The Coral Reef: It’s Alive

I don’t know why I haven’t written about this, but I guess I should tell you about something special I’ve worked on a few months ago. My team and I have completed construction of a lifelike virtual coral reef on contract from well-known SL entrepreneur Veritas Raymaker. Veritas, if you don’t know him, is perhaps the most polite person in the known universe. He’s been putting together a rather interesting series of educational displays on Praxis island.

Our build is actually hidden underwater in an air-tight platform from which you can observe the coral reef. But it’s more than that - the display is organized into several interactive displays, each describing and showing you how coral reefs can be damaged. The displays take you through a short sequence explaining the issue in chat, as well as demonstrating the effect for you to observe directly.

The build illustrates several real environmental factors that can affect the health of the world’s coral reefs: climate change, pollution, eutrophication, over fishing and sedimentation. Each of these effects are actually in play today in our planet’s coral reefs, and from the platform you’ll be able to see exactly how they affect coral ecosystems.

There is a separate station for each of the environmental factors, each with a dedicated observation bubble through which you can see a lively coral reef, complete with colorful corals, algae, bubbles and some of the most amazingly realistic fish you’ll ever see in SL.

To visit the underwater platform, you’ll have to teleport to Praxis, a truly beautiful sim where Raymaker has organized a variety of environmental displays. Follow the paths down to the dock - you won’t see the reef or the platform, as they are completely submerged. A the end of the dock, you’ll see a teleporter that takes you underneath the waves directly to the platform where you can engage the interactive displays. Start at station one by touching the display and reading the text. Be sure to look out the observation bubbles to see the coral reef die as the effects take hold.

The reef build was a team effort, made by the new Construction Division of Electric Pixels. Scripting and Sculpting was done by the very capable Thickbrick Sleaford, who by the way is available for complex contract scripting work through Vermont Enterprises;  Design, storyline, signage and particles was done by myself; Quality control and testing by Haley Salomon. If you’re looking for someone to help you produce an amazing display, please consider Electric Pixels - Construction Division.

One catch: in order to receive the full immersive experience, you should turn on particles in your graphics settings and also turn up your sound. Give it a moment to load, especially if you have a less-than-new PC. Here's a direct link to the start of the display at a dock near the underwater platform. Enjoy!

A Retail Experiment Concludes

Some weeks ago I attempted to improve the in-store experience for my customers by reducing the number of visible textures. The theory was this: visitors appear at the teleport landing point, but their viewers are instantly overloaded by texture loads and their world is gray. You see, my store’s design concept is an open one that makes all items very easy to find because it’s mostly open to view.

The open concept worked at first, because I perceived an issue I had when shopping: some shops have far too many rooms, hallways and areas in which to look for items. It makes shopping nearly impossible for those in a rush, although some may find difficult shopping experiences fun. I wanted to avoid that situation, especially where customers don’t even see your products because they were in a room the customer never encountered. So I simply laid out all my items in easy to view locations. My first store had no ceiling and very few walls.

However, as the store grew and more products were added, the requirement for more textures (mainly on product boxes) continued to grow. It came to a point where a visitor would be faced with loading (albeit automatically) over 150 textures in order to see the store. Tracking software indicated some visitors would appear and then quickly leave. The obvious conclusion was that they were overwhelmed by the gray view and simply went somewhere else without shopping. Not good!

The experimental solution was to block off each of the store’s areas from general view, requiring shoppers to enter them before they could see the products and require texture loads. This way the store would become visible much faster and this should be a better experience for shoppers. I even placed helpful signs and arrows indicating where people should enter each area.

After weeks of running in this mode, I now conclude the texture load theory was wrong. While the store did come into view much faster when teleporting in, sales dropped off significantly. At first I took this to indicate a continuation of the degraded economy in general, but several friends (Amber, Haley and Marlee) suggested the visibly blocked store sections conveyed a different impression to shoppers - hidden products must be creepy! Since shopping is a very psychological matter, especially in SL, I thought there’s probably something to this theory.

Ten days ago I took down the obscuring walls to once again reveal the entire store to view. As expected, long texture load is now quite evident when teleporting in, but what would happen to sales? After ten days of “open” operation, I can safely say that sales are up significantly!

The conclusion? While texture rezzing performance is always important, the psychological factors that develop from the store’s visual appearance trump performance when it comes to shopping.

Hide Your Products!

I performed an interesting experiment this week at my store, Electric Pixels. Like most SL business owners, I’ve experienced a downturn over the past year, and it’s still not great. However, by keeping my expenses low I’ve managed to survive. But there’s still a concern over how to grow sales. I’ve tried various strategies, including completely rebuilding my shop in a new way to be more inviting to visitors.

The original philosophy of the shop was to make it easy for visitors to shop. I had experienced visiting many stores where products were scattered across several rooms, resulting in awkward situations:

• Having to find out how to move from room to room (might require opening doors, navigating difficult stairways, or even - argh - teleports!)
• Fighting with camera controls to scan the area
• Not realizing there was yet another room around the corner

I felt that the segmented shop design might be a detriment to sales because impatient shoppers would not put up with the troubles of locating items within the store and quickly move on to other places. After all, the next location is merely a click away.

