Another SL vs RL thread

[Persephone Emerald]

I've long been saying SL is as real as RL, even though it's not physical.  Lately, though, it seems less real to me. Good illusions make it seem real, but bad ones can damage the construct.  I thought last night - as I was looking for places that look like the Northern Califorina coast - that few people in SL know how to create good illusions of real life places.

Victorian towns shouldn't have Tudor buildings. Non-tropical lands shouldn't have palm trees. Shopping areas shouldn't all be malls of white marble. Art galleries should be small sometimes, but not just wall-less platforms.

I want places in SL that recreate the places I love in RL. I've been lucky to have visited many beautiful & awesome places in RL. Seeing them recreated in SL brings back memories that can make my emersion more rich, but seeing poor recreations is disheartening. To recreate the Northern Califorina coast, I want small shops & houses of stained wood, painted white, or in pastel colors, with Victorian gingerbread. I want wooden sidewalks. I want redwoods & other evergreen trees, ferns, blackberry bushes, grasses & colorful realistic flowers.  I want mountian streams that run down to sandy marshes & beaches that don't have palm trees.  I want cliffs that are rocky & sprinkled with bright flowers. I want natural-looking animals that move & make noise.

RL Venice is also not a collection of pretty boxes intersected wtith canals of clear blue water. It's a stage of decaying grandure upon which real life is acted out. It's wide open plazas of lights, music & people, contrasted with twisting streets & narrow back alleys. It's the smell of salt air & pizza contrasted with that of algae & urine. It's the sound of people talking in a dozen languages, music playng, the signing of gondaleirs echoing through the canals, children playing, footsteps on cobblestones, seagulls crying, pigeons flyng up, motorboats roaring & waves lapping against stone.  It's fantastic white marble, painted plaster & gold trim from a distance, that's dirty, chipped & flaking up close. It's a city that's brilliantly alive, engorged & overflowing with a thousand years of memories, actively growing & dying in every moment that one breathes in it's air.

I can see the shallowness of most SL places because I've seen some of the wonders of RL. Some people may like emersing themselves in fantasy worlds that could never exist in RL, but I think being reminded of places we've been in RL can create a more emersive experience as our minds fill in the visual details, sounds & smells that SL lacks.

Do you have RL places you like seeing recreated in SL or would like to see recreated here?

 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I find SL too real, actually. Not that it feels real (you will never feel the wind in your hair or the sun on your skin), but it's too closely oriented on reality.

There should be places and sights that can't be found anywhere in the real world, places where physics and gravity work in completely different ways. For example, imagine yourself walking through an MC Escher painting such as this one:

I thought about building something like this back in the day, but walking upside down on a staircase at the ceiling would require you to attach your avatar to the stairs (i.e. sit on them) and wait for an animation to play. As soon as you stood up, you'd just fall down again.

The same goes for things like walking through a door that leads to a completely different area, hundreds of meters away (and upside down or sideways). Of course this could all be done with a scripted teleport system, but it just wouldn't feel very realistic. Or unrealistic, as it is

Why can't we turn off gravity in our sims and have people float around in a zero-g environment? Or change how gravity works in order to create a true upside down experience? Or mess with the terrain physics and let visitors bounce around like rubber balls? Simulated down-to-earth reality gets really boring after a while.

[Venus Petrov]

I have  visited places in SL that evoke memories of RL places.  Not exact replicas, but similar enough to make me think of the RL place when I am there.  What I find wonderful about SL is that creative people build places I have never been nor am likely to ever be.  Places such as Inspire Space, as one example.  I will never walk over asteroids in space to perform Tai Chi nor float with that special someone among the planets and stars free from the encumbrences of space suit and oxygen (to say nothing of the terror of free floating teathered to nothing!).

This, for me, is what makes SL special.

[Vania Chaplin]

I remember, reading in a Brazilian Magazine back in 2007, that someone had made a tesseract home, based on the story "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert Heinlein (a great story).

Tesseract is an hypercube, in four dimensions. If I am remebering it ll, it had a script to make the trick and only one avatar could enter te house at a time.

Unfortunately, I've never found this build.

