ArminasX has a Sexual Encounter!

No, it's not what you think. But it does involve sex. This week I visited a place where Second Life's virtual capabilities were used to the extreme: The Tour of the Testis.

It's one of those amazing automated tours, where you board a vehicle that takes you through interesting and usually educational displays. This tour is definitely educational, as you actually fly through a truly gigantic testis and observe the entire biological process from the inside.

The tour is presented by The Ohio State University, Second Life Campus. Specifically, it's for their Medical Center, and was built by DrDoug Pennell.

Strangely, your vehicle has a wiggly tail and is shaped like something familiar. It seats four, so bring your friends. You choose between an audio or text tour. I chose text.

The tour takes you inside the relevant body structures, as if you are cell-sized, where you can actually see cells being generated and swimming through tubules. The sperm particles are represented as fluorescent green particles! They're pretty easy to notice as you can see in this image.

The biological explanations in text are well beyond my meager medical knowledge, but they seem quite comprehensive. Here's an example:

Normally these spaces would be filled with sperm in various stages of development.
However in patients with Sertoli Cell Only Syndrome, they only have ....
Sertoli Cells :-).  They are azoospermic (have no sperm) and as you might expect, are infertile.
We are now outside the tubule.  However, we would still be INSIDE the testis.
Note that the blood vessels as well as some cell types such as the Leydig Cells (orange/brown) are OUTSIDE the tubule.

I suspect medical students would benefit from the explanations more than casual visitors such as myself. 

The display shows incredible biological detail in a massive and intricately built model. Key structures are highlighted and animated to show you precisely how things work.

The tour ends at a dramatic platform where you can examine a breathtaking overview of the tubule. Don't leave yet, because there are additional animations you can access from the platform by clicking on the signs.

This tour is very well done and provides some great educational value. But here's the key question: is this a good place to take a date? Heh, it depends. Why don't you find out? Here's the SLURL.

A Fleshy Encounter

Many avatars remain just that; virtual people who communicate with other virtuals. Some reveal clues about their atomic identity, while others remain entirely hidden behind an identity firewall.

Sometimes that firewall can be breached, if one takes a chance. I first did so at last year’s SLCC in Tampa, where I actually met many atomics. Strangely, it turns out many of them do not actually resemble their avatar’s appearance.

Taking that big step across the virtual to atomic void can be filled with emotion. Fear, anxiety, happiness and curiosity are only some of the feelings that occur. But it’s always exhilarating.

I recently had the opportunity to do it again. This time I happened to be in London, UK, where I took a chance and asked my long time friend, blogger and artist Vint Falken if she wished to get together. She agreed!

Then there was the usual awkward first moment, when you think you recognize the other atomic and approach them. After all the online time, the blog posts, tweeting and plurking, the comments back and forth and projects we’ve done, we were finally together.

She doesn’t look like her avatar, either.

After a wonderful dinner we landed in Trafalgar Square watching zany amateur performance art. Soon we ended up talking with a photographer, who seemed interested in us. And that’s when things got weird.

Photographer: “So what do you guys do?”

Vint and I looked at each other and chuckled. How could we possibly explain our strange and unknowable virtual life to someone who's never heard of virtual reality? We tried our best, and I think we managed to convey some sense of the magic we all experience in a world that can be anything.

Photographer: “And what are your names?”

More chuckling. I was in “avatar mode”, and had to explain that we don’t have real names, or something like that. And also that in fact this was the first time we had met in real life.

Photographer: “This is the first time you’ve met?”

Us: “Yes!”

Photographer: “I hope it works out for you both!”

Sigh.

Virtual worlds still have a very long way to go, it seems.

Beggars in a Strange Land

Getting hit on by a beggar is not uncommon in Second Life, but twice today it happened in ridiculous places. Where does one go to escape them?

It began at CG Linden's Friday open discussion on software releases. Myself and 10 others (including new friend and fellow blogger Ciaran Laval) showed up to ask questions and get answers from the well-spoken CG Linden. Much I had heard before, but a few things were new to me:

• Evidently Linden Lab keeps a "blacklist" of banned scripts. Each region's simulator checks the UUID of scripts against the master blacklist to ensure that bad-guy scripts are unusable across the grid.
• The BETA grid (a separate virtual world used to test radically new software in a safe manner) is currently testing MONO, a more effective script engine. One of the participants suggested that particles would require a lot of work on this new software. Now that got my attention! The notion of re-writing my 200ish particle scripts is a scary thought.