My approach was to make an open store, where all “departments” were visible; no surprises, everything clearly marked. However, sales never were quite as good as the previous store design.

Friend Peter Stindberg suggested (more than once) that one issue with the new design might be texture rezzing. Because all my departments are visible, the SL viewer must load all textures within view - and this takes time. I didn’t really notice this effect since my computer and network are pretty good. However, those with less than adequate equipment could have been presented with a scene full of anonymous grey boxes. I wasn’t so sure, but thought this was worth an experiment.

My approach was rather trivial: I simply placed a obscuring wall in front of each separate department, closing off the view of the product boxes. This would eliminate a ton of texture rezzing for any visitor. Of course, once the visitor entered a department by passing through the obscuring wall, they’d have to rez the textures for the relevant product boxes. But there would be far fewer to rez at one time.

What was the result? Strangely, sales actually doubled for the days following the wall change. This means that Peter’s hypothesis was correct! My thoughts:

• Visitors with poor equipment saw grey product boxes and impatiently left before purchasing
• There are likely a great many people with poor equipment. Perhaps the majority? (Hm, what does this imply for Blue Mars??)
• Visitors are drawn into the now hidden departments to see what’s there because the wall obscures everything

There may be other effects happening here, but in any case it seems to have improved things. Experiments are a Good Thing. 

2.5 Store Years

It’s been 2.5 years since I opened my SL store, Electric Pixels. It’s been quite a journey, and the store has undergone several evolutions:

• The first iteration was actually not in-world at all, but existed solely on the then-named SLExchange in January 2007. Started on a dare from a friend, my items sold quite well. Well enough that I quickly saved sufficient Lindens to proceed to stage two
• In March 2007 I took a step by purchasing a tiny 512sm parcel in the obscure sim Lanestris for the princely sum of L$6000. I wanted to set up an in-world store because it seemed like the right thing to do. While the tier was just right (it’s actually zero for your first 512sm), I had no idea how to set up a store. So I experimented with several crazy concepts, and learned much. The important thing was the cash flow was ten times that of SLExchange. This led to stage three a few months later
• In June 2007 I took a huge step by purchasing an 8192sm mainland parcel, which required my first tier of USD$40 per month. I was confident my revenue would cover that, and I built a rather different and much larger store using learnings from iteration two
• Some 18 months later I took the opportunity to acquire land adjacent to my 8192sm parcel, doubling its size to a full 1/4 sim. After several weeks of rebuilding I had successfully expanded and redesigned Electric Pixels with multiple display areas with live demonstrations everywhere

And so it sits today. But I’ve survived for over two years while some other businesses have failed. What’s my secret? At each stage I’ve been very conservative and expanded only when absolutely certain my revenue greatly exceeded the monthly expenses.

That and all the customers who come by to look and purchase. My thanks to all of you!

The NEW Particle Lounge!

 

A long-standing project of mine is something called “The Particle Lounge”. It is a place where I can hold events, parties and have people over to chill. The original Particle Lounge was kind of an experiment, where I tried various particle effects and other visual techniques to create a spooky, eerie place like no other. I think it succeeded.

But then I expanded my shop, and the Lounge had to go. I placed it high in the air, thinking that it would be just as easy to use. It turns out that it was not easy to use. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. So there it sat, floating up in the sky unused.

I wanted to believe I could do better than that, and after some out-of-the-box thinking, I realized I could build a new Particle Lounge - underground!

Well, it’s not exactly underground, but it is simply under the floor of my shop; the ground there is quite sloped and I realized there was sufficient space under the floor to build something big. So I did.

The new lounge turned out even better than its prior iterations. It’s larger, more carefully built, and takes into account all the feedback I received from the last iterations.

It was so cool we thought we’d better have a party to open it. On two hours notice.

That was not the greatest plan, but somehow we found an excellent DJ (Natasiaa Nightfire) on awesomely short notice. We leveraged our friends lists, group notices, conferences, twitter and plurk to send out instant invitations. People arrived and all had a great time. Here are the inevitable paparazzi photos of only a few of the distinguished guests:

Codebastard Redgrave floats above the quad-sun floor in an endless aerial spin.

 

Radar Masukami jigs, explodes while being accosted by those crazy brain-eating Aetherfish (made by Thickbrick Sleaford, by the way.)

First Question host Pooky Amsterdam looking great as usual.

The Slovenian Writers: iYan and iAlja Writer. 

 

Blogger, supermodel, virtual wife and compulsive comedian Tymmerie Thorne reaches for an Aetherfish.

 

Good friend Bevan Whitfield in her new dress eyes the guests.

Tweeter Caliburn Susanto is suspicious of the Aetherfish.

 

Virtual healthcare specialist Coughran Mayo dances to the music. Was Abba playing at this point?

Queen of Green Haley Salomon ponders the not-green floor color. 

I must mention that a late guest was Jene Tempura. Very late indeed, as he showed up some 12 hours after the party ended, no doubt due to some catastrophic time zone miscalculation.

If you’d like to explore the lounge and all its hidden secrets, drop by Electric Pixels anytime. But just watch out for that first step!

I’ve Been Busy...

You may have noticed I’ve been pretty quiet lately. That’s because I have indeed been busy, very busy. Readers may recall that I sought to purchase additional land to expand my rather overcrowded main store, and I was successful!

