Feeling better about SL
First of all, I must also say that my initial disappointment with the Second Life platform started to wear off and I must admit that I started enjoying it. Turning up the graphic detail and using SL on a good machine with an adequate internet connection certainly improves the in game experience. Interacting with other users also become more frequent and enjoyable. I found that some users are very ready to assist and make it their business to comment and make friends with you.
I also had a bad experience with using the "Physical" object attribute. After spending considerable time building a chair I erroneously forgot to "link" the child objects together and when I converted the chair to "Physical" it fell apart. Initially I had build a simple two piece chair but then I decided to try harder and build the more complex chair shown below :
Yes ! That's me with the parrot on my shoulder at the Fermi Sandbox which is a location that allows you to build stuff on privately owned land without having to pay. The parrot was a nice addition and its available without having to go through to much trouble.
The chair itself is made up of numerous pieces and I even took the extra care to give the legs an angle so that it looks more like a real chair. I obviously also attempted to sit on the chair but I kept having problems with the avatar sitting on the chair's edge or facing the wrong way. I decided to leave it as it is for now and then check later on if anything could be done with scripting to remedy this.
I also had great difficulties when I changed the properties of the chair to "Physical". My avatar will sit on the chair and the topple over after a second or two. This seems to happen regardless of the modifications I made to the chair to make it steadier and I am sure that with the shape it has now, in the real world it would not topple over. I researched through blogs about SL and the most common advice was that I should not turn the chair to "Physical" but leave it as is. The image below shows my avatar after one of the hundred or so falls I had when trying to sit on the chair !
At first my I could not get my avatar to sit on the chair correctly as a human would. After some research I rotated the cube that forms the seat part of the chair and the avatar started sitting correctly more often then not as shown below :
Happy Hippo Building School
While chatting with one of the users in SL and inquiring about creating objects I was directed to the Happy Hippo Building School which is a special place especially designed for people to find tutorials and all types of assistance in building SL objects. I must say that the corny name does not do the site justice. The place was full of information and with people ready to help. The site also contains information about live training sessions with demonstartions about building specific objects.
I must say that after playing with SL for a while I am surprised to see that there is a lot of activity and a lot of people are around in some of the more popular locations. I am surprised because my initial research about SL all pointed out that SL was past its day and not much used any more. Furthermore I am amazed at the creations that some people have made, especially now that I can appreciate the sheer hard work it takes to create anything significant in SL.
First of all, I must also say that my initial disappointment with the Second Life platform started to wear off and I must admit that I started enjoying it. Turning up the graphic detail and using SL on a good machine with an adequate internet connection certainly improves the in game experience. Interacting with other users also become more frequent and enjoyable. I found that some users are very ready to assist and make it their business to comment and make friends with you.
Multilingual SL
To my amazement I also discovered the multilingual capabilities of Second Life. I found myself talking to people from countries with languages that I have no knowledge of and communicating with them effeciently enough to have meaninfull conversations. These users were using in-game translation services and I must admit that the translation accuracy was above what you would expect from a real time service.Building Objects
During my first tests I found it pretty hard to build complex objects in Second Life. Apart from the usual primitives I was finding it quite hard to put objects together in any meaningful sequence. Once I mastered the building interface which took me the best of three hours or so things stared becoming more interesting. It soon dawned on me that to build complex objects it is important to use measurements through the building interface rather then to attempt to align objects in 3D using the visual interface only. I also had a bad experience with using the "Physical" object attribute. After spending considerable time building a chair I erroneously forgot to "link" the child objects together and when I converted the chair to "Physical" it fell apart. Initially I had build a simple two piece chair but then I decided to try harder and build the more complex chair shown below :
Yes ! That's me with the parrot on my shoulder at the Fermi Sandbox which is a location that allows you to build stuff on privately owned land without having to pay. The parrot was a nice addition and its available without having to go through to much trouble.
The chair itself is made up of numerous pieces and I even took the extra care to give the legs an angle so that it looks more like a real chair. I obviously also attempted to sit on the chair but I kept having problems with the avatar sitting on the chair's edge or facing the wrong way. I decided to leave it as it is for now and then check later on if anything could be done with scripting to remedy this.
I also had great difficulties when I changed the properties of the chair to "Physical". My avatar will sit on the chair and the topple over after a second or two. This seems to happen regardless of the modifications I made to the chair to make it steadier and I am sure that with the shape it has now, in the real world it would not topple over. I researched through blogs about SL and the most common advice was that I should not turn the chair to "Physical" but leave it as is. The image below shows my avatar after one of the hundred or so falls I had when trying to sit on the chair !
At first my I could not get my avatar to sit on the chair correctly as a human would. After some research I rotated the cube that forms the seat part of the chair and the avatar started sitting correctly more often then not as shown below :
Happy Hippo Building School
While chatting with one of the users in SL and inquiring about creating objects I was directed to the Happy Hippo Building School which is a special place especially designed for people to find tutorials and all types of assistance in building SL objects. I must say that the corny name does not do the site justice. The place was full of information and with people ready to help. The site also contains information about live training sessions with demonstartions about building specific objects.
I must say that after playing with SL for a while I am surprised to see that there is a lot of activity and a lot of people are around in some of the more popular locations. I am surprised because my initial research about SL all pointed out that SL was past its day and not much used any more. Furthermore I am amazed at the creations that some people have made, especially now that I can appreciate the sheer hard work it takes to create anything significant in SL.
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