9/4/07

Gigii's First Time...

Upon my arrival in Second Life, I felt it was important to doll myself up. I spent the majority of my visit adjusting my hair, makeup, and facial features. I stumbled upon the clothing and accessories folders. While fumbling around with the drag and drop options, I was able to find a suitable outfit. I did take all my clothes off at one point which encouraged a gentleman to quickly make my acquaintance. It would have been a blissful encounter if he had spoke English. *sigh* Maybe in another life Vladimir.
Once I had my outfit I was ready for flight. The rest of my stay was spent flying around "Orientation Island." I crashed, literally, into a fashion show and chatted with some newbies. Since I have been in world once or twice before I decided to explore a bit further. I traveled to a clothing store called "American Apparel." While there I poked around at the items for sale and exchanged witty banter with a few employees. It is funny some of the things people will tell you in SL as opposed to RL.
Considering the range of users, navigating for newbies can become confusing. It would be cool to be greeted by a virtual tour guide on your first visit. Someone who can walk you through the GUI and help you navigate the islands. Providing such a service could help demystify the beginning stages of SL. Overall, SL is fairly easy to figure out if you have some gaming experience.
As a graphic artist, the potential for better graphics and simulation would be amazing. I would probably spend more time in world if the eye candy was more graphically intense.

1 comment:

Alex Halavais said...

The perspective on graphical detail is funny, because coming from other virtual worlds, I find SL pretty rich. That said, I agree--more detail is always better. Right now, they are playing tradeoffs between supporting more hardware (to be able to increase the user base) and still making it attractive enough for the average user.

The technical decisions that allow for relatively low-bandwidth server-based simulation may ultimately give the edge to other approaches, I fear.