Where is the future in SL?

[animats]

Second Life lacks future-themed sims that get used. Good futuristic design is rare in SL. Linden Labs builds info hubs  in a futuristic style, but what residents build tends to be rather classical. Philip Rosedale once commented that he was disappointed about this. Horizons was supposed to be futuristic, but that didn't work out.

LL tried.

There's plenty of dystopian future in SL, but little optimistic future.  There's some good cyberpunk. Hangars Liquides and Cocoon are probably the best examples. There are some "space stations", but they're mostly corridors and doors, like a Doom level. Not much to do there.

Is it possible to build a working future in SL? Does anyone have a vision beyond the Jetsons and the 1964 Worlds Fair? Can we get some help from people in eastern Asia, where urban architecture is more adventurous?

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, animats said:

where urban architecture is more adventurous

We occasionally get "adventurous architecture" here in the UK, usually by scandinavian architects...

I't usually horrible.

See, you can for example, do one of those "adventurous" geodesic sphere based designs, but, people HATE living in them, they are a swine to carpet, as carpet doesn't come in huge discs, it comes in rectangular sections on a roll...

People hate rooms with walls that slope inwards or outwards by mad amounts, and triangular rooms, or other odd ngon shapes. Curved corridors are a ***** to fit flooring to, 

"Adventurous" designs generally are designed to look "hella-kewl" not to actually be used every day by real people.

Can you imagine what living in a 1.2 km high tower (second from left in picture below) that twists by 60 degrees as it rises would be like?

Imagine the vortex effects caused by the wind blowing past it, and the updraft caused by sunlight on all that solar control glass, imagine having your shirt sucked right off your back as you tried walking across the pavement to the buildings doors.

Imagine trying to lay carpets and arrange furniture in a corner apartment where there isnt a single right-angled corner in the damn place, and the outer wall slopes inwards. Imagine trying to get furniture delivered, when you live on the 387th floor.

"Adventurous Architecture" basically sucks.

 

[animats]

We're not getting much inspiration from recent movies. Here's Disney's "Tomorrowland".

It's beautiful, exuberant, and useless. You could build this in SL, but why? What would you do there? Too much of movie SF is like this

 

General Motors pavilion, 1964 World's Fair. Looks like a low-rent version of Dubai.

Hangars Liquides in SL. Biggest cyberpunk build in world. Housing, bars, and clubs. Dystopian. 

Why are we stuck at dystopia, even in imagination?

 

 

[Klytyna]

47 minutes ago, animats said:

Why are we stuck at dystopia, even in imagination?

Because the future isn't some golden place of total happyness...

It's the same miserable RL craphole we've all lived in since whenever, where most building is boring and functional, and "exciting and adventurous" building is generally a pain in the backside.

True Story: Once upon a time there was an architect called Mies.. He was hailed as a champion of "Modernist Architecture" (lots of glass & concrete cubes). Then he died, and there was much redjoicing.

But the Mies Fanbois were dismayed that London didn't have a Mies Mono;ith in its skyline s they came up with a plan to demolish more than 30 Grade 2 Listed buildings in the City, and erasing a few dozen slamm streets, to make room for a HUGE Mies Monolith right in the heart of the Capital.

Oddly, the general public showed a COMPLETE LACK of support for the campaign to "improve and modernise" their city with a massive glass and concrete block designed 30 years earlier by an arrogant idiot.

Oh and as for the dystopian thing in 3D...

Probably because of an old friend of mine, over at the old Team Dystopia website, since he's an architect who designed and made over 100 3D "futuristic city blocks", wich were widely sold and used as backgrounds for a lot of 3D sci-fi renders, you can see a few around the ankles of the 4 stratoscrapers in the image above. People used his stuff to make Dystopian builds for their Blade-Runner style work.

Even Luc Besson, trying to make a non-dystopian movie about the future, with "The 5th Element" had that whole massive skyscrapers above fog shrouded depths of ruin and decay thing going on. The buildings for the most part, are pretty much the same on the outside as current ones, just a lot taller with a few extras stuck on like the vertical trams.

See, rendering the future as it really will be is BORING, houses in 10 years will look just like houses now, only newer.

Industrial areas will still have boring buildings made of brick, and cinderblock, and corrugated metal. Office blocks will still generally be square-ish towers, and minimalist-semi-neo-classical, will still be popular for stuff, post modernist for other stuff. 

Cities are ORGANIC, you don't generally get some hella-kewl designer moving in and replacing the entire cityscape all at once with "Futureness", you get a building here and a building there, which have to obey planning and zoning regs, about fitting in. People don't build 1 km tall tower blocks in the middle of suburban housing areas, people dont build half mile wide complexes in crowded urban areas formally owned by dozens of smaller property developers because some of them won't sell, and its expensive.

It's all going to look they much the same. The days of telling what decade buildings are from their appearance is kind of over.

Cities like Shanghai have that dated "futurist feel" because they were proving how modern they were in exactly the same say the Mies Fanbois wanted to modernise London, except the regime there didn't care that peole might not want their comfortable old style buildings replaced with "Futureness you cant lay a carpet in".