Thanks to some quick purchases and helpful neighbors, I’ve managed to double the size of my parcel to a complete and square one quarter of the Caso Milo mainland region. The only question was, “what the heck do I do with it?”



Keeping in mind my business philosophy of getting a return for my investment, I decided to completely reorganize the manner in which my products were displayed. The old store’s approach was to display as many items as possible in order to minimize avatar movement. However, I observed some shoppers unable to find what they sought, even though I believed items were clearly laid out.

After some consideration, I came to the hypothesis that visitors to my Particle Shop usually come in search of a specific item, such as smoke or fog (or once Bird Poop, but that’s another story). They generally don’t understand some of the other creative products on the shelf and unless there is a very easy to use and highly visible demonstration, they simply don’t bother looking at the items. Particles are much more difficult to sell than fashions, I suspect, because motion-oriented items are hard to comprehend in a still image, and often represent they something that is totally not possible in real life.



Hence the new store layout, which does the following:

• All products are classified into one of eight major categories (like “Hearts”, shown above, just in time for your Second Life Valentine's day present). I wanted to have few categories, because it seems that people are overwhelmed by more than ten or so topics. The previous layout had around twenty areas, and I actually spoke with customers who refused to go looking in it due to the number of visible product boxes
• Every product has a very visual live demonstration, seen by touching the “DEMO” button. You can’t miss them!
• Products are displayed “in context” so that you get a feel for what they do. In other words, the “Garden” items have rocks and trees in the area. They aren’t part of the products, but they add to the visual experience by showing the customer a way of using them. Have a look at the “Garden” section above
• Every box delivers an explanatory notecard upon touch
• Each of the eight areas has a giant can’t-be-missed sign that includes an icon to represent the feeling of the area. (Yeah, I haven’t put the giant Bow up on the “Pretty” section yet, give me a break!)

It’s been an enormous amount of work, as you can imagine. Not only did I have to design the layout and build all the structures, but the most difficult part was creating all the demonstrations. To give you an idea of what had to be done, I eventually made 158 demos, and I’m giving a rough estimate of around 25-35,000 lines of LSL code had to be written to make this all work.

Anyway, there’s lots left to be done, but the basic structure is up and running. If you want to come by to shop or just gawk at the layout, please feel free to drop in!

After Much Debate

Yes, I’ve made a decision. And it’s why I haven’t been posting this week. I’ve been shopping – for land.

My main shop is located on mainland in the Caso Milo region, and has been unchanged size-wise since June 2007. However, I’ve been gradually filling it up over the past eighteen months with products, displays and even a rather wacky lounge. I’ve even begun to worry about prim counts, something I’ve never had to do before.

Last week I noticed a few parcels adjacent to me on sale! After much debate (hence the title of this post) I decided to expand onto mainland instead of getting into the island game. The bottom line was that I just could not justify the expense of an island without having a solid approach for a return on that investment. In other words, I could not think up a way to actually use the land on an island effectively. Sure, I could USE the land, but would I get any RETURN from it? A business does not last long if it spends without returns.

Besides, as everyone knows, islands are a risky proposition if you are not willing to fund it from your own pocket. You must have a substantial income from your business, massive donations, subsidies or a complete complement of renters. None of these are guaranteed, and you’ll have to work very hard to make sure they come through. Worse, there are no guarantees that tier rates will remain stable, as we’ve seen recently. So I proceeded to engage something I know I can afford and make good use of. A bigger mainland shop.

After some quick “buys” and “joins”, my parcel is now almost twice its original size, as you can see in the top image. One issue is that I did not quite get all the space nearby. There was a 256 sm parcel subdivided into a 208 sm and several 16's. I'm negotiating for the 16's, but the 208 sm is priced at the ridiculous price of L$25,000+, if you can believe it! It's using some kind of automated script to gradually lower the price. Fine, I will build around it, and I've placed some particle stanchions around it to keep people from falling to their death below.

Meanwhile, I have obtained significant space that can be used for a variety of purposes. The question now is, “what exactly will I do with this extra space?”

My goal is to rectify an ongoing issue in my particle business: sales seem focused on very basic items, such as chimney smoke, white fog, fire and a few other staples. Meanwhile there are many other fascinating particle effects that don’t sell as well. I have pondered this for a while, and now have a theory that I can test with the new land.

The theory is that unusual particle effects are very difficult to understand, and simply cannot be sold from a box picture or even a basic small-scale demonstration. People already understand smoke and fire, so they buy them. They don’t understand the more unusual products, so they don’t buy them. I sell many strange star effects, but I believe the reason they buy is because I usually have a parcel-wide demonstration running that people can’t miss seeing. In other words, if customers see products properly, they are more likely to purchase. My job as the merchant is to truly show them what the other stuff is all about. And I could not do it when limited by the space.

Thus, the new area will be used to provide rich demonstration experiences, far more detailed than ever before. For example, I suspect I’ll end up with a gigantic area for showing fireworks effects. And another for dance floor effects. And so on.

So if you don’t see me in the next while, you can find me hidden in the back, building demonstrations!

Just a Pile of Products?

I’ve added some new items to my store in the past few weeks, taking up more space on the product shelves. In fact, a count today revealed that I now have 196 unique products for sale. I’ve talked before about how I arrange the product shelves for shopping ease, but today I want to talk about extra features that every store should consider having.

