» second life

  

Sony mentioned its long waited PlayStation Home would be released before the end of this year, after so many delays and disappointments, Home beta actually got released today! I can’t imagine what the result would be if it wasn’t able to deliver its promise, again.

I was quite excited about hearing it from wired blog because I’m into virtual reality related games such as Second Life. I downloaded a 70+ mb file from the PlayStation Network and I was in the game within minutes. You start out in your own virtual apartment and let me tell you the graphics are stunningly nice. The view is even more impressive if you want out the balcony and look out the the boat yard. Literally breath taking!

  

There are tutorials here what will teach you about the features of Home such as basic action, words and the ability to move your decorations as you see fit. Obviously you can buy more decorations with real money just like you would when purchasing downloadable contents from PlayStation Store.

Every place requires you to download its piece, for example the Mall, which is around 30mb in size. Hopefully my 40GB PlayStation can last for a while because I don’t want to install a bigger one (too lazy) and right now I only have 12GB left. Anyway back to the Mall, as you can guess, this is where you will be able to purchase new clothes ($0.49 and up), home decorations ($0.99 and up) and even new living spaces ($4.99 and up). Obviously since its beta so there are only a handful of items available for purchase and some stores are still closed. I’m pretty sure there will be a LOT more since if Home goes well, it will be another source of income for Sony. I can already see myself buying all sorts of clothes and decorations to personalize my own character, or avatar and my apartment.

  

Aside from the Mall, there is also a Theatre, a Bowling Alley, a music place where you can vote for which song to play next and in the middle has a mini game in a pond in the central gathering area. You basically fly a UFO around and catch things. I assume there will be more mini games introduced in the future, hopefully free of charge. I assume the Bowling Alley is also another mini game place, I haven’t had a chance to download that piece and experience it yet because I was too busy appreciating the graphics of Home.

  

Unfortunately none of my friends have it yet but there are already many PS3 owners to interact with. Just like many online games, there will always be some idiots annoying others. I guess that’s part of MMO life. You have the option to block and/or mute players. And of course you can also add players to your friends list. Chatting can be slow without the keypad but its nothing major plus there are some preset words and emotions for you to choose from. I am still trying to figure out how to get the emotion of playing the PSP. I asked around and no body answered. Sigh, talking about friendly huh?

I highly recommend the PlayStation Home to everyone, with a PS3 obviously, because its an alternative way to meet up with your friends as well as meeting new friends and play mini games or launch, say, Call of Duty 4 together. The graphics are amazing, and I hardly experienced any lag at all even with many people around me. I haven’t noticed any frame rate issues so far either even with the impressive graphics and the amount of people. And best of all, its free to play unless you start decorating your character and/or your apartment.

That is all I have discovered about PlayStation Home so far, I am sure there are more but that’s for me and YOU to find out!

  

Ever since I have started and finished the Digital Building a week ago, I have been itching to design and start building another structure. I’ve been digging through countless number of architectural pictures to get some ideas on this design and I have stumbled upon Zaha Hadid, an extremely talented architect who creates impressive looking structures. I am amazed and inspired by her designs, jaw dropping, literally. Her Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Vilnius for its organic design as well as the BMW Central Building in Germany for its sharp and futuristic design.

  

I believe Zaha Hadid’s fan count has just increased by one. I’m sure I will fall in love with other architects’ designs as I study along the way but Zaha’s is my first.

Anyway, back to my own design.

The exterior design isn’t really based on anything in particular this time, it just popped out of my head all of a sudden. I guess this is like a by product of studying all kinds of designs from different architects. At first I couldn’t think of a name for this build but since it looks technical, at least from the outside, I have decided to call it Technical. People without reading this blog will most likely think I’ve built fighting pick-up truck.

  

In this design, I’ve used large one piece drop down windows from second floor all the way to the first floor. The main entrance in the middle separates the two sides with large pillars/columns. They are my attempt to create a more striking, bold and structured feel to the overall design. Sort of like a skeleton supporting the skin. I’ve decided not to wrap the skeleton with glass infront but I might change my mind on this. It shows striking, bold and structured feel clearer without glass but I also like the idea of being “revealing” where you can see it but not clearly.

  

For the interior, I based a little on one of Zaha’s interior designs but nothing close to “copycat” like, just some minor concepts. As usual, there is a lift that will connect both first and second floor. I have trimmed the surface area of the second floor in exchange for the ability to looking down to the first floor. I think having more open area also reduces the feeling of crowdedness and thus making the over all interior more relaxing. The lift platform on the second floor connects to the two suspended glass platforms, one on each side that leads to the rest of the area. In the middle are 5 large metallic columns with each suspended by a wire. I have chosen to use silverish metal texture in combination with the “glow” effect to transform the middle into the center of attention, I’m sure it would still be the center of attention even without the “glow” effect but I wanted the middle to be more dramatic.

 

In my previous projects, 95% of the decorations / ornaments were not scripted, meaning they would not move nor react to user input. For the first time, I’ve scripted these 5 columns to rotate in one direction in a slow but noticable speed. I have set a timer of 5 seconds so that the rotation will alternate between clockwise and counter clockwise. I’m pretty happy with the result.

I hope you guys like this one as well and I will be back to the drawing board pretty soon for my next project.

