Uncannily like the real thing
Category: Weirdness
Posted on: August 28, 2007 7:00 PM, by PZ Myers
If you've ever tried Second Life, you will be astounded at the verisimilitude of this simulation.
(via Cairns Blog)
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Comments
Posted by: Dustin | August 28, 2007 7:13 PM
The object of Second Life seems to be to spend real money to get fake sex.
Posted by: Martha | August 28, 2007 7:19 PM
I dunno, not everyone in the video looked like testosterone-fueled gorillas or implant-heavy Barbies.
I like Second Life though, its got the same sort of pluses and minuses as a set of IRC channels.
Posted by: Gelf | August 28, 2007 7:25 PM
I dunno... There was some vague resemblance, but I didn't see a single person wearing a high school mascot costume and/or (usually "and") sporting a large, crudely made strap-on dildo. In addition, it would have been much more convincing if one of those conversation groups had been broken up by somebody driving a convertible into the office, getting out and flying away, just leaving the car there.
Posted by: Dustin | August 28, 2007 7:28 PM
Especially since that seems to have been filmed in an advertising company. The more cars that crash through their walls, the better.Posted by: Gary | August 28, 2007 9:05 PM
What was that song that was playing? I remember hearing it years ago, and now it's bothering me. Is it a remix of music from a NES game or something?
Posted by: Martha | August 28, 2007 10:04 PM
Popcorn likely performed by Hot Butter.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | August 29, 2007 12:20 AM
OMFG... I'm still chuckling. (And I've never played Second Life either.)
Posted by: J Daley | August 29, 2007 2:23 AM
http://www.getafirstlife.com/
Posted by: RCP | August 29, 2007 3:40 AM
Needs more lag.
At least the item creator is somewhat fun, if only for the purpose of creating invisible cubes that shriek horribly and incessantly to scatter across the land.
Posted by: Hypatia | August 29, 2007 8:36 AM
Cute and funny. But way off on the demographics, there should have been at least one furry, a mopy goth, and a pamala anderson clone wearing nothing but leather straps.
Posted by: Will Von Wizzlepig | August 29, 2007 12:22 PM
Speaking of Second Life (which is unfortunately pretty lame)
'Darwin Pond' - "an Artificial Life Simulation: a virtual world exhibiting the emergence of life-like behaviors", can be found here:
http://www.ventrella.com/
Jeffrey Ventrella, one of the original developers of second life, has some pretty nifty stuff on his website.
My favorite is 'Bird'.
Posted by: woozy Lewsey | August 29, 2007 4:26 PM
All the talk on the other posts about "materialist" and "duality" and "spiritual planes" made me think of a neat idea to add to games like 2nd life and the Sims. Add the spiritual and non-material planes with different physical rules.
Okay, I'd need to work out just what would happen on those planes (ability to channel ancient Babylonians? sympathetic magic? A visable layer of karma reflecting every time you've gone to a nude beach? Maybe an ability to buy and sell absolutions and holy relics?)
Anyway, this post got me to try 2nd life for the first time yesterday. Not sure I was missing much. I mean not knowing where to go I just wandering into a bunch of bachelor pads playing bad music. I found a sailboat that would have been fun to ride but it wasn't open to strangers.
Posted by: dwarf zebu | August 29, 2007 5:51 PM
There were LYRICS???
Posted by: Bo Dixen Pedersen | August 29, 2007 6:02 PM
I dont get it. It's nothing more than a glorified avatar based chat room apparently with very bad graphics and bad netcode.
It's for clueless people in the ad industry and perverts.
People with understanding actually plays MMORPGS's if you want the so called alternate realities.
Better graphics and better netcode and much much more to do.
The level of success WoW has says it all and the ad people should look at the computer games industry and multiplayer gaming as the actual world to reap communitybuilding exposure to your products.
Product placing and licensing and outright banner ad selling is already being explored in multiplayergames.
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 29, 2007 6:04 PM
"There were LYRICS???"
No.
Posted by: Kesh@mac.com | August 30, 2007 10:40 AM
The original idea was a "sandbox," where people could effectively create their own environment for what they want. If you want just an avatar-based chat set in a forest, fine. If you want a zone created as an MMORPG, go for it. The ability to create what you want was the main draw.
Unfortunately, what we've got is what happens anytime you let humans create whatever they want: mostly sex shops, gambling (now defunct) and the rest is just sheer insanity.
Posted by: Tukla in Iowa | August 31, 2007 4:44 PM
People with understanding actually plays MMORPGS's if you want the so called alternate realities.
Some of us know how to entertain ourselves without ridiculous "quests" and other such overly structured nonsense.
I guess if you feel the need to be pigeonholed into a predefined social structure and you're not very goal-seeking, it helps to have someone tell you what you should be doing during your time online. WoW is for you. I'll stick to making my own choices on SL, thanks.
Posted by: Nenya | August 31, 2007 8:06 PM
Heeee. I've seriously had the urge to pick something up in RL by waving my arm at it, after a number of hours spent in SL. This was great. :D