The issue is that when you have a great many products, things can be confusing for visiting shoppers. Where do they start? What’s different from the last time they visited?  What’s it all about, anyway? Over the past year I’ve developed a few solutions for my shop; they may work for you too.

Problem: How do customers find new items? At first I would simply place a “NEW” sticker onto the appropriate product boxes. That was fine when the number of products is low, but as the number rises it becomes increasingly difficult for customers to make their way through the entire store to find those shiny new items.



Solution: New products are displayed in an area specifically set aside for that purpose. Of course, it should be visible immediately upon arrival to the store. I’ve made such a display at Electric Pixels in Kiosk form. I automatically know when to clean it out, too – whenever it runs out of space for new items, I clean out the older ones.

Problem: How to deliver custom-made items to customers? One can, of course, have them pay you directly and then you hand over the item. But that method can screw up in various ways, not the least of which is incorrect payment amount.



Solution: I’ve created a “Special Deliveries” area, in which I place one-time product boxes containing special orders. I set the floating text to the name of the customer and also set the box for sale at the agreed upon price. A quick IM to the customer leads them to come by and “pick it up” (which really is “buying” it.) This ensures that your transaction log shows more detail than “Give Inventory”. A side benefit of this approach is that while they’re in your store, they just might buy something else, or perhaps bring someone else along with them.

Problem: Depending on the season, there’s different combinations of products that go together. For example, during Halloween you might want scary Vampire items alongside with falling leaves. Or at another time you might want Christmas and winter items placed together. Either that or you force your customers to thread their way through your shop looking for them. Except that they won’t, and you lose the sale.



Solution: Recently I built a “Seasonal” area in which I can display different combinations of products throughout the year. (That is, if I get off my can and actually move stuff around – note expired Halloween items in photo. Sheesh.)

Problem: Visitors are not sure what to do with your products.



Solution: My solution is to build a demonstration area, where I can display interesting combinations of products. It’s not selling anything directly, but instead the purpose is to stimulate the imagination of the customer, which may lead to purchases they wouldn’t have made otherwise. (Pictured: Eureka Dejavu and myself, testing the demonstration area.)

Problem: Visitors don’t know much about your store.



Solution. You could use one of those accursed Landmark givers, but I don’t like their intrusiveness when I shop, and I suspect my customers don’t like them either. Instead, I’ve built an all-in-one gadget that upon a click offers a landmark, group join, explanatory notecards in multiple languages and a link to the website, too. It also tracks visitors and emails reports periodically.

You can see that a store is not simply just a pile of products pasted on a wall or laid out on the floor. I’ve tried to make the shopping experience as simple as possible. You can too!

Concierge Party

Somehow I snagged an invite to this weekend's ultra-exclusive Linden "Concierge Party". The party is open to residents with monthly tier in excess of USD$125, and their guests. That's me, the guest. Someday I may require land of that size, but right now my store's portion of my parcel's capacity is only 700 prims and I simply can't justify anything bigger.

Anyhow, back to the party. The theme of the party was "Ides of March", based on legendary Caesarian events. While I am sure someone will blog about the wacky events and amazing Toga-style activities, I want to talk about the amazing way Linden Labs handled the event.

Back at my shop awaiting the opening of the party sims, I wondered how this was going to work. You see, the Second Life Group for the party held over 7,000 members. I mentally calculated how many sims would be required to hold this colossal event. Hmm, 7,000 attendees over 24 hours, with a maximum of 40 avatars per sim before they topple over due to extreme load. Dozens, at least.

Wrong.

They had five.

Yep, only five sims required to handle 7,000 potential visitors! How did they do it? My first clue was the avatar count in these sims. As you can clearly see in the image above, there were actually 81 avatars in Colosseum. A few times I've seen forty, but never 81! I was there. I saw them. I didn't count them, there were far too many. And get this - I was fairly easily able to move around and converse. At one point I was getting almost 30 FPS in a sim containing 68 avatars, although there were times my frame rate dipped down to the single digits.

Here's my observations of how Linden Labs might have pulled this off:

• Limited number of visible textures. While the buildings were attractive, appropriate and useful, a careful inspection showed they made generous use of few textures. Good design!
• No floors. I noticed this immediately upon arriving: most things were simply set directly on the ground. First impressions were similar to seeing those awful "Yard Sales". There were hardly any prim-based walking areas, just dusty ground.
  
• Limited number of buildings and prims. The sims seemed empty, at least when I first arrived before they filled up with people. A check of the prim count in Temple showed 1235 objects of 15,000, 13,765 available. No wonder frame rates were fast: there was very little to draw!
• Havoc 4. The party sims were running the new Havoc4 physics engine, purported to be much more efficient. It certainly seemed to be. Even when things got a bit laggy, I was still able to move about without suddenly lurching forward, crashing into innocents and accidentally knocking them into a pit of doom.
  
• Top class server? I can't prove this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Linden Lab used servers with a bit of extra juice. Why not, if you are expecting 7,000 for dinner?

Good building tips indeed, if your objective is to pack 'em in like sardines. Meanwhile, I'm wondering whether this experience tells us something about future sim performance. Perhaps someday I'll have 68 avatars strolling through my store! For now, I'll be happy with six.