I finally had the time to get back to my architecture/interior design hobby recently. I’m actually not too happy with the exterior design of my previous design – Basic Blocks – Contemporary Home. It was just way too plain and I admit I didn’t put too much thoughts into it and spent nearly 100% to interior design.

  

This time I focused on the exterior just as much as the interior and based my idea on the Digital Beijing Building by the talented Studio Pei-Zhu.

I love how the blue lights are “escaping” from the gaps between the columns which really gives the digital as well as the “Matrix” impression to the whole design. In addition to having those blue lights on both sides, they are also visible and extend from the front of the building all the way to the back of the building.

  

The building consists of two floors with each floor measuring approximately 40m long, 20m wide and 10m high. The prim count (the number of objects) is a bit more than usual mainly because of the “digital” design on the two walls on the sides. The two entrances are well hidden so people will not be able to see them and makes the “digital” flow from front to back without the entrances interrupting it. I have also made heavy use of the “glow” effect both inside and out for the extra lighting effect.

Overall I am very pleased with this design (finally) and hopefully my next project will be just as fun and satisfying to design and build as this one. Hope you guys like this one as well!

Comments and feedbacks are always welcome

This is my first time blogging about my latest design in Second Life. I’m a content creator specialized in homes, stores and even some military buildings like hangars and command centre with nuke. But I prefer designing and building houses instead. I have recently released my latest home design called Basic Blocks.

Why call it Basic Blocks? It actually comes from the design which consists 10 rectangular blocks. It has two floors, therefore 5 blocks per floor with the middle one connecting to the other four on each much like a “plus” sign. The middle also consists of an elevator for accessing both floors. In this design, I tried to apply a bit more interior designs inside instead of just a plain empty shell. The designs are mainly from mixing different ideas in some of the interior design books that I read all the time. You will also notice I”m a big fan of the 3 colors – black, white and grey, I can never stop using them in all my builds.

Hope you guys will like this design and feedbacks are always welcome! Even the negative ones as I strongly believe I need to listen to all in order to further improve my designing skills.

For more pictures please visit my listing @ slexchange.com where content creators like myself sell their products and/or services for Second Life.

Looking back these years playing Second life, an online virtual reality game. Friends come and go, though I’ve gained a few more friends who initially were my customers. The only thing that is missing in my second life is I need to socialize more, I have to admit it plays a huge part in the game. That is also one reason why I don’t have too many friends in there. All I did and still am doing is login, build and logoff. By build, I mean building houses, stores, malls and bunkers you name them. I really love building in SL, because it allows me to release my imaginations through the use of software tools.

When I first started with no money, I didn’t have my own land and thus I didn’t have my own store. I had to rent from someone. The place was called Mobius Village, it drew my attention because my avatar name is Mobius Hashimoto, so it meant something to me. Not sure if it still exist though. Also the rent there was resonable so I had my little store there for about half a year or so. Then I found another place called Armory Island which, as you can guess, sells military related products and is the biggest place for your military needs. There is no rent but AI charges a 25% commission, which is somewhat steep. But with the traffic there, I thought it was worth it and its also good for exposing my products to more people. About a year had passed, my business was stable enough that it would cover the monthly land ownership fee as well as the premium membership fee. I decided, with the help of some friends, to buy my very own piece of land, its a 4096 sq feet of space, which was and still is more than enough to build a relatively spacious store. You have no idea what the feeling was like to own your first piece of virtual land!

So here I am, still building things and running my little business. Although I don’t build as much as I used to, my passion for building and this game overall is still as strong. Lately I’m just occupied with other things that I haven’t built for months until now.

If you are into virtual reality type of games. You should definitely give Second life a try. It is free so you have nothing to lose other than some of our first life. There are just many fun things to do there like clubbing/partying, building like me, or just socialize with others and play many different types of interesting mini games that are built by others in Second Life.

Time flies, its already been 2 years since I’ve joined Second Life. So I have decided to design and build a 2 year anniversary prefab. As usual, I tried different ideas and came up with this. Hope you guys like it!

Mobius

Recently downloaded a trailer of the Sony PlayStation Home, it has been delayed over and over. The latest release date is last quarter of this year and hopefully that will be the last delay. Can it compete with a popular virtual world Second Life? On the surface, it looks similar to Second Life with 3D avatars, interactive places and chating with your friends. But users create their own content and sell them like in SL?

In the mean time here are some images I took while watching the trailer.

I have been playing a virtual game called Second Life for almost two years and about once in two months a new joiner will post in forums asking “How come no one is buying my item” or “Why am I not making money”. The truth is, there is a lot more invovled than just creating an item or provide a service. You cannot just expect anyone to “walk in” and buy whatever you have to offer, most consumers in Second Life are smart, they shop for the best and paid for the least amount.

So you have created an item or think of what service to provide, GREAT! But that’s not all, next steps will be to market your item/service either by posting in forums or purchase classified ads within the game. The latter will cost you so you might want to stick to posting your new items/service in forums for now. There are two main forums, one within Second Life website and one at SLExchange. SLExchange also provides item hosting for you to put up your items for sale for free(takes a very small commission for every sale). As people around the virual world knows more about you, you will be able to create a “brand” for yourself.

As you can see, there are much more to do to be successful, I’ve only mentioned a small bits of it. But my final words are – “Build for passion and not for the sake of getting rich quick”. Earning money is a good thing, I mean who doesn’t want more money? But if you don’t invest time and even money, you will not make money.