The 3D online environment I have been exploring is known as 'Second Life', which allows 3D avatars to move around 3d surroundings freely and talk to other avatars. The concept is based on a standard text-based chat room but has been developed into a virtual world within which you can create a visual representation of yourself and literally live a second life.
The site is very easy to sign up to and the software is quick to download; however, the first real negative I discovered was the lack of flexibility in terms of your avatar's appearance as well as the character names available.
I found the movement controls easy to adapt to and I was impressed with the freedom the program allows, as you can fly all around your current environment and instantly teleport to different locations, which was pretty fun at first. I found the novelty soon wore off though and I was soon bored with the apparent lack of things to do. Nothing fun is free... not far off the real world!
I decided to explore Second Life by searching for various famous landmarks and visiting them. Here are the holiday snaps...
This is me flying around the Eiffel Tower
Me in the Oval Office... me and Obama are homies
The Statue of Liberty - I was quite impressed with the water here, very nice.
Stonehenge... well it's the best version I could find.
I couldn't find any famous football stadiums... so this is just a football stadium, pretty cool though.
From my own experience using the program and from what I have read, it seems there is a very common complaint with Second Life, which is the amount of time it takes the 3D surroundings to generate. You also can't see very far in front of you! For example, I did find a nice, big football stadium, but couldn't get a decent shot of it because one of the ends just wasn't there because it was too far away!
To wrap up my first thoughts on my first experience with Second Life, I think the concept is a very good one but it may just be a little ahead of its time at the moment. It will have more of a place when the average home computer can generate the graphics instantly. Also, I don't think you can really get into Second Life by just exploring all the time - it gets boring - you have to get involved, get a job, buy things, buy land etc. etc. And that's a little sad... in my opinion. Each to their own and all that though.
