Hyperlandscape

A thought has occurred to me over that past few days, especially after playing with the realXtend version of the Opensim server and browser, sorry, client software. We're rapidly reaching a point of being able to download fully functional sim software to run on our home PCs, seriously. We'll be able to build out whole sims then attach those environments to open, or account-based, grids on demand. In other words, not only will our clients be able to hop our accounts from sim to sim, we'll be able to hop our sims from grid to grid. We can not just show up for the party with our av and allowable inventory, but with our whole sim attached to the landmass. What an entrance!

This turns the world wide grid model into more of a hypercube landscape than a static planet of contiguous landmasses separated by ethereal oceans. A grid is, after all, no more than sets of sim location and user login records on a space server. There's no physical infrastructure associated with it beyond the database machine. Adding or deleting a sim is as simple as adding or deleting a user account. So I'm wondering if the developers will adhere to the traditional model and force us to log into grids to see who's attached at the time, or will there be a clearing mechanism that'll allow us to just log into a sim, using it's own static IP, without regard to the space server it's registered with at the time. Of course, if we've no account on that grid, we'll not be able to leave the sim.

The idea of being able to fly my four-sim spaceship to a grid and park it there for the duration of an event, then fly it back to it's "home" grid is quite compelling don't you think. My friends will be able to log in either way because they'll have an account with me, or my sim is publicly available. Their access to the current grid will simply be limited according to their accounts on those servers. But my thinking stemmed from wondering what these new grids would look like from a virtual nature perspective. Any type of landscape might be "parked" next to any other, and might change tomorrow or next week or next year. Perhaps the social grids will designate some permanent Mainland area, as Linden Lab has done with Second Life, and let the visiting sims dock around the "edges." This might be a bold shift in our concept of virtual geography. If the developers are brave enough to provide the functionality.

Natural Oversight

The most noticeably prolific plants on the virtual landscape of Second Life these days are commonly known as ad farms. A sixteen square meter block of virtual land, which is the smallest possible subdivision in SL, supports three primitives. Three large, sometimes spinning, sometimes flashing, textured prims floating over the landscape is just enough to mar the "natural" view and force neighbors to consider paying what amount to extortion fees to end the madness.

Observing the process of various farmers trading these tiny parcels for ever increasing sums is quite fascinating up to the point that one has to consider, at thousands of lindens each, that they've priced themselves completely out of a realistic market and will end up eating crow. Another option, of course, is that they can afford the tier, using real life funds, and simply enjoy watching people squirm. This is hardly a new phenomenon in the human condition or the virtual ether. Ad farms have existed on the WWW for decades as whole groups of domains were scooped by such entrepreneurs as Rick Schwartz, routed to profit sharing advertising websites, and individually sold for premium profits. They've even discovered a way to kite the system. The difference is that, on the web, these sites only appear on our pages if we mistype a domain or forget to activate our popup blocker; we have built the tools to avoid the intrusion.

Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, states in a BBC interview: "Virtual worlds are inherently comprehensible to us in a way that the web is not...They look like the world we already know and take advantage of our ability to remember and organise...Equally important, he said, was the visibility or presence that being in a virtual world bestows on its users. By contrast, he said, when visiting a website people are anonymous and invisible. Shopping on Amazon might be much easier and enjoyable if you could turn to one of the other 10,000 or so people on the site at the same time as you and ask about what they were buying, get recommendations and swap good or bad experiences." I'll contend that virtual 3D Amazon might not be much easier and enjoyable if its landscape were consistently covered with thousands of odd, imposing advertisement prims. If it's Amazon's responsibility to police such "collaborative efforts" in their virtual space, then it's equally Linden Lab's responsibility to do so on their Mainland estate in Second Life.

Mr. Rosedale also expresses, "Second Life is an alternate existence, built by its residents, that strives to be better than the physical world." True, however, the compelling collaborative visible environment Second Life affords also supports ad farms in our faces with no tools or allowable recourse available for us to employee in our efforts to help build this better world. Collaboration is both an additive and subtractive process. So far, Linden Lab has only granted Second Life participants the former ability resulting in, using Mr. Rosedale's terminology, not a better world, not even a truly collaborative one.