Sleepy Mistake

The other night I made a mistake. A business mistake. Not a big one, but telling the story may help other business owners avoid a similar fate.

It began as I was about to sign off after working on a new gadget in my Lab. I was very tired and sleepy, as everyone seems to be in Second Life lately. Someone was in the store buying a few items. I strolled over to thank them for their business, and she said, "oh can you help me?"

Normally, this means the customer is interested in something that I don't sell. It's an opportunity to make something new. Something people might want. I encouraged her to tell me what she wanted. And so she did. Sort of.

Her idea seemed fairly simple to build, so I decided to build it on the spot. "Real-time Building" is usually a lot of fun, and you can get instant feedback from the customer as you build things: "too big", "not orange enough", "too icky", etc.

The build proceeded. Particle shapes were devised. Parameters tweaked. Parameters tweaked again. And again. And still more. Somehow the build just wasn't quite what was required. Many adjustments were made. I realized at this point that I did not quite understand what she was after, either because she didn't or couldn't say, or because I was too sleepy to hear it or probe for clarifications.

As the tweaking continued, more requirements were stated. Some were easy to incorporate, so I did. Others were fantastically complicated, and would require hours more work. Finally, as sleep was about to overtake me, the item was finished. At least without the complicated add-ons. I noticed the clock said I'd been working on this custom product for a long time, and normally this implies a fairly high price. However, in the interest of speed I quoted a lowball price. She said, "omg - I don't have that much money!"

Yikes! I suddenly realized I had made the most obvious contracting mistake: not determining a price before the work started. A cardinal sin for freelancers. Here's how it should have gone down:

• A clear discussion of what is required, and an explanation of what was possible
• An agreement on precisely what is to be built
• An agreement on the fee for building it
  
• The build takes place
• Goods and Lindens are exchanged
• Everybody happy

But, it didn't work out that way. Instead, customer leaves with a product that is less than they imagined, and contractor (me) receives fewer Lindens than the work deserved. Moral of the story: agree first, then build.

One more thing: Never, Never, Never do work-on-the-fly when you are sleepy! After a certain hour of the night, go dancing, chasing dragons or ride a teacup!

Sim Phantomed Sim!

This week I was minding my own business (literally) with Haley Salomon when suddenly we both plummeted downwards and splattered on the ground! My store was built on megaprims that stand about 50m above the raw ground. Picking myself up off the dusty ground, I looked around and saw nothing but bare land!

Immediately, I thought that somehow my land, store and all my objects had been taken away by an evil land-baron-trickster-bot, or perhaps in an insufficient-sleep induced stupor I had marked the parcel for sale at a fractional price. But no, the truth was even stranger.

I looked up to where my store had been - and it was still there! Somehow both of us had simultaneously fallen through the floor, all the way to the ground. Bizarrely, we apparently were standing on the ground in the middle of a solid megaprim cube.

Having no other obvious course of action, we flew back up through the "solid" cube to arrive at the store's normal floor. Upon casually striking the "Stop Flying" button, I gently set down on my store's floor once again.

And then plummeted 50m to splatter yet again.

Somehow the megaprim floor had become Phantom - and I could freely pass through it. A furious investigation ensued, where I checked the phantomness (is that a word?) of the remaining floor cubes (phantomed). Store walls (phantomed). Any objects nearby (phantomed). Everything was made phantom!

Perhaps, I thought, it's only my objects. I rocketed over to my neighbor, Aspasia Arliss's park and approached her house/temple/not-quite-sure-what-it-is, and being the clumsy oaf I am in a laggy sim, proceeded to fly right through it! All of her objects were similarly phantomed.

Returning to my store, and gaining a slight bit of psychological stability by positioning myself mostly on the floor (see picture above), we set about figuring out how to report this unbelievable turn of events to the Linden Mandarins.

Suddenly, I squirted upwards out of the floor to resume standing normally on the now solid floor. Other objects were also suddenly non-phantomed.

So what happened? A SL Client problem? No, it happened to two of us at exactly the same Second Life second. Did I dream the entire scenario? No, check the picture again. Clearly it was a sim problem of some sort - and fortunately a temporary one at that. It does a business no small goodness to have arriving customers plummet to their death mere seconds after they arrive.

Moral of the story: When you hear a big "Splat", it isn't always due to avatar operator competency challenges.

SL Ergonomics, Part II: Building Tips

In a previous article I described what I refer to as "Second Life Ergonomics". It's all about the appropriate design of virtual structures to make it easy for avatars to use and enjoy. My main complaint is that many builders tend to build virtual structures using real-life ergonomic considerations, and fewer realize that avatars have significantly different characteristics that must be accounted for.

Here are a few tips that I have learned during my brief virtual existence (well, brief except for last week when I was online for far too many hours!) This list is certainly not exhaustive - I am thinking of new ideas all the time, and I am positive there many great ideas I have yet to learn.

Phantom Objects - On those days when it's really hard to turn, walk and especially precisely navigate through a crowded area, it's really annoying to get hung up on items in your way. Yes, I know you should walk around them - but sometimes you just can't.

