Second Life

[Stuart]

Does anyone here use Second Life? We got involved in it about a year ago due to Karla using it in connection with some of her research. We found it very handy on the long winter nights when there wasn't much else to do.

There's something for everyone on it, recreations of ancient Rome, lots of educational resources and even some nudist sims!

I've done some very, very silly things in it though 

[Dan]

My girlfriend was thinking of making stuff to sell there now that she knows she doesn't have to use the built-in tools for 3D-modeling. Do you have any idea if it's worth it or not from purely a monetary point of view?

[Stuart]

My girlfriend was thinking of making stuff to sell there now that she knows she doesn't have to use the built-in tools for 3D-modeling. Do you have any idea if it's worth it or not from purely a monetary point of view?

Its almost certainly not.

[Dan]

Its almost certainly not.

Especially if you factor in the time it takes to learn LSL to be able to give some behaviours to your objects. That said, I'm probably going to just say nothing and wait for her to realize :)

[Alex]

I don't really see the point in Second Life to be honest, you could use your time for much more useful things; learning a new skill, meeting real people etc. Sorry for those that do like Second Life, but it seems a bit of a waste to me.

[Dan]

Don't tell me you'd prefer this game.

[Stuart]

I don't really see the point in Second Life to be honest, you could use your time for much more useful things; learning a new skill, meeting real people etc. Sorry for those that do like Second Life, but it seems a bit of a waste to me.

I sometimes treat it as MSN with pretty graphics - although the fact that it simulates a 3D world means there's lots you can do in it. I like the educational resources - there's a fantastic rocket garden made by NASA that has pretty much everything that's ever been launched and all to the correct scale.

I agree though, no substitute for a real life, its best saved for winter when its horrible outside!

[Karla]

I don't really see the point in Second Life to be honest, you could use your time for much more useful things; learning a new skill, meeting real people etc. Sorry for those that do like Second Life, but it seems a bit of a waste to me.

I think the same thing about TV.

[Dan]

Did you try coding some objects for SL, Karla?

If so, how's the language, the restrictions (workable or painful?) and the library?

[Karla]

Did you try coding some objects for SL, Karla?

If so, how's the language, the restrictions (workable or painful?) and the library?

I was expecting it to be really horrible as LSL is a scripting language, but it turned out to be a very elegantly designed language.

Essentially, you script an object to have different states (although in practise this isn't as useful as it sounds). So for example if I was to script a parachute then the avatar would either be in a falling state, deployed state or standing on the ground state.

It is also event-driven so you start a timer, listen out on certain communication channels, send off an http request, or read in a line on a notecard for example, and you handle the corresponding event in another procedure when it happens.

You don't have to worry much about the fact that all these scripts are running in parallel, unlike when programming in Java or C++ say. So you create an object made up of many prims (as in primitive shaped object), with each prim having zero or more scripts in them. The prims can also communicate with each other.

The best thing about it though is that it really brings back a love of programming. You can really play around with programming again and interact with the results, much like when you were first learning but more so. It's great fun!

I love the idea of programming their equivalent of a GUI though. They have HUDs, which are large 3D collections of objects that are reduced in size and stuck on your screen so you see it in 2D.

The major downside is that you can't easily refactor your code because you can't refer to other scripts in your code.

As with any technology though, it will evolve in ways beyond what it was originally intended for. So for now Second Life is just a chat room, but more interactive and in 3D. People are using it for all kinds of purposes though (mainly cyber-sex it seems). It has massive potential for education (the area I am working in). I am also aware though that people have been talking about the 3D web for a long time now and have never managed to pull it off. The end result is always a 3D model on a 2D page. I think the Second Life model is the future in this regard, especially as they have sparked off a whole open source community by releasing the source code to their viewer. The metaverse is around the corner!

[Dan]

Wow, you really have something against scripting languages, don't you? :)

I'm still not too sure about LSL. As far as I can see, there's none of all the nice features modern high-level languages have these days...

Is the library good? Is it easy to stay within the memory limitations? Or the CPU ones?

[Riot.EXE]

I have an account, but I haven't logged into it in a LONG TIME.

"Kenneth Revestel" was the name of my character...

[brumnude]

i downloaded the Linux Alpha version but not being good with command lines i can't get it to install. I tried the bog standard sudo apt-get install ./secondlife command and it went nuts saying it couldnt find the files.

[hjmartin]

I've been playing around with Second Life for a little while now.

My Avatar's name is "Haley Oval" if you care to look me up.

The problem I've found with it is that, of people in Second Life who are "naturists," I find that nearly 100% of them really aren't.  They're interested in something quite different.

[Karla]

i downloaded the Linux Alpha version but not being good with command lines i can't get it to install. I tried the bog standard sudo apt-get install ./secondlife command and it went nuts saying it couldnt find the files.

Say the file you downloaded was SecondLife-i686-2.1.1.208043.tar.bz2

tar oxvfj SecondLife-i686-2.1.1.208043.tar.bz2
cd SecondLife-i686-2.1.1.208043
./secondlife

The name of the file and the directory it unzips into changes according to which version you have downloaded. The same instructions apply to other viewers as well. I use Phoenix viewer myself as I hate Viewer 2 that Linden Labs have bought out.