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January 2007
Points of Interest
apollo [blog] Tue 30th @ 07:50 EST
first look, musing, torley
Following an old rule of thumb, I neglected to update for a few days because I had nothing really significant to say. Today I have a few random points to make, so here's a handy list:
- I haven't tried recent updates of the First Look viewer recently as some people are reporting issues with it and while I don't mind helping with beta testing I've come to think of the First Look client as the "in development" real client and the really real client as, well, unusable from my perspective.
- Torley has a most fantastic list of cool places to visit.
A short list, yes, but perfectly formed.
Comment Recycling
apollo [blog] Thu 25th @ 11:35 EST
musing, torley, virtual reality
I was reading Torley's blog earlier, in particular The Majesty of Science and Alternate Virtual Reality and somehow these posts collided with the fact that I've been re-reading A Brief History of Time recently to produce the following:
Sometimes I think it's fun to think of the scientific viewpoint of the universe in philosophical terms, for example the classic "Bugs Bunny" cartoon where he can stand on thin air because, as he says, "I never studied law."
Perhaps then "we" - as humans - only experience the world/universe the way we do because we "know" things on a fundamental level, as in we are born with certain fundamentals "hard wired" into our being that simultaneously prevent us from perceiving outside our physical realm while enabling us to be - in the way that we perceive "being" - in the first place. That line of thinking of course implies that if "we" - again, as humans - could somehow break away from those fundamentals then by definition we [humans] would cease to be human, because those fundamentals are what define us as a human entity even as they limit us. Yet if we could transcend those limits we would still be sentient and alive, but perhaps not in ways that we would describe those qualities in our base human state.
Returning to the "Bugs Bunny" quote, I find it fun to think about because essentially gravity is a limitation of our physical presence; we're made of matter and matter responds to gravity. This is built in on a fundamental level and to "unlearn" this would, in the context of what I just described, mean freeing ourselves from our physical being. Given that SL is completely dependent on the physical realm I'm not sure that it, or other virtual systems like it, will usher in a revolution or ascension of humanity, but that if we reach a point where, for example, someone writes a true AI that passes the Turing test and then that AI reproduces independently; that might teach us some things about the nature of existence.
I know the last paragraph kind of jumps from Point B to Point J with nothing in between, but all I'm really trying to say is that watching a sentient organism evolve in a world that is much different from ours could be enlightening. SL is much different from the real world in the sense that, while the real is based on matter and energy, SL is based on information so constraints that apply to our physical world simply do not apply there, such as the rule that matter cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet at the same time it is still bound to our world because, for example, even information in SL cannot travel faster than the speed of light because the underlying subsystems that convey the information are [currently] limited by that speed.
Midian City: Torleystalkers a Go-Go
apollo [blog] Sat 13th @ 13:53 EST
midian city, places, slurl, torley, visit
If you're more than peripherally interested in Second Life then the odds are good that you have heard of Torley Linden in one capacity or another. I like to read Torley's blog for many reasons; from the point of view of a writer I'm amazed by her prolific and high quality output, and as a reader I enjoy her point of view and enthusiasm.
I often find that the places she highlights in her blog or on her photostream are vibrant and well designed and are places that I would want to visit. As much as I dislike feeling like a Torleystalker, which I am honestly not, I can't help but go and check out a lot of the cool builds highlighted by her.
Midian City is one such place. Photos do not do it any kind of justice, especially if you have a decent graphics card capable of local lighting. In my delirious state after discovering how amazingly cool the VBO-enabled First Look Viewer is and blogging about it earlier, I couldn't resist running over to Midian City in order to see how the new viewer would handle a busy sim with high quality graphical elements to render. The viewer performed admirably but I soon got lost in the experience that is Midian City.
The sim is an exemplary one too, a shining jewel on The Grid I am sure. The architecture and texturing are both amazing in their abstract quality and when taken as a whole. Influenced by Blade Runner and Sin City the world created by Jade Steele is focused and purposeful, with some of the best use of local lighting I have seen in SL. This sim really showcases what SL is capable of graphically and reminds me that the often bland, simplistic, low-res feel of SL has a lot more to do with content creators than it does with the SL client's rendering engine.
The fact that the new First Look Viewer with VBO turned on makes it possible to move about the city smoothly and confidently without all the usual SL hitching, grinding, turning lag and general choking doubtless added significantly to my experience and overall mood today, but that certainly doesn't take anything away from the masterpiece that is Midian City.
Footnote: I happened to see a certain Hamlet Au from a certain popular SL news site teleport into the sim while I was there today. If they end up getting featured, I can only say that they deserve to be. Everyone in SL should see this place, if only so they can know what SL is truly capable of graphically and thematically, when you have a designer that is good at what they do and cares about their builds. In this vein there are a few other places I want to write about and I will in good time.