As the meeting drew to a conclusion, questions for CG kind of petered out. Suddenly, a quiet guy in the corner spoke up and told the crowd that he's "looking for work" and is "available for interviews". Somehow his topic didn't really relate to the highly technical discussion up to that point in the meeting. Worse, when no one responded to his plea, he continued on, saying: "Anyone? Anyone? I need Lindens to have a place to live!", "Boy, you guys must be rich!" and finally: "Please give me L$1000!!!!".

Sad. Amusing. Pitiful. In spite of all that, the crowd was very polite and provided sage advice on where the best freebie shops could be found. Eventually he disappeared. Or ejected, I'll never know.

After CG's meeting broke up, I decided I'd better test my scripts on the BETA grid, just in case I have months work of rewriting unbeknown to me. I'd never been to the BETA grid, and I landed on a small area of only four adjaecent sims containing some basic structures and facilities. I was mostly interested in the sandbox where I could perform the testing.

I usually try not to test particles in public sandboxes, as they often attract a lot attention and I end up answering questions instead of building. On the lonely BETA grid the same phenomenon occurred, as I was approached by several gawking spectators wondering what was going on.

A freebie-equipped standard avatar approached (not the one pictured here) and asked a few questions. Suddenly, she asked me, "can u borrow me some money?" And then I began laughing, a lot.

Why? Because any money on the BETA grid stays on the BETA grid and won't transfer back to the main grid where it could be used to buy cheap hair and pole dances.

Beggars in all places, even where money is meaningless.

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.

"Bring a Date — It'll Glow Your Mind!"

That's the slogan for a new Rezzable attraction entitled, "Tunnel of Light". What is it all about? Well, it's kinda like, a tunnel of light!

Seriously, when I arrived I was extremely disappointed. Instead of seeing animated buzzing color textures and extravagant particle effects all around me, I somehow landed in a peaceful and pastoral meadow scene. I half-expected to see cows wandering in the vicinity. Thankfully, there were none, as they often deposit unpleasant surprises for those walking by.

However, one item stood out: a red neon arrow, indicating I should traverse a path towards a pond. Being quite adventurous, I took the arrow's advice and ended up at a rather dull pond. Noticing a small item floating in the pond, I touched it.

Then many things happened. Quickly.

I fell down, up and through a myriad of brilliantly decorated light tunnels, ending up at a black/neon boarding area reminiscent of a DisneyWorld ride. A car-sized teacup slid up and stopped in front of me, and of course I jumped in. Ten seconds later, the teacup began a magical journey through numerous psychedelic zones, some of which included the most amazing texture animations I have ever seen.

The teacup followed a wispy blue path through tunnels and into massive open areas, seemingly traveling between planets. At one point I moved through a forest that was made of, well, this is hard to explain, and impossible to photograph, but the "buzzing" textures made the forest look blurry. I've never seen anything like it.

And glow! Things were glowing everywhere! Builder Spiral Walcher has taken advantage of the WindLight viewer in ways never seen before. Maybe I am crazy, but even my Group Tag was glowing!

The preview of Tunnel of Light can be found here. Warning: you really must be WindLighted to get the full effect. Evidently the Tunnel will become a club later this month, I'd recommend you head down to the Tunnel of Light straight away - and unlike me, bring a date!

Gods of Second Life

Every society sprouts a new religion from time to time, and Second Life is no exception. Yes, there are lots of conventional and unconventional religious activities taking place, but this week I came across a unique and purely Second Life-flavored worship area.

The difference?

Gods of Second Life is based entirely on actual Second Life characters and phenomenon, as if we were suddenly hundreds of years into the future when today's issues and personalities had become legend.

Upon arrival, the worship area is rather sparse and seemingly uninteresting - until you look closer at the several altars. Each one is carefully designed to play on Second Life. There is little signage, so you must know your Second Life trivia to understand the exhibits. A long list of Second Life Deities is provided, which includes this quote about the God "Uncle Phil":

Uncle Phil is the Creator from who's loins the world of Second Life and Ruth, the All-Mother have spung. The bringer of Order from Chaos and Pixelated Reality from the Great Void. An effigy of Philip's pants is the shrine of Ruth.

"Uncle Phil" is one of the three Major Deities, the others being "Ruth" and "The Great Corey". All the great features and personalities of Second Life are represented here, including Torley, Hippos, Lag, Crash, Linden Bears, Newbies and many others.

I don't often post multiple pictures, since I fear the Internet will run out of online storage, but Gods of SL deserves many. First, outside the temple is a monstrous torch, which looks eerily similar to the standard torch one finds in the default inventory, except that it oddly emits Flying Spaghetti Monsters. This is the altar for the God "Corey". Watch out for those noodly appendages!

The main temple, which is itself a gigantic effigy of "Uncle Phil's" pants, is pictured above. Note the similarities between the temple and the "real life" Philip Linden - including that rather strange multicolored structure covering the naughty bits.

The Goddess Ruth sits inside the temple, greeting visitors with her standard unchanging gaze. She's holding a Pastafarian torch very much like "Corey's". Pictured are Ruth devotees Infinite Graves and Marlee Theas, who have come to worship before Ruth's default chair. Ruth doesn't seem to move very much, but I am sure she is watching over us all. According to the legend, "If you are fortunate, you may glimpse her visage briefly as people of SL teleport in and out of areas".

Near the teleporter, a gigantic list of commandments specifies:

In Yadni we trust
thou shalt build like crazy
thou shalt help the newbie
thou shalt save the freebie

That's as good advice as I've ever heard for Second Life! Strangely, I follow them too. Most of them. Well, two.

Near the temple is a very inspiring obelisk showing the default avatars on each side. Male and female, human and furry, all equally represented on the different faces of the obelisk just as they are in-world. Seeing those all-too-familiar avatars stirred up uncomfortable memories for me... newbs just don't know how newb they are until it's too late. At least in my case.

My favorite display is this default wooden cube. It appears to be a standard box, and indeed it is. Then you read the description:

"Altar for LAGNOR, God of Lag. I would have finished it, but the sim is too laggy."

So true.

I haven't shown the Altar to Torley, the Hippos Bath or many other amazing items, but you can see them by visiting the Gods Of Second Life at this SLURL. When you arrive, choose "Gods of SL" from the teleporter and enjoy!

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.

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.

Spooky

Ok, so I know that people make Second Life pets, and some of them even follow you around. My neighbor in Caso Milo has a wonderful pond with apparently artificially intelligent ducks. I've seen birds flying through the sky and I've ridden elephants for a laugh.

But last night I saw something a little different. As I was working with Veyron Supercharge on her evil "Sweatshop" build (I am making some evil-looking flames that will burst from the industrial-style smokestacks), she showed me an interesting sight next door at her South Gate parcel.

It was a ghost!

This small build contained a rather creepy looking sculpty tree (made by Seph DaSilva) with matching ground terrain. However, once we were nearby we were assaulted by ghosts! The "Spectre", made by Lyle Maeterlimck of Liquid Designs, slinks around the tree area and rushes up to unsuspecting passers-by. More ghosts are spawned and it gets pretty spooky.

That's a pet! Now, if only someone would make a pet that washed the floors in my store...

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"!

Mountain Biking!

I fell into a very interesting place the other night - Weather Island. While they have many of the typical features you'd expect, there was one that piqued my interest: Mountain Biking.

Yes, there are lots of bikes in Second Life, but there aren't that many you can get from a shop that is right beside a gigantic mountain biking area. Hills, pits, cliffs, and other natural features appear in the desert-like ride area, ready to test your biking skills.

Once in a while you get a puff of dust as you make a hard turn, but my favorite bit is the mud puddle, which sprays muck everywhere. (aside: why is ArminasX so fascinated with mud? Perhaps because it is a particle effect? Sigh.)

You can visit the biking area by starting at Desert Jack's Bike Shop and Pit Stop. (Note: SLURL puts you at the main landing point for Weather, not precisely at the bike shop. Just head to Weather (140, 231, 35) and you will find it.) You can pick up a bike for L$0, a good price indeed. They also have helmets and backpacks available, so you can look the part. Of course, I always lose my hair when I wear a helmet. Just remember to put it back on when you are done. Oh, and bring your biking shorts, unlike me...