 

[animats]

37 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Once upon a time there was an architect called Mies.. He was hailed as a champion of "Modernist Architecture" (lots of glass & concrete cubes). Then he died, and there was much rejoicing.

Ah, yes. Mies van der Rohe.

Illinois Institute of Technology Commons, Chicago. Who needs curves?

Mies's work looks much like basic prim building in SL. Everything is rectangular. Except for LL builds.

Sidney Opera House. LL info hub style.

[JaJanna]

The future is almost now. Get ready or not it will happen  anyway. Normally ppl work one season ahead.

[Jason916]

I wonder what if SL will back to what it had in 2003-2005 for example))

[s2Pandora]

When I think of "futuristic", I think the most.. I guess, semi-realistic vision I have comes from how the city in "Mirror's Edge" is. You see more of it in 2 than 1.

Edited March 1, 2019 by s2Pandora

[LibGwen]

On 11/26/2018 at 1:00 PM, animats said:

Why are we stuck at dystopia, even in imagination?

 

 

Spitballing:

1) Because people tend to get abusive toward someone suggesting things could be better than they are.  So "safe" fantasy consists of an ersatz good life that's secretly inimical.

2) Because anyone can mock, drag down, and trash.  It takes energy, respect, and work to comprehend, support, or enhance.

3) Because support tends to happen quietly, out of the glare of spotlights.  Look at how often someone embarks on a project in SL and gets all kinds of contributions from people who think it's exciting and inspiring.

4) Aesthetics.  It's one thing to have a vision, it's quite another to be able to put it out there for people to see what you imagined.  In all the conversations about Bellisseria continent's appeal, I have never seen anyone try to figure out why it makes people say "Yeah, that."  It's that it was assembled by people who know how to do proportion, sight lines, and attract your attention to the "here" rather than the "away somewhere".

5) For some reason, imagination is been out of fashion for several decades.  When trying to decide what to do with this post, I was trying to think of imaginative movies in the last twenty years.  The only name I could think of was Luc Besson.  People like "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" because it's full of imagination, not because of anything remarkable in the characters or plot.  It's quite a frightening future, but wow.

(And only now do I notice how old this thread is.  Well, I agree, the grid's lack of inspired futures needs to be pointed out.)

Edited June 6, 2019 by LibGwen

[Daffao]

On 12/29/2018 at 9:08 AM, Jason916 said:

I wonder what if SL will back to what it had in 2003-2005 for example))

Young adults these days prefer modern PC programs. Which tends to be the majority users of these programs when it comes to casual usage. Most young adults in SL seems to be from South Americas or countries where SL is the modern tech art. Which is great. I'm glad they live more modern these days. 

Those who were in SL in that era 2005 I figure most got very old by now and moved on. I met a girl who said she was in SL last time around 2007. She tested it again and told me how they used to have fun back in the days. The whole culture of SL changed. Like a new country and immigration took over, gradually. To change something like that would require a rebranding. Since if you look outside this forum and someone mentions SL, they tend to have a opinion about it or two. Instantly turning away all spectators. I see it all over the web and social media, at least at english speaking places. That's why brands can be good but also devastating. 

My prediction is that SL will become more Spanish focused and Asian. Even more than now. That's where the cash is. 

[Yorkie Bardeen]

I won't argue against the social/psychological theories for dystopia, but I will suggest also that SL mostly lent itself to a darker, more confined version of the future. Open spaces are harder to realize than dense urban scenes- SL is quite small and cramped in terms of pure square meterage. At least back in the day before materials and such it seemed like darker, less clean texturing offered a better visual element (a lot of old stone, urban decay etc), the more pixels of interesting dirt, shadows, stains on a face the better. The video game/RPG activities worked mostly around some notion of struggle and/or conflict, so that RP/gaming scene would naturally want to do Cyberpunk stuff.

I personally like the optimistic, clean vision of the future from late 60s/early 70s sci-fi movies etc, and there are good resources for that style of futurism (Isil, Solares and other creators).

My current home is an ART modular shop building, which might look more suited to a rain-soaked neon dystopian Blade Runner future but I think it looks at home in my little wooded hillside.

Edited June 7, 2019 by Yorkie Bardeen
spelung

[KforCat]

Come see my home!

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Spinolds Flat/16/176

I RP there in character always when you see me.

[Resi Pfeffer]

23 hours ago, KforCat said:

Come see my home!

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Spinolds Flat/16/176

I RP there in character always when you see me.

That thread is about the future of SL and NOT about your need of friends and company.

[animats]

On 6/7/2019 at 12:02 PM, Yorkie Bardeen said:

I won't argue against the social/psychological theories for dystopia, but I will suggest also that SL mostly lent itself to a darker, more confined version of the future. Open spaces are harder to realize than dense urban scenes- SL is quite small and cramped in terms of pure square meterage.

There used to be a "Route 66" sim which was a small town in the middle of a big empty desert. It's gone. Nobody can afford a big empty desert in SL. I'd like to have long roads through unpopulated woods, open country, mountains, and such, connecting some points of interest. That's sort of what "open space" sims are for, but they are not used much. We do have that long open water route between Bellesaria and Jeoghot now, but there's nothing comparable with land.

