errcheck Hicks gave my SL avatar, Old, a brief tour of a couple spots in world. I teleported to Sony’s Media Island and then the Sun Microsytems area. Both have some nice-looking theatres for viewing video. Sony’s island had a working tram and a bunch of billboard-style video screens where music videos get played. The Sun one also had some multi-avatar platform kiosks, where the video can start playing just by walking up to it.
Along the way, I tried some things and learned some other things:
- I can only fly so high. I kept bumping my head on structures, despite pressing the page-up and getting a nice running start. Simulated ouch.
- There is something called rezzing that allows me to drop an object in the world and view it, but some places don’t allow it. I’ve got the Venice Beachhead for December 2006, but had a hard time finding a place where I could see it. And when I did figure that part out, I couldn’t navigate the camera to be able to read anything but the headlines.
- I can run! That makes my crazy SL event () a little more interesting. I also tried cutting corners and aiming, proving there could actually be some strategy to the race part of the event.
- The X-Y-Z coordinates can be bookmarked as a landmark, although I had a difficult time figuring out how to make use of them. They don’t show up in the main connection form, when one first logs on (and that seems the most natural place) or seem very accessible from the search tools (which were still “down” today). Still, I landmarked away and have two places I can go back to, someday.
- The place is deserted. That seems to be the norm, in the few places I have been. The RootsCamp meetings have had a dozen or so avatars grouped together for the purpose of chatting. The only other places with more than 1-2 citizens are the default city I got dumped into during server problems and my “home” — which I think is near a big soccer ball stadium, from last year’s sports informatics class. The sparseness make me feel like I’m living in a post-apocalyptic world.