Two Months Tops

I've landscaped a fair share of Second Life environments through the years. We can sit down over coffee if you'd like to see the pictures. None of them exist today. Only a very few of them survived more than eight weeks. Granted that nature is transient, virtual nature is practically vaporous. Even my own environments have been destroyed in favour of building something new.

My impression is that Second Life environments are too static. Sims, and avatar presence, severly limit the number of lag-inducing, scripted elements that may be incorporated to spawn random abstractions. Sims also impose a hard limit on the number of detail prims that may be used to attract and retain the interest of busy browsers. In short, there's very little substance to any build in Second Life. Environments are maintained by traffic, presence, use. Surviving builds are generally homes and malls, not forests and parks. Concensus seems to be that virtual nature is useless.

Virtual Nature Lover

"I made trees growing on screen," (Philip) Rosedale says. "That's when I realized you could simulate nature."
(source: USA Today)


I only peeked and poked pixels on a Commodore 64, attached to a thirteen-inch television, to see flowers growing out of a pot and blooming in a rainbow of random colours. Now Philip owns the world and I'm just a simple gardener. I don't envy his self-imposed madhouse position. Really I don't.

Virtual Disasters

We aren't subject to the destruction caused by earthquakes, tornados, or wildfires in virtual worlds, but rather to other types of natural calamities. Of course occassional offline situations occur based on real world lack of power or connectivity resulting from storm winds or volcanic activity. During those times we can't access the worlds at all but generally see no ill results when able to return. I should note here that most people do seem to return after such events so hosting companies don't see user reductions as they might after true virtual disasters.

True virtual disasters strip us of virtual assets, or limit feature availibility, for extended periods of time. Software patches meet this definition as they invariably contain bugs that, at best, cause escessive lag for the duration of the day, at worst, cause database-related problems that result in losses of user assets, sometimes even the loss of an entire account. I remember when Asheron's Call would be rolled back and repatched. Players would not only loose the day's loot, but also the application of rental payments, randomly successful item enhancements and travel time due to these "cronal disasters" as Jarod called them.

Second Life users have randomly suffered as much as half of their inventories missing for the past two years. The causes have been so obscure that the company has rarely been able to recover. The items are simply gone forever. Inworld business owners are currently scrambling for customers as the classified and parcel listing search features are disabled post latest patch. The scenario equates to a real world flood making locations virtually inaccessible to potential customers. Actually it's more like an antiflood as many people are reporting that their clients can't "see" water textures.

In a world where objects can be scripted, it's fairly easy to activate self replicating physical items that spread through the world like wildfire consuming resources to the point of crashing the servers and sometimes the clients.

I wonder if there are any companies that insure virtual property? Surely there will eventually be. Just as we have flood and fire insurance in the real world, we'll have property and possibly even access insurance in the virtual worlds. How will those policies deal with losses due to the banned access to an account for such offenses as breaking terms of service, or losses due to deaths caused by lagging connections? Will we pay for those policies with real money, game currency, or in kind by providing virtual services to the sales people?

It'll all have to be handled somehow because virtual catatrophes are just as pervasive, nonprejudiced and unpredictable as natural disasters are in the real world. Recovery is mandantory. The losses are just as real and just as expensive.

Kumori's Last Night

Kumori was an estate-wide environment populated by the natural builds of Higbee Protagonist, Master Gardener of the Second Life Parks and Recreation Service. It mysteriously vanished from the grid overnight and is no more.

Click the picture on the right to tour an album reflecting the charming beauty that was Kumori. I'll miss wandering through those rocks and woods.

aNature

Is there a difference in aLife and Virtual Nature? From listening to Khamon, I get the impression there is. From what I know about virtual pets, I believe there is. However, in the future, do these two areas of virtual world development need to look at and learn from each other?