Category: second life

Second Life invades San Francisco

SL islands pop up from the Pacific Ocean.

Online Worlds are consolidating and emerging in the real world, many and many layers of 3d online cities are popping up everywhere. Today, using google map I discovered that online territories are big enough to compete with the San Francisco Bay, and I hypothesized that the whole Second Life world could start to rise up in the Pacific Ocean.

Second Life has now reached 1800 sq.km: this means that is greater than the city area of Los Angeles (1,290 sq.km.).

You can imagine bridges, which connect the Bay with the extended archipelago of Second Life, allowing you to reach the main islands.

The online worlds grow and evolve, transform what they touch and begin to occupy wider and wider extensions, (hypothetically) unlimited, entering into competition with the physical limited spaces of our planet.

When will the amount of the extensions of these online territories overcome the earth ones?

Scaling method
I started from the Gmap and I put the Ruler to 10Km (or 5 mi). We know that the base of an SL island is 256 meters. Four Islands are around 1 Km. I scaled down the SL map using this references.
😉

Inspired by this articles:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/01/second-life-larger-than-world-of-warcraft-there-oahu-combined.html
http://virtualunderworld.net/wordpress/?p=534

Thanks to:
@slhamlet @bluescurissimo @dedaluke ArianeB GoogleMap MappaNovus Hublog

Vulcano is hope



Vulcano is a Land/Community born from an idea of total openness. Openness to the management of resources, to Avatars, to political beliefs, to religions.

Vulcano has been a kind of hope, an hope that something different is still possible.

Over time Vulcano has changed, prominent figures led it directly or indirectly, have been defined lines of conduct, first projects have strong characterized the image and the idea of Vulcano. Such as Elwe Elwing’s mega-tree and Bru Yang’s ship are the DNA of Vulcano.

We should start from this, the DNA. I think the questions suggested by OpenSource Obscure have reached not by chance.

What would I save and what would I cancell in Vulcano?

First of all I would start from initial ideas, saving highest concepts:
Vulcano belongs to everyone, without discrimination.
Vulcano is for freedom, equality, fraternity.
Vulcano pursuing collective interests.
Vulcano belongs to Vulcano’s people as much as all the not Vulcano’s people. Vulcano is a testing ground, is a laboratory of ideas, is a community driven by curiosity, is a land of freedom and hope.

Maybe Vulcano deserves to be rethought in terms of its social structure, what kind of community is Vulcano?
A free government, based on the points written above, might be sufficient for a community?
Or, Vulcano needs a governance structure more precise?

Unfortunately I have no answer to these questions.

About Objects on Vulcano, I think they should respond to collective needs, or be appreciated by the community as the important parts of the history of Vulcano (such as the Bru Yang’s ship, the Elwe Elwing’s tree ELWE and Platform Open).

Therefore I would avoid objects made for purely personal needs, or which are not regarded positively by the community (if they exceeding a certain number of Prims? Or all of those?). A feedback will be collected with this Opensource Obscure’s poll and it will be a first indicator of a right way to get.

Thanks to Open for this good idea: P

Simone Riccardi aka turboy Runo

PS thanks also to David Orban for the most great idea: Vulcano itself.

Architecture in SeconLife

I found this old article I wrote at the time of SecondLife. I publish it today 06/13/2013 for archive function.


As an architect, I find the possibility of thinking about architecture in the metaverses very fascinating. What is impressive is the infinite freedom of design there is in SecondLife and this is why I’m quite disappointed with the ways currently used to represent architecture.

If architecture can be defined as a discipline, whose aim is to design space in which human beings live, then the same definition can also be applied into SL, substituting “human being” with “avatar”.

Vitruvio, a 46-30 BC writer of treatises, ascribed architecture three factors:

  • firmitas (structural);
  • utilitas (functional)
  • venustas (aesthetical).

Lets think of these factors in relation to virtual architecture. In SL Architecture, one of these factors is superfluous, and not only that but venustas masks one of these factors with a structural issue firmitas.

In a world without gravity (or low gravity) and without dangers of instability, I don’t regard everything relating to the structural paradigm very interesting.

Probably, if Vitruvio, or other writers of treatises, had known about SecondLife, he would have shown us that it’s not essential to use solids to make beams and pillars appear. In fact, beams and pillars in SecondLife are only part of an aesthetic issue, of decoration.

Architecture in SecondLife should go beyond these formal limitations and in so doing, un-tap its own virtual energy.

Some projects could deal with moving architecture: buildings that float in space and move like clock hands, more like a machine than a block of concrete or brick, with buildings that fly like planes and with walls of light.

The architecture of SecondLife must free itself from the burden of Real Life because the factors characterizing SecondLife are very different. Architecture that can be taken back to Real Life, I would define as “Spontaneous Architecture”, derived from our “terrestrial anthropocentrism”.

While the few examples of projects that exist in SL would crash if you transported them into Real Life due to firmitas, which is superfluous in the metaverse, they are nevertheless the start of a thought process, which has already understood the de-materialization of the terrestrial universe and which projects itself into the near future of a de-materialized life with new rules.

Contributed to The Arch by avatar turboy Runo.  Translated from http://www.secondlifelab.it by DG Johin