We of the White Suits

I'm not saying we are or should wear white suits, Hamlet Au aside. I'm referring to the 1951 comedy/science fiction flick, "The Man in the White Suit" starring Alec Guinness, who would later on become Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star wars series.

The premise of this 60 year old film is straightforward: a nerdy chemist working at a textile factory produces an amazing invention: a fabric that is virtually indestructible and automatically repels dirt, staying clean forever. Even better, the suit slightly glows white due to its "radioactive content". Well, perhaps that isn't so good.

Nevertheless, the story unfolds and the protagonist, Sidney Stratton, attempts to convince his textile factory to produce clothing with the new miracle fabric. Initially interested, the factory owners soon realize that if they were to produce clothing with the new fabric, they'd be out of business because people would never need to buy clothes again! Even the workers found the possibility to their detriment, and they united with management (unprecedented in the 1950's) to force Stratton's idea out.

It's a fun movie and an interesting premise. But could it be true? I believe we're living this science fiction story out in Second Life today. Consider the clothing our avatars wear: it never wears out; it never gets dirty; and, if you are so inclined, it can slightly glow. Our clothing doesn't have to be white, however.

And thus we'd never need to buy any more clothes, and the virtual clothing factories would close?

Apparently not. An inspection of anyone's inventories shows at least hundreds, if not tens of thousands of clothing items that don't soil, never wear out. The virtual clothing factories are not closing. They are thriving, mostly.

Why is this so? What is the difference in attitude between the 1951 movie and 2010 virtual life? I think it's that people think differently about life today - we are accustomed to living in a universe of creativity and options, whereas the people of 1950 were less well off, with far fewer options for creative outlets. They were satisfied with less, while we are never satisfied because we know something new is merely as distant as the next imaginative thought. Sure, there were no doubt 1950s fashion hounds, but none of them had 17,000 items of clothing as our avatars do.

I believe this attitude is one of the success factors for virtual reality. People want to create. They want to consume new things. In fact, many proceed through their virtual lives almost with the sole purpose to acquire new (indestructible) clothing designs.

With the exception of Hamlet, of course, who has only one white suit.

Virtual Peace

Yesterday I caught a tweet from Friend Joshua Fouts (@josholalia) who had retweeted Yoko Ono’s tweet from eariier in the day:

@yokoono: Join us when IMAGINE PEACE TOWER lights at #SecondLife sunsets http://bit.ly/2LIPT 3:20 7:20 & 11:20SLT (SLT=PT)

I attended this event last year, and I returned this year to the 7:20PM SLT lighting.

The display is simple and beautiful: luminescent blue beams, reach far into the sky from a pleasant, meadow-like island. The beams are a soft blue, but when placed together in symphony towards the sky, something wonderful happens. The tower is a reproduction of a real life exhibit in Reykjavik, Iceland, first unveiled last year.

The Imagine Peace Tower inspires people to think of peace, consider our world as one and just maybe, take some action to make it a better place. From Yoko’s manifesto:

So let’s work together to save this planet. Since destiny is created by first imaging what destiny we want for ourselves, we should IMAGINE PEACE in a big way with total conviction. In the old days, gurus sat and meditated day and night. That was pretty powerful. But we live in a different world. Time is so precious to us now. A million kids can be killed in one second as we are wondering what to do. So we can’t just sit and meditate. We should IMAGINE PEACE day and night, as we go about our daily lives.

 
There were not very many people there, that night on Yoko’s island. Haley and I sat quietly and awaited the lighting. As I looked at the unlit platform, I recalled the song that began the movement, Lennon’s “Imagine”, that I first heard long ago. While some may argue with its ideals, I believe it influenced me throughout my life by making me perhaps a little bit more peaceful than some, striving for something better - for everyone.

Suddenly, the lighting ceremony began as I heard Yoko’s voice. She welcomed us, and explained why the tower was made, calling it the “Light of Wisdom”. Then the familiar piano strokes of the famous song began to play as the tower lit up and it all came together for me. Amidst the peaceful scene, the towering lights, the song did its magic. As it continued, both John and Yoko spoke of their immense ideals, and challenged everyone to join their movement.

