Sheep Vortex Show
The Sheep Vortex premiere last night was a nice affair. Seeing Spot (or, um, his avatar) there and having a chance to chat was really great. Wandering around in the swirling “vortex” of broken shards of electric sheep was pleasant, even if the performance and resolution of SecondLife’s rendering processes left much to be desired. Here is a snapshot I took:
Here, you can see me talking to Spot. (Spot is the one typing/chatting.) By coincidence, we both happen to have chosen the same avatar, showing that sometimes it is possible to have a Ph.D. student formed in your own image. ;-) There were a bunch of other people there as well, some listed as CMU alumni, though I’m not sure I knew anyone personally.
About SecondLife: I’m not a big fan. Like many people, I have a free account because, well, with all the hype it seemed important to me at one point to check it out. But using SecondLife is frustrating. It is just sooo slow and, well, pointless. (Spot’s very nice premiere notwithstanding.) We have evidence here at CMU (which I won’t reveal, but trust me) that the number of new users signing up at SecondLife is very small, and so even with the hype it just doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction.
Perhaps if the software (both client and server infrastructure) improves so that the graphic quality and run-time performance become more impressive, the user experience of SecondLife will also improve. Maybe this will translate into more users and more neat experiences. But it might already be too late for that. I’m not sure how many great content creators (like Spot) are going to keep up their interest in going there.
Peter Lee @ March 14, 2008