doug woods

image by Learn4Life

A few years ago I first tried out Second Life and, to be honest, I didn’t like it at the time. Nevertheless I decided to give it a second look recently to see if things have changed.

Let me try to explain what it was that I didn’t like the first time. At that time I had a Pentium processor in my machine, a good deal of memory and, for the time, a top range graphics card. Even so, I found Second Life to be quite unusable. The graphics were very crude (rough not rude!) and took a long time to display on the screen. Moving your avatar appeared tricky and cumbersome, in fact doing anything with your avatar appeared tricky and cumbersome, even getting him to look right. As for the flying option, well that just cheesed me off … I wanted to walk properly before I learned to fly!

What I really didn’t like was that you were very restricted in the way you could name your avatar. Although you could give yourself any first name you wanted, your surname was either chosen for you or you could pick from a limited choice. Consequently, I ended up with a name I could never remember and that was not particularly useful when you had to type this in to login each time! Besides, I really wanted the option to use my real name!

When I did get Second Life working (slowly) I found that there wasn’t much you could do with it. Okay, you could meet people but I really just wanted to explore and find out things, after all I don’t talk to people I bump into on the street in real life, except perhaps to say ‘sorry’.

Finally, what really hacked me off was the need to buy virtual currency. You had to pay real money to buy virtual money that you used to buy virtual goods; I’m sorry but that just seemed like a scam to me!

Anyway, that was then and recently I’ve decided to take a second look at Second Life. So what has prompted me to do so? Firstly, I had hoped there would be more to see or do now, I had, in particular, heard about the Learn4Life island which seemed more relevant to my work. I also now have a much more powerful computer and graphics card. I hoped also that many of my other niggles may have been resolved by now.

There certainly have been improvements. I found that Second Life remembered my original Avatar name, which was good because I had long forgotten it, even so, I decided to create a new one from scratch. You still cannot use your real name or even one you completely make up yourself. This is a shame but I did find the choice of surnames a bit more usable than previously, so I was able to come up with a name that sounded a bit sensible!

I still found a problem with the graphics in that they didn’t always render quickly, despite the much faster graphics card. Perhaps my slow urban broadband connection is the problem here (but don’t get me started on that issue). I was also surprised that some of the graphics seemed very poor, almost 1990s style, particularly in the landscape, textures and objects such as trees, but maybe that is a legacy issue.

I still found creating a reasonable Avatar to be tricky, the limited options really didn’t quite match what I wanted to produce. However, it did seem quicker this time around. Moving the avatar was also much easier than before, flying also seemed easier, though I found less need for that.

Second Life has recently introduced a new ‘viewer’ interface tool, which makes it quite easy to use and navigate around the virtual world.

There did seem, however, to be far fewer people in the virtual world than I experienced in the past. I don’t know if Second Life is losing popularity or if more people were now spread over a much larger world.

I did venture a few times over to the Learn4life island and there are certainly a lot of interesting things going on there, except that I didn’t find anyone else on the island. I guess it is the place people visit only when they know something is planned. Even so, I’m quite intrigued by the possibilities on offer there.

The virtual currency still exists and even has a variable exchange rate! My membership to Second Life is still the free level and, I hope, you can do a lot with that. There is a premium level which gives you a few (it seems) more features such as a virtual house, virtual money each week, online help and access to virtual adult facilities (no thank you!). Of course you have to pay real money to get these virtual features which you can only use in the virtual world, which still seems like a scam to me but then, on the other hand, if you can earn virtual money and convert that to real money, it may be more useful. Of course the services offered by Second Life and its developers do cost them money and nobody should begrudge them earning a living; perhaps I just wish there was something more tangible on offer for your real money.

Overall, my second experience of Second Life has been much more positive, the recent changes to the viewer are a great improvement over what went before. I do feel there is a steep learning curve to be gone through before you can fully use Second Life but that is part of the fun of it. There are still a few niggles with the choice of names and avatar design but they do seem more flexible than in my previous experience. Second Life still appears very ‘resource hungry’ and you may find you need a high end machine to make best use of it,m you also appear to need a good broadband connection and I guess some of my problems may lie in my poor urban broadband connection (I told you not to get me started on that…)

If you’ve been put off by earlier experiences of Second Life or not looked at it for a while, I would suggest having another look at it.

If you are on Second Life and see a sullen overweight avatar walking around in a denim shirt and shoulder bag, please say ‘hi’ but don’t be offended if I don ‘t reply; I’m either shy or haven’t yet mastered the speak options!

If you are interested in the Learn4Life island on Second Life, there is a short video introduction here http://blip.tv/file/3404585/

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