[Nalates Urriah]

Looking for a reason why... There is never a satisfactory answer for those asking the question. The reason is too obvious and simple. Humans do what they know how to do with each building on what came before. When someone reaches too far ahead it just doesn't work as people don't know what to do with it.

Building departments make those designing geodesic dome structures add internal supporting walls... Duh! But, that is typical of humans. "The building code says there has to be a supporting wall..." It doesn't matter there is nothing to support. People build doors everywhere because people are familiar with doors and think there should be doors.

It is habit.

Also, it is the educated that do RL design and consider what new materials can be used to solve a problem. Others like Frank Lloyd Wright designed to fit location or task. Most SL residents are not design oriented nor grounded in architectural concepts, put the bathrooms and bedrooms near each other. So, they copy what they have seen. No dreams. Habit.

Why have stairs in SL? We don't need them. But, people know how to use them.

We can fly. Why do we have elevators? People know how to use them to get to a specific place.

We are not limited by gravity, material strengths, or generally any RL constraints. But, what does that mean? Well.... in SL obviously it means skyboxes 😣

I was just in the region Peony. What a gorgeous build. All but one home is basic box house. But, texturing, scale, arrangement... all exceptionally well done. Most people in SL can't accomplish that level of building. Everyone is ... well a majority are novice builders. The best it seems they try for mood or beauty. Very few try for something they have never seen... the future. SciFi moves are about as far as it goes. 1920s SciFi looks corny today. Their idea of the future is not how the future turned out.

Very few can break away from their conditioning. Of those that can, very few are here.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

The future is in the City of Solace in a sim called Tieut on the mainland. It's a rental sim which is pretty neat.

 

[FairreLilette]

On 12/29/2018 at 12:08 AM, Jason916 said:

I wonder what if SL will back to what it had in 2003-2005 for example))

Second Life was all inworld in the beginning and there was no Marketplace.  The technology was just different and all working together.  

Technology has changed so much that much of Second Life is spent in 2D spaces like Flickr, etc on tiny little phone screens.

Computers have changed so much that most jpegs are way too low of pixels now.

I have a 24 megapixel camera and it is like a different world.  It truly is.  Like another world.  

Things are out of sync right now and more pixels are needed for people to enjoy the new desktops, and people complain about having to rez 1024 x 1024 which could very well be out-dated soon.  

How can SECOND LIFE catch up with modern megapixels?  It's decades behind.  

[FairreLilette]

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Posted November 26, 2018

We're not getting much inspiration from recent movies. Here's Disney's "Tomorrowland".

It's beautiful, exuberant, and useless. You could build this in SL, but why? What would you do there? Too much of movie SF is like this

 

General Motors pavilion, 1964 World's Fair. Looks like a low-rent version of Dubai.

 

Low rent version of Dubai?  Wow.

In America, jobs have been outsourced and insourced to death that most people's kids have to live at home or move back home.  No jobs OR too low paying. 

America's jobs are overseas and the rich man kept importing more cheap labor into America from South America which took away things like pensions and health care and jobs for a lot of Americans.  

I wish America had a low rent area like that for today's American kids because it really needs it~  desperately !  

Edited August 19, 2019 by FairreLilette

[FairreLilette]

On 11/25/2018 at 11:43 AM, animats said:

Second Life lacks future-themed sims that get used. Good futuristic design is rare in SL. Linden Labs builds info hubs  in a futuristic style, but what residents build tends to be rather classical. Philip Rosedale once commented that he was disappointed about this. Horizons was supposed to be futuristic, but that didn't work out.

LL tried.

There's plenty of dystopian future in SL, but little optimistic future.  There's some good cyberpunk. Hangars Liquides and Cocoon are probably the best examples. There are some "space stations", but they're mostly corridors and doors, like a Doom level. Not much to do there.

Is it possible to build a working future in SL? Does anyone have a vision beyond the Jetsons and the 1964 Worlds Fair? Can we get some help from people in eastern Asia, where urban architecture is more adventurous?

I think the only one thing that could get this world beyond a dystopian future is to have a one world currency BUT Christian's have made up in their minds a one world currency means the Antichrist will reign and it is a signal of "the end times." 

I don't think a one world currency is going to happen any time soon.  Religion breeds irrational fears into people for "the rich man" so he can exploit humanity.  

Also, the planet is just more and more polluted which is killing us.

People complain about second hand smoke all the while breathing in the carbon monoxide of the gases from all the cars which are killing the Earth and everything in it.

For the carbon monoxide that comes out of one car, people should be taxed 20,000 dollars a month at least give or take.  

People are a bit delusional and ignorance still has the upper hand which breeds dystopia into visionaries.

But, the delusion comes from misinformation and lies from media and governments, and scare tactics from governments and religions that is behind all the ignorance breeding dystopia into visionaries.  

I read Hilter got the Nazi's to do what they did because Hitler was convinced the Jews were going to kill Christian children and got the Nazi's to believe it.  Hitler preyed on fear.  Someone is trying to kill you and your family fear.  Other governments do that time and time again.  

Then, I know people who say the holocaust never happened.

This