Second Life by Linden Labs

[Firefox]

For those of you who don't know "Second Life" is a massive virtual real life simulator with millions of members.

Basically, you customise your own character and then make your way through the huge world spaces interacting with the other members, buying, selling things, building and chatting just like in real life.

How does this differ to the old MUDs, MMORPGs or even Twinkies? In a word, the shoes!

http://shinythings.wordpress.com/

http://yourtoes.blogspot.com/

These two URLs give you a taste of the fantastic virtual reality that can be achieved. And the shoes can come with sounds and scripts to make your character's feet and legs behave just like real life feet and legs wearing such shoes. These scripts can be automatic or partly user controlled using gesture commands.

Some of the features have to be seen to be believed! And it's getting closer to the real thing all the time as technology advances. I was never into these RPGs but I would highly recommend this. Be warned, because of the high levels of functionality, the methods involved in building your character and getting hold of the shoes/clothes are not easy to learn. I would put it on a par with learning a big package like Excel or Paint Shop pro. The user interface has tons of controls and it's not exactly intuitive either. Also, getting hold of the shoes and honing them to fit your character is not completely simple. You either have to know where to go to get them free, earn money in the virtual world to buy them, or make your own (advanced 3-D modelling skills required).

But, give it a try. If you have any questions, I'll try to help.

Here's the main URL: http://secondlife.com/

[crotchboots-m]

i suppose it might be fun for some folks,but i like to totally escapist stuff when i games,etc. the game you describe sounds too much like real life to any real fun,at least to me

[Firefox]

It is like real life in that some people actually work inside the game earning virtual dollars (for example, building things, putting on shows, modeling or dancing with their characters) and then they transfer it to real money (there is an exchange rate $270game = $1real life). Someone has already made $1 million real life dealing in virtual property! However, 95% people just bum around in the world, exploring, shopping, chatting, listening to concerts and shows, so all that activity is playtime really. The difference between this and real life is that someone could wear the shoes of their dreams in a crowded high street or bar looking like any person they chose to, interacting with people along the way. It's great for people who don't have the confidence to wear the shoes of their dreams down a crowded high street, and I think there may be quite few of those here. It's like watching a movie with you starring, and you can watch it from any angle, inside your "head", from behind, in front, to the side, zoom in on the face or the shoes etc. It also offers the opportunity for sophisticated body morphing. Think of the ideal type of girl or guy who would most turn you on, and with practice you can recreate exactly the look of that person. There are 150 controls to change the shape of bodily and facial aspects, each through 100 different graduations. And you can get them wearing what you want too. No more grumbling from the girlfriend she's not wearing the 6" stiletto thigh boots you bought her! It's not a substitute for the real thing but a different kind of experience.

[shyguy]

I played at Second Life a while back, and you do have the option of designing (re-designing) the shoes which are available, by choosing heels, and raising the height. Yes I did try some heels out on there and play with the height and style. I just got bored with it very quickly.

[Firefox]

The environment certainly caters for all tastes. As well as the heels there are people who spend all their time walking around as Klingons, stormtroopers from starwars or various furry/Tolkein type creatures like elves/hobbits etc. I could even be a fox if I wanted

[ChipsHH]

I was watching a "60-second" thing on G4, and they actually talked about Second Life. I tried it out myself one time, and found out how much memory it needed to run! Anyhow, they were saying who actually plays it. It turns out "people are only on it for 15 minutes ..... a MONTH!" (exact words) I pretty much took her word on it, and didn't bother installing it on this computer. I was still in the process of learning the basics for it, too. :-(

[Firefox]

I played at Second Life a while back, and you do have the option of designing (re-designing) the shoes which are available, by choosing heels, and raising the height. Yes I did try some heels out on there and play with the height and style. I just got bored with it very quickly.

That playing with the height is just the basic 2-3" mode for beginners. The more advanced mode is wearing an avatar heel base and then buying "prim object" constructed shoes. These shoes have special invisble prim prisms to modify your foot shape and achieve 4-5" heels. Also you can get them with scripts to modify your walk and scripts to produce clicking heel sounds when you walk. Then there are special high heel posing scripts which modify your characters animation to produce cross ankle poses, heel rocking, feet shifting etc, just like the real thing. And if you are really advanced you can design and build your own shoes and write your own animation scripts.

I'd agree with the advanced machine comment. This thing eats mchine capacity to get it working properly as the graphical worlds and 3-D animations can be very realistic.

In spite of what they say, you need Pentium 4 2000+, 1 GB Ram, Modern Graphics card with at least 256MB on board, and very fast connection 1MB/s + to get near the potential. And the investment in time to learn the interface is large. (client downlowed/install is about 100mb too).

I still reckon it's worth it though, and the concept will improve. They have just introduced Beta testing on a headset which picks up brainwaves so you control your charcter by thought patterns, further improving the virtual reality concept.

[euchrid]

For those of you who don't know "Second Life" is a massive virtual real life simulator with millions of members.

Is something similar not now possible in Sims?

Be who you want to be, dress them up, interact with other Sims, etc.

Just a thought. It'll run OK on a standard PC for one thing.

Also, if you're into internet chat, you could check this out http://www.imvu.com/

- You can create your own Avatar and customise it to your hearts desire.

Want to be a rock chick, a goth vixen, a dominatrix, an asian vampire, whatever? - the (virtual) world is your oyster.

Lots of sexy footwear to play with too!

[Firefox]

Yes, there are few major virtual reality systems. Second Life's claim to fame is that you have intellectual property rights on objects you create within the game, and you can control how they are copied, transferred or modified. This leads to e-commerce. Say I create a pair of high heel shoes for people to wear on their avatars. I can sell those shoes in my shop (or someone else's shop, sharing the profit). Typical price for pair of shoes is anything from free up to about L$600 (300 Linden$, L$ = 1$US approx). Mind you, building complex objects and texturing them and scripting them is not easy, it's a real skill; you will earn your money! So if I can get someone to buy my shoes for 300, I have just earned $1. If I have a chain of shoe shops with lots of visitors, you can see how real money can be made. Some people actually do earn a living out of the game but most people end up net-spending or earning peanuts, just a few $ a week. Still, the opportunity is there for those who want to spend time on it. It's just another aspect of the simulation.

[Firefox]

I've spent so much time building shoes in second life and messing around with creating things I haven't had time for HHP. Sorry about that! Basically Second life is the business when it comes to object creation and realistic shoes etc. No other system comes even close. IMVU, Sims, WOW are kicked into touch by this. If you want faff around in souped up chat rooms for teenagers do IMVU. If you want proper 3-D building tools do Second Life.