• TIP: Unless the object has some physical purpose make it phantom. That way the object cannot interfere with an avatar's motion, but still adds to the visual effect. Don't phantomize objects that require physical characteristics, such as furniture to sit on or ramps to walk up.

Solid Objects - I can't stand it when I am trying to walk along a narrow path and end up falling off the side, sometimes to my virtual death. Why does this happen? Because the builder didn't account for the sloppy avatar movements.

• TIP: When ever there is a danger of falling, place some kind of solid object to prevent disaster. Avatars need railings, walls or even a slight hump sometimes to channel their movement and overcome occasional inadequate navigation. Even a transparent barrier would be helpful and not interfere with the visual effect. It's quite simple, really - just assume all your visitors are drunk and stumbling around!

Head Space: All avatars by default have their camera position behind and above them. That way you can see exactly what your virtual counterpart is doing, and with whom. Unless, that is, there is a wall or roof in your way. Cramped quarters are really difficult to deal with, especially if the Grid is laggy.

• TIP: Building material is free in Second Life: you can afford to have taller rooms that accommodate the normal camera position. Make rooms with very tall ceilings. Or better yet, don't have any ceilings! In some cases, even walls aren't really necessary.

Curves: The last time I looked, my keyboard did not include a curved arrow. That's why I have a lot of trouble walking accurately along curved walkways. Avatars can most easily walk straight, but curves are harder to follow. Spiral staircases are the worst, and few can successfully navigate them without bumping into the walls or falling off.

• TIP: Don't build curves for avatars to traverse. Do build curves for avatars to admire.

Dexterity: While it is easy to click with a mouse, it's difficult to do so when you must do so precisely. A vending machine with tiny buttons is not good, since it becomes very easy for someone to push the wrong buttons. Misdirected clicks often happens on websites, and it happens in Second Life too.

• TIP: Click areas should be sufficiently large to avoid any confusion with neighboring buttons. This is especially important for buttons that perform actions that count - like paying money or ejecting that annoying person from your land. Use contrasting colors to ensure they stand out and are identifiable.

Smell and Taste: As I said in the previous ergonomic post, thankfully these senses are not yet implemented in Second Life. I can imagine what some people might do if they were. But how can you reasonably approximate these senses?

• TIP: Since smell and taste are absent, you must use a visual experience to hint or remind visitors of smells and tastes. Appropriate images, carefully chosen particle effects, sounds and textures can sometimes convey a message of smell and taste.

Item Layout: Upon entering a store or gallery, experienced avatars simply stay put and motor their camera around to check out the wares. Unfortunately, most younger avatars (and even some old ones) are poor camera drivers. Instead of camming they move their avatar around the area, turning and pausing to examine every item one by one. They walk, turn, tilt, examine. Then repeat. And again. How many times must they do this? Sometimes once for every item in the store or gallery. This is at least tedious and sometimes frustrating when the lag demons are prowling.

• TIP: Make items big enough to see clearly (especially product boxes or photo displays), but not so big as to cause enormous amounts of walking and turning.

• TIP2: Consider displaying items in a circle or semi-circle, where the avatar needs only rotate to easily view a lot of items. I use this technique at my store, and it has proven quite successful. Even better, it really isn't that difficult to build.

Wide Size: Yes, I know the diving board ladder looks realistic, but it is a huge pain in the a** to line up your avatar precisely so that when you go up, you don't fall off. Similarly, smaller doorways are often hard to get through, especially if you have a larger avatar.

• TIP: Assume that avatars are large and size things accordingly. Also assume that it is hard to navigate precisely, so don't make things very narrow if you expect avatars to use them. Use invisible railings or equivalent if there is danger of falling off.
  

Colors and Textures: Avatars have relatively poor eyesight. They often cannot see distances clearly and even up close they can't make out details unless they are able to zoom in. Also, sometimes poor graphics capability means they can see only a limited amount of textures.

• TIP: Try to minimize the number of textures in use, so that once a texture is loaded, it is rapidly displayed on all applied surfaces. If you use many different textures, visiting avatars will spend a long time rezzing all the textures and generally experience local slow downs.

And those are some ergonomic tips for you. As I learn more, I'll post a follow up article with new ones in the future. Good luck with your build!

Stacks Complete!

I may have mentioned in a previous post that I was building some custom fireballs for Veyron's industrial factory build in South Gate, and I can report they are now installed and working well. The three smokestacks blow off giant fireballs simultaneously every once in a while. It looks great in person, but it's difficult to capture a decent picture of them, like any fast-moving particle effect. (I say that with experience, having had to take hundreds of pictures of particle effects for my product boxes.)

Meanwhile, after the flames were positioned, Veyron took me for a tour of the rest of her industrial build. While there are some large buildings like the "factory", which has the three smokestacks, the most interesting part is deep underground.

In the basement of one building a passageway opens into some truly incredible sewers. The highly realistic underground tunnels twist and turn, leading you below ground between the buildings. Dirty walls, "aromatic-looking" water and assorted trash add a certain ambiance to this subterranean wonder.

Meanwhile, she opened a floor grating and invited me down into a very close cylindrical pit. Suddenly, water started filling up the chamber...

The next day in RL, someone asked what I was up to last night.

"Oh, nothing much - I drowned in a virtual sewer with a demon."

Another typical day, in the sims of Second Life.

