Exploring the metaverses

New in the city, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

Yes, I cheated on Linden Lab. But was one of this moments when someone cheats on his partner just to discover that he loves him/her deeply in despite of all the bad moments.

After some stupid days of lag, crashes and assets server problems i decided to explore other “virtual worlds” to see how they are. I have a limitation, just a few of this metaverses work with Mac, the most similar to Second Life, There, works just on Windows.

Between the limited selection available i decided to try vSide (still in beta, well, in alpha for Mac), and i found it… how to say it?… interesting. vSide is focused in social and music side, the lag is really low and the frame rate is quite high, even having a lot of people in one server (more than 100 avatars), there is music playing all around. There are three regions (servers) for the moment, all three full of shops, clubs, places to chill with friends. In the regions there are also “apartments”, you can “rent” them for free and organize a private (or opened to all) party. This apartments are available to the first who arrives and become “free” again once the “renter” leaves or logs off. You can modify the furniture of this apartments inside some limitations. There are some other nice features but…

If you want to find a place for creation don’t go to vSide. You can’t create nothing there, absolutely nothing. The “regions” are as they are, no building or creation possible (a good way to keep lag low, but also a big limitation). Absolutely all you can see (clothes, buildings, animations, etc…) is created by Doppleganger, Inc. the developers and owners of vSide. To make your avatar you have to choose between the (limited) possibilities and, in theory, you can’t use an avatar of other gender (it depends on the RL gender you say you are). You have to buy all new clothes and apparel in the stores around with a “local currency” and all is quite expensive, all the stores are owned by Doppleganger so no possible competition (maybe they should let Anshe Chung visit them ).

Furthermore all is quite childish, nudity is not possible (not only is not allowed, is impossible to make your avatar fully naked) and cyber is strictly forbidden (not kidding, the TOS says you can be permanently banned for cybering). Of course they control all content because you can’t create or upload nothing. So if you have children now you know is a safe environment for them, but quite limited for an adult. Anyway is not a bad place to hang sometimes and have fun with people and listen music.

I love Second Life, the possibilities are almost infinite, but i needed to go out and see what’s around to keep loving it. Anyway Linden Lab should work more in the main problems, stability and performance. They are losing some of the “beloved” corporations (AOL and Pontiac have decided to close their sims in SL and Coca-Cola have just opened one in There, main SL competitor), maybe this will be the only way that they finally react, if they don’t listen the residents sure they will listen to the corporations.