[Darrius Gothly]

 

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

I find SL too real, actually. Not that it feels real (you will never feel the wind in your hair or the sun on your skin), but it's too closely oriented on reality.

There should be places and sights that can't be found anywhere in the real world, places where physics and gravity work in completely different ways. For example, imagine yourself walking through an MC Escher painting such as this one:

I thought about building something like this back in the day, but walking upside down on a staircase at the ceiling would require you to attach your avatar to the stairs (i.e. sit on them) and wait for an animation to play. As soon as you stood up, you'd just fall down again.

The same goes for things like walking through a door that leads to a completely different area, hundreds of meters away (and upside down or sideways). Of course this could all be done with a scripted teleport system, but it just wouldn't feel very realistic. Or unrealistic, as it is

Why can't we turn off gravity in our sims and have people float around in a zero-g environment? Or change how gravity works in order to create a true upside down experience? Or mess with the terrain physics and let visitors bounce around like rubber balls? Simulated down-to-earth reality gets really boring after a while.

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This sounds like an absolutely hilarious fun time. I'd love it too. (Just gotta remember to bring extra band-aids and muscle sprain bandages.)

 

[Ima Rang]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

I find SL too real, actually. Not that it feels real (you will never feel the wind in your hair or the sun on your skin), but it's too closely oriented on reality.

There should be places and sights that can't be found anywhere in the real world, places where physics and gravity work in completely different ways. For example, imagine yourself walking through an MC Escher painting such as this one:

I thought about building something like this back in the day, but walking upside down on a staircase at the ceiling would require you to attach your avatar to the stairs (i.e. sit on them) and wait for an animation to play. As soon as you stood up, you'd just fall down again.

The same goes for things like walking through a door that leads to a completely different area, hundreds of meters away (and upside down or sideways). Of course this could all be done with a scripted teleport system, but it just wouldn't feel very realistic. Or unrealistic, as it is

Why can't we turn off gravity in our sims and have people float around in a zero-g environment? Or change how gravity works in order to create a true upside down experience? Or mess with the terrain physics and let visitors bounce around like rubber balls? Simulated down-to-earth reality gets really boring after a while.

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That sounds like a great time and I would be will to pay L's to visit such a place.  Just what SL needs right now IMHO as it does seem too rooted in reality presently.  

[Wilhiam Hydraconis]

 

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

I find SL too real, actually. Not that it feels real (you will never feel the wind in your hair or the sun on your skin), but it's too closely oriented on reality.

There should be places and sights that can't be found anywhere in the real world, places where physics and gravity work in completely different ways. For example, imagine yourself walking through an MC Escher painting such as this one:

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Funny and interesting you should mention that. A characteristic of Escher' work is that what is drawn and seems to have several dimensions is actually a 2-dimensional trick ( optical deception ) that cannot be reproduced in any x-, y- AND z environment (RL or SL).

 

What you're asking is technically impossible in SL.

ETA.

[Marigold Devin]

The college of arts and technology in my home town have a sim in Second Life, but it is absolutely nothing like the town to look at, which isn't very disappointing (obviously I can walk out of the door, and catch a bus and be in my town if I want to see my town).

There are a couple of representations of Brighton, East Sussex, England in Second Life, and although not replicas, have captured part of the essence; the helter skelter on the pier, the Brighton-blue painted railings.  Its just enough to evoke happy memories of childhood visits to the seaside. 

Regarding what Ishtara was saying, about how nice it would be to see places with perhaps changed gravity, it reminded me of a short film I saw recently, of what happens when a slight change is made to the physics engine. Everything and everyone on the sim were drifting slowly eastwards. I wish I'd been there, that must have been weird.

[Persephone Emerald]

@ Vania Chaplan

I like the idea of a tesseract house. Would it be like having tardis rooms perhaps? Let's incorpoate Istara's idea of non-normal gravity too.  What if you could open a door from any surface on the interior of a cube-shaped room & find yourself in another room? What if after that, you, could do the same & find yourself entering 5 more rooms, rather than going back into any of the others?  What would a tesseract house look like from inside & outside? Could you use TP scripts to walk into rooms that can't be created in normal 3D space?

[Darrius Gothly]

Picture a "Quad" of four rooms. Each room has two doors located on adjoining walls. To go from one door to another, you must turn to the left or right.