An Introduction to Second Life Ergonomics

Ergonomics? Isn't that about how you place your hands on a keyboard? How you sit in front of your screen? Yes, but that's Human Ergonomics. Today I am talking about Second Life Ergonomics.

What exactly do I mean by "Second Life Ergonomics"? I mean that those little avatars that we control (or is it the other way around?) have needs just as their human owners do. They can't see as well as humans, they have restricted ways of moving around and have utterly terrible dexterity. Some of them are pretty ugly, too!

But seriously, these "physical" characteristics of avatars really do affect how we travel throughout the Second Life grid. Who hasn't been stuck trying to navigate to a precise spot, overshooting, and backing up? And repeating 0ver and over? Crashing into walls? Getting stuck in a rotating door? Falling off the edge of a ramp? Try moving while the grid is bagged out!

Frustrating, these be.

When I first built my Caso Milo store, I wanted to right some of these wrongs so that visitors would not encounter those issues. But immediately I had to realize that:

Real Life buildings are made to accommodate Real Life people with their physical capabilities

Therefore,

Second Life buildings should be made to accommodate Second Life avatars with their virtual capabilities

Often I encounter Second Life builds that replicate real life buildings, or incorporate real life building ideas. While these builds are not wrong, they may introduce problems for avatars who do not have the same physical capabilities as humans. Our quest to be realistic sometimes results in difficulties for visitors.

What are the characteristics of avatars that make them different than humans? Let's make a list:

• Sight is normally set to a specific view - from behind the avatar, not from its eyeballs
• Motion is normally in straight lines, and difficult to perform accurately in a curve
• Teleportation is possible
• Flight is possible, except in sims where flight is disabled. (FYI - there is a secret way around this, revealed to me late last night by Veyron Supercharge at her demonic industrial build site... but that's another story for another day)
• Dexterity sucks. It is very difficult to accurately touch or manipulate small items
• Smell and Taste are absent - thankfully!
  

And let's add one final one:

• Avatars can't always know how something is going to work, since Second Life objects can behave unlike anything in real life. In other words, humans have half a chance at guessing how something works or acts since physics is, well, universal. But Second Life doesn't operate with the same physics. Pink Elephants can fly, Hearts appear on arms or Particle Fog, Doves or even Cheese can flow out of your butt! It's just a bit harder to know what to do.

Knowing that avatars have differences from humans, do you think that buildings should be made differently to accommodate them? I do! I built my shop after considering these differences. You might be interested in knowing how you can build in an ergonomic way... but I will save those tips for another post.

Burning After Alexis

Alexis Lange is not only a friend of mine, but also a Battlestar Galactica pilot based in Eleggua (call sign "Panther".) Last week she came to me looking for a way to make her flyer more realistic, specifically by adding a massive rocket plume.

Easy, I thought. Just build a particle emitter that shoots out the right mix of shapes and colors to visually appear as a plume. Then paste it on the a**-end of the flyer. I quickly constructed a disc-shaped "Afterburner" emitter that could fit well within the thrust tubes of the powerful flyer, shooting out white-yellow flames.

It was going fine until I dropped by the Eleggua airfield (which is itself hundreds of meters in the air) and gave Alexis the Afterburner prototype for testing. The device worked perfectly, and even synchronized with the flyer's start and stop chat commands.

The trouble began when I suggested that Alexia link the Afterburner to the flyer so that she could fly off and not leave the emitter behind on the deck! However, it turns out that the permissions on the flyer were no-Modify, meaning she cannot link any objects to it, including the Afterburner.

I was about to abandon hope of getting this done easily, short of begging the flyer's maker to somehow include the Afterburner, when I had an idea.

Instead of attaching the emitter to the flyer, I realized we could attach it to Alexis! Yes, while she's sitting in the cockpit, the emitter goes off as designed, but the plume still appears as intended. Flames blast out from her spine backwards and appear to come from the flyer's engines. With some simple adjustments, I'll be able to make a rocket plume Alexis can wear in any vehicle.

In fact, I think I'll be making an entire line of wearable aircraft effects including explosions, smoke trails, rat-tat-tat or what ever else seems appropriate or just plain cool. There will be no need to equip every vehicle with effects - just bring them with you instead! Thanks for the inspiration, Alexis!

Two things were very important for me on this adventure:

• There are always more ways to solve a problem than you think at first. Never give up - just keep trying, even ideas that are, well, crazy at first! You may bump into the answer.
• No matter how bad the situation, you can usually find a way to make something good out of it. Learn something, change something, change your self!

And Alexis, one thing to remember about the Afterburner - be very, very careful where you are when you say the word, "start"!

Tips for a Successful Second Life Club

I came across some very interesting Second Life business ideas the other day quite by accident. Readers may recall my rantings on how best to organize your store for traffic management earlier, but these ideas take them a lot farther.

