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.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Two Months Tops
5 comments:
Perhaps virtual nature will find its use when connected to nature; not as a simple mirror nature but as a distillation of unseen essences of nature which add to our understanding of our environment.
i hope you don't stop blogging and/or landscaping just because the masses would rather spend their time staring into a lag-tastic club filled with the grey figures of horny nerds from all over the world... for me at least, the only 'use' virtual nature needs to have is an ability to make me feel peaceful, at home, appreciative. don't get discouraged, just consider yourself lucky to have a preference for the locales that are self-selective and weed out the dullards...
I have spent a long time putting my garden together and have enjoyed searching through second life for just the right plant, tree or animal. Feel free to check our Arwennas Secret Garden if you have the time. Judging by the IMs I get, there are a number of residents who really enjoy the virtual nature there.
In addition, the Arbor Project is devoted to acquiring ad-farm 16sqm blocks and planting a tree. Not all of us feel that virtual nature is useless.
Hi - I've only just found my way to your blog and I too hope you don't give up.
I share your frustration at the technology of SL (although not at the residents - precious few bother with parks and nature reserves in RL, why should any virtual world be different).
I have a small area (8000sqm) on a private island sim that I have turned into a jungle, but the sheer hassle of getting it to look and fee right has been a major headache: I bought some great looking plants but they lagged the area to death, I bought some critters but they can only in habit a small area as even the slightest change in terrain height causes them to flip on to their heads, and I wouldn’t even know how to start adding random elements to the thing!
But for all that, it’s still vastly different from anything else for islands around. People can come and sit on the beach and ignore the jungle behind them, or they can take the plunge and start to explore (which reminds me – must add more content very soon!), hell! they can even dive into the storyline of the shipwrecked soul that inhabits the place. That’s got to be a welcome break to the ban lines, bordellos, illegal gambling dens and bloody empty shops that crowd in on me!
So… what was my point? Oh, yes! Don’t give up! Think small scale, grass roots (non pun intended) guerrilla gardening. Try and get more people into the idea of giving over part or all of their wee 512 or 2000m plots to a garden. Oh. That was a different point. This comment seems to have gotten away from me.
So. In conclusion. Keep making gardens and parks!
HeadBurro Antfarm
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This is great info to know.
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