Meta Magic Studio - Second Life - August 2008

Meta Magic Studio has owned the sim Los Arboles since December 2006. The sim is intended as a demonstration sim where we show case build examples including office spaces, amphitheater, theater, gathering spaces plus some other unique concepts that demonstrate prim usage and texture development.

The Los Arboles sim is a “standard” simulator offering from Linden Lab which they classify as a private region (island). From Linden Lab:

Private regions (Islands) are a great solution for large projects, community development and permanent event spaces. Private regions can be grouped, or joined together to create a contiguous space, so you can add to your land mass as your community and projects grow.

Linden Lab also offers Openspaces sim.

Openspaces (light use regions) are also available so you can add ocean or open park land. For more information, check out our Information on Openspaces knowledge base article.

While both sims are same in size (aprox 65K sq meters), their performance and prim allotment are vastly different.

At Meta Magic Studio, we wanted to easily demonstrate this to our customers, so we decided to purchase an Openspace sim and have it placed next to Los Arboles. We have called it Meta Magic Studio - heck, marketing is important!

The build here is more tongue-in-check than Los Arboles. We have textured the land with our logos and made purple trees.

Meta Magic Studio - Second Life

Started working in Google’s Lively yesterday so these are my initial reactions. In one word - disappointing.

In more words - Google has a long way to go, but some things they got right.

It is a 2.5D approach to interactive worlds. It is better than Active World but not even close to Second Life. I know there is the power of Google behind this so I can not dismiss it right away, but this thing needs help.

I have read were people said it was easier to navigate than Second Life, but my initial testing on 10 people showed similar problems. It is NOT intuitive. People with gaming backgrounds pick it up faster, but their reactions to the graphics is a barrier. Those with no / little gaming experience were happy with the graphics but left on their own, could not figure out how to move and interact.

Lively is a endless series of disconnected virtual chat rooms, each capable of holding up to 20 avatars at once. Rooms vary in size a little and can be listed on the website, or remain unlisted. This is not what I would expect, at least you need to be able to get 100 avatars into a room. My personal sim on Second Life has achieved 80 avatars before crashing.

I plan on spending the next few weeks in here, learning it and seeing what opportunities present themselves.

Initial Positive Feature: You can set up a room off of your website, so people do not have to figure out in world where you are.