ATown Fall is the owner of multiple successful sims, most of which involve 24x7 DJ clubs - a rarity itself in Second Life. He sets up sims one after the other, hiring staff and gathering residents and merchants to populate them. While he certainly does the basic things, ATown has several very unique Second Life business approaches that I hadn't considered:

• ATown's admission policy echoes real life - you often must pay a cover charge to get in. This makes the events more important, if only because those who are inside really want to be inside because they paid to get in! This raises the profile of the events.
• Because you must pay a cover to enter events, the concept of VIPs becomes real. All too often clubs hand out "VIP" tags to basically anyone, but that makes the concept of VIP meaningless. However, ATown's cover charge is waived for his VIPs, and the tag is no longer meaningless. You really are "important".
• Many businesses try to increase their traffic by planting as many poorly-paid campers as possible on their parcels. But these zombie-like operations appear quite artificial and often scare away real visitors, who immediately recognize it for what it is - a scam to game the traffic counter. Meanwhile, ATown has a very unique approach to camping. Instead of paying people to camp, he simply has people wait for a specified duration before they are given a pass to enter the club. Of course, you could pay the cover charge and get in immediately, but instead many people simply wait out the time for their pass. And in the process, cause the traffic count to rise - because their wait time in the line is equivalent to a row of camping zombies. But it's much more realistic.
• I've written before about the importance of traffic flow in a shopping mall. Essentially, the problem is that TP allows people to skip by the shops and go directly to and from the entertainment. Many, many clubs have this issue. They hope to make money by renting space to shopkeepers, but fail to encourage traffic to the shops. The shopkeepers fail, and ultimately the clubs are unsuccessful. I've previously recommended using careful placement of the landing point such that arriving TP'ers must walk past or near shops on their way to the entertainment. This has proven successful in a few malls I've seen. However, ATown takes this concept a bit further. He sets his land to no-fly. This, combined with the landing point trick, means that visitors must walk past the shops - and walkers are more likely to see items they'd like to purchase than someone flying by at warp speed.

Why do these techniques work? Simple - they are already well proven in real life! ATown has recognized that the same things can also be done in Second Life. And evidently very successfully.

Dreams Mighty Prim Competition

Today I happened to get invited to vote at a building competition. Dreams is having a "Mighty Prim Competition" that focuses on the Torus prim. It's all about building something beautiful and dreamy using only 55 prims (5 of which are the base and name holder). And get this - only Torus prims may be used! Haley Salomon (semi-finalist in NWN's Uncanny Valley Contest) and I are pictured inside one of the exhibits.

Walking around the competition area reminds me of Burning Life, just not quite so crazy. The competition rules state that no scripts or particles may be used, so the sculptures are all static. I observed entries with themes from Christmas, Veteran's Day, Animals, Flowers, Faerie Houses, Giant Food Items and of course the completely undescribable.

There are 27 entries at the competition site, some of which are quite attractive - and even more so when you realize they are built only from Torii. My favorite was Anhayla Lycia's, but there are many other terrific builds. I'd encourage you to drop by to see the ingenious entries.

If you come, you should vote for your favorites. The contest began on 11 November, and voting commenced on 20 November. You must cast your vote by 29 November, since awards are at noon SLT on 29 November.

You can visit the competition at: Dreams Entry, Dreams (155, 161, 24)

Particles at Burning Life

I've never been to Burning Life before (mainly because I am not old enough!) So I thought I would pay a visit. I am fascinated by interesting builds, and there is no better place to see the envelope of ingenuity pushed than at Burning Life. My visit to Burning Life today turned out a lot better than my first attempt - no griefing in sight today!

Since I am sure others are reporting on Burning Life in general, I am reporting on Particle Effect builds at Burning Life. I am not sure if anyone else is doing so. Basically, I tromped around the site looking for interesting particle effects. While there are many wonderful physical builds, I have to say that there really are not many particle effects present. I suspect some shun particles for fear of generating lag, or perhaps there just isn't many people able to build them. Lag doesn't really happen, of course, unless you build massive particle bursts as are often found in freebie particle baskets.

JT Dagger built this amazing creation, called the "Atom Spinner". Perhaps I should have taken a video of it, since it is quite animated. This item rotates, changes colors and emits multi-colored shape-changing particles. Particles need not be like anything in the physical world. It's cool particle sculptures like this that I admire.

A friend of mine, Carrie Cronenwerth, is refitting a mall and is wondering how best to attract more traffic, as many landowners do. She and I toured several Burning Life sites the other night (pictured) to get some ideas. I suggested she might consider placing some fascinating sculptures in her mall to attract visitors - they seem to attract me, so why not others too? And what better way to find builders than to visit Burning Life? It's almost like a trade show for builders.

This one is quite basic, but it certainly collects your eyes! It seems to be made/owned by TheDreamingDragon Nighbor and Legith Fairplay. In fact, there seems to be several "eye" oriented effects at Burning Life for some unexplainable reason.

My friend Jopsy Pendragon has perhaps the best particle display I've seen. The display includes not only the amazing lightening particles, but also sound and animated textures. You can't see it in this picture, but it includes a dancing fountain, like a simplified version of the Las Vegas Bellagio fountain - all made from particles.

And of course, the most notable particle effect was the Burning of the Man that took place today. It was probably the biggest fire I've seen in Second Life so far. Well done, Burning Lifer's! The fire proceeded for many minutes and then gradually died out to the applause of the hundreds present.

But that was not all! After the burning died out, the toasty near-the-fire participants were handed the "Dance Effect Orb", which as you can see produces an iPod-commercial-like appearance. Everyone danced with more particles flying above. Sweet!