The doors are sliding type doors; when touched, they open. Each room has both doors, but when a door is touched, both its door and the door in the adjoining room open at the same time.

Arrange the rooms so that you can walk in a circle, going through each of the four rooms and winding up where you started. Except ...

When you leave a room, it is swapped out with a randomly selected room from the inventory of rooms. As soon as it is empty .. Zip! Rez! Position! Done.

Even if you immediately turn around and go back where you just came from, it will be a "New" room.

Is that along the lines of what y'all are thinking? Because it sure sounds doable with a bit of scripting and building work.

[Persephone Emerald]

I think it sounds very cool & you should work on that idea.

However, if the avatar could have more control over what rooms they enter, this could make a nice house to live in. The 1st room could be in our regular dimension, but the others would be elsewhere (with odd views from the windows perhaps). They might need only a small footprint for the room anchored in our dimension, while the other rooms could be temp rez or high above them. (I've seen houses with temp-rez rooms before on the old Marketplace, but I haven't seen them in-world.)

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Agree that builds in SL often clean up the worn and tattered reality that lends some RL places their charm. I've often admired many coastal towns in the northeast U.S. and thought that they'd look great re-created in SL in all their weathered glory.  Don't get me wrong, I understand the desire to "clean up" builds in SL, where we don't have to deal with decay and signs of age, but I also agree that sometimes breaks the mood if you're really familiar with a RL location and the SL version is "sterile".

Because some other people mentioned the strength of non realistic builds and physics and gravity, I've always thought the Gaea series by John Varley would make for awesome roleplay, which is only impossible in SL because Gaea was the "inside" of a living moon, which would require being able walk on the inside surface of a hollow mega-prim sphere. Or more accurately the inside surface of a torus, with spokes to the center, so there are multiple gravitational effects going on.

[Darrius Gothly]

 

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Pep wrote:

Not to pour cold water on the concept but it *has* already been done in SL, using "instant" tps between rooms as you walk through what appear to be doors. It was some time ago and I don't remember much about it other than it was quite fun, and a little like being in a maze without realising it.

Pep (It would be a good challenge to recreate it.)

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HAH!! I'm an En-Gee-Near! Just because it's been done before is NO reason I can't INVENT it for the first time ... again. (LOL)

I was even thinking it could become a Community Project by allowing others to come in and design rooms of their own. That would open it up to many different visions, styles and experiences too.

It'll take some more thinking and planning, but off-hand I don't see any reason why it couldn't show up someday soon.

[rotpaulette Carter]

Nothing wrong with palms trees in Alaska, it is our world our imagination after all.

we could travel in Rl and see beautiful places.

We are not looking in Rl like in SL. No? If i look at your profil picture:smileyhappy:

[Vania Chaplin]

To avoid that this topic "Another SL vs RL thread" becomes confuse, with two interest, related, but different discussions, I am opening a new one: "SL vs 'unRealLife' thread"

[Arkady Arkright]

 

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Persephone Emerald wrote:

Victorian towns shouldn't have Tudor buildings.

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On this one item I'd have to disagree with you - towns evolve, a place like York now has buildings dated from before the vikings up to the 21st century - so, depicted in the Victorian age, it will  will have Victorian, Tudor, Viking and even earlier structures.

 

[Dillon Levenque]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

I was even thinking it could become a Community Project by allowing others to come in and design rooms of their own. That would open it up to many different visions, styles and experiences too.

It'll take some more thinking and planning, but off-hand I don't see any reason why it couldn't show up someday soon.

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I want an LM just as soon as it's done!

[Persephone Emerald]

@ Arkady, you're correct of course if the town is a Bristish Victorian Town. I was grousing about that because I was thinking of US Victorian towns. I should have been more specific in my post.

[Quinn Morani]

 

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

I was even thinking it could become a Community Project by allowing others to come in and design rooms of their own. That would open it up to many different visions, styles and experiences too.

It'll take some more thinking and planning, but off-hand I don't see any reason why it couldn't show up someday soon.

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I want an LM just as soon as it's done!

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I was just going to post the same request, but then Dillon beat me to it. LM please when you're ready to show it off!