For me the experience was brief and wonderful, because it reminded me of our obligations in this troubled world. Each day we see, read or even participate in conflicts large or small, many of which are unnecessary, distracting or hurtful. Of how we must pause our conflicts and try our best to make life better not only for ourselves, but everyone. In my immersed state on that lonely island, the light of wisdom shone brightly.

Thank you John, and thank you, Yoko, for leaving us this place and these ideals, where anyone in the world can visit, and Imagine.

A Volcanic Eruption!

It’s been a while since I released a new product, so I wanted to make sure it was something big. And indeed, this one is huge! It’s called “Volcanic Eruption”, and it does just that.

Volcanic Eruption provides more realism to Second Life volcanoes. Most volcanoes are simply a dead mountain with a cone-shaped depression at the top, and the odd one might have smoke percolating out of it. However, I wanted to do something better.

Originally a custom build for a private estate owner but now available to all, the new Volcanic Eruption particle emitter provides a realistic twist to your virtual volcano. Simply place the emitter into your volcano’s cone and it does all the rest for you. And what, exactly, does it do?

It erupts!

To be more precise, it follows a sequence typical of real volcanoes:

• It remains idle for a time. (You can specify how long you’d like it to remain dormant)
• The eruption commences with a stream of smoke flowing skyward
• Suddenly an explosion occurs, releasing flying ejecta in all directions!
• A column of fire rises from the volcano’s cone
• The fire collapses, resulting in a deadly pyroclastic flow that runs down the sides of the mountain

 
In real life, the most dangerous part of a volcanic eruption is the pyroclastic flow. It’s a superheated mix of toxic gases and dust that speeds downward at velocities far faster than you can run, cooking and choking everything in its path. That’s what kills people during eruptions.

And now you can have it for your volcano too. Just drop by Electric Pixels, where you can find the new Volcanic Eruption in the Garden and Weather departments. 

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.

Another SL Blogger's Party!

This afternoon I attended yet another SL Blogger's party, this one being hosted by Nika Dreamscape at media baron Stuart Warf's Rezzed TV Island. By the way, if you haven't been to Rezzed TV Island, you should drop in for a visit, it's a wonderful build. 

Unlike past parties, there was no specific theme. Usually there's a theme like Mardi Gras or Steampunk and everyone dresses up to match. But this one was wide open and everyone came in great, yet unsynchronized outfits. For me, I simply showed off my chest with a high-quality open green shirt.

Nika and Stuart hosted this event, which is always held by a volunteer blogger. Will you be the next host? 

Keeme Brown appeared wearing the unfortunate Lobster outfit. Somehow I can't imagine having a big bug like that on my ...

Several events took place during party, including an exhibition house XWA Wrestling card, and a fishing tournament. Of course, those ubiquitous breeding bunnies were on sale, too.

Quite a few bloggers were in attendance, although many of the old-time bloggers did not show up this time. Lalo Telling and Snickers Snook dance together here.

The infamous parody Tweeter SecondLie made an appearance, here with Crap Mariner. I wonder who's under there? Time for an up-bag shot?

The lovely Tymmerie Thorne is in charge of events for the Blogger's group, and she's been doing a wonderful job organizing things. Since she's been on the case, we've had very regular meetups, and they're fun, too.

UberFashionista Callie Cline showed up, but for some reason wore a "Happy New Year" hat. Had a late night, Callie?

NWN events reporter Chestnut Rau made an appearance. Why not, it's a big event!

SuperBuilder Anhalya Lycia somehow snuck into the event! There were at least 40 others in attendance, far too many to mention. Please come to the next event!

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.

SL 2.0: Carnage and Cathedrals

There’s a very disruptive change coming from the Real World and it’s going to hit Second Life later this year.

That’s my conclusion after thinking about the implications of the new SL Viewer 2.0 beta that’s been making its way into computers around the SL world for the past couple of weeks. Pieces of the master-plan jigsaw puzzle are coming together and The Lab’s strategy is now becoming much clearer. Let me explain.

Viewer 2.0 is part of a larger strategy for vastly expanding the scope of Second Life. We’ve heard their execs fancifully describe a future where they might have a million simultaneous residents, an unimaginably large number compared to today’s mere 80,000. As unbelievable as that number is, I think they’re not kidding.

