appears that we have interests in pushing things to a Whole 'nother level.

So as previously mentioned there is great possibility to use the system for educational gains, be it museums, observatories, or even apparently colleges.

Just my two bits and a few words from the local grape-vine.

[Doodler]

One thing that failed to impress me about Second Life is the control interface. Very kludgey. Could use some streamlining and improvement.

Wasn't overly impressed by its crafting system, either. Making all these amazing things...that just sit there...

There's no conflict, either, just sorta everyone hanging out in someone else's fantasy land. There's no dynamic that drives the world.

[Pinemarten]

I joined last week. It is a great way to waste time. I like exploring, and playing with the free objects. My first one was a jet pack. I now have hover bikes, biplanes, and even a fishing rod. I am still trying to attach the fish to the rod. I signed up as P*** M******. Say hi if you see me, I might start a new Baut group.