To achieve this, they must have: even more compelling content to attract and retain more residents; the ability to hold more simultaneous residents per region; many more new residents; and a great first-hour experience to keep them once they arrive. Viewer 2.0 addresses several of these points, but not all of them.

While much has been written about the features of the new viewer for good or evil, there are two things that stand out above all the rest in my mind. First: Shared Media and Second: Mesh import. Yes, Mesh import has not yet been released, but The Lab has indicated they’ll be releasing it “later this year”. It’s my belief that these two features will change the landscape so utterly there will be a New Virtual Order.

Shared Media, if you haven’t heard, is the ability to bring web content directly into the Grid. At first glance this might appear to mean you can view your spreadsheet or powerpoint presentation in world. Perhaps you’ll watch a YouTube video. Yeah, that’s likely quite useful for some, but many residents question what value it could possibly do for them. Who needs spreadsheets, anyway?

My belief is that viewing plain old web pages, videos and documents are not the best use of this feature. Instead we’ll see a complete revolution in the control systems for in-world items. Gone will be those bush-league blue dialog boxes that make operating many virtual items terribly frustrating: makers must fit their system into only twelve identically ugly buttons, and this makes almost every complex item confusing to use.

Instead we will soon see the development of very professional control systems that are as beautiful and functional as you’d see on contemporary web pages - because they WILL BE web pages! And you can do this all from within LSL scripts. It's not about viewing YouTube on a prim - it's about using the maker’s easy-to-use web-like controls on a prim.

We’ll also see a flood of data entering and leaving the Grid via these new web interfaces, providing unimaginable capabilities. One simple very example: an in-world game with a terrific interface that you can also play outside the grid via the website - using the exact same interface! The applications that could be made are almost limitless. Let’s face it, the previous development environment was extremely primitive and it severely limited what creators could build. Many doors open with Shared Media, and The Lab is no doubt hoping for significant innovation.

Mesh Import is the ability to load existing 3D designs from the outside into the Grid, without having to tediously build things in-world with the rudimentary 3D tools provided. Sure, lots of amazing things have been built using them, but consider this: there are immensely powerful 3D modeling tools outside the Grid, used by tens of thousands of professional modelers to produce perhaps millions of incredibly detailed 3D models. These models, with a bit of tweaking, will soon be rapidly flowing into the Grid, and their quality will probably trump existing content. When word of the ability to convert these models into dollars gets out, I expect to see many new content developers arriving with vast libraries of amazing items.

There will be a great fog of skepticism throughout The Grid over whether these new features are good things. Many will say they have no use for them and question why they are being introduced when many other issues could be addressed instead. But I think they are necessary, even if we don’t know precisely what we’ll do with them. I think this because these are very powerful tools, and in the history of mankind powerful tools are always picked up by creative people to produce wonderful things. In the 1920’s skeptics said talking movies would be the end of film, and many asked why bother with sound at all? Were they right? The introduction of voice and many other innovations to film eventually made it possible for James Cameron to produce Avatar, an experience beyond the conception of a 1920’s filmgoer. Second Life must also innovate to take us to amazing place we can’t yet imagine.

What does this mean for existing makers? Generally it’s not good, because if you’re not a 3D model mesh importer or a web coder, you might have a hard time keeping up with amazing products made with the new techniques. Gadget makers in particular may be forced to convert their products to the new web interfaces simply to keep up with the competition - and that’s at best. At worst their products may simply become irrelevant if they are replaced by direct web content. Since most existing content makers are part-timers who might not have the time or training to make the transition, I’m expecting a large turnover in the maker population.

I anticipate two more developments: something to significantly increase server scalability and a broad advertising strategy to attract a very large number of new residents - and perhaps advertising specifically designed to attract new makers. We’ll see this advertising appear once all the elements of SL 2.0 are in place. They’ll all arrive on the Grid using Viewer 2.0, of course, since that’s a key part of the strategy. There will be a tidal wave of new residents and makers.

The new makers will build most energetically, while carnage awaits many existing makers. But when the smoke eventually clears, we’ll see a million residents, walking through the new cathedrals of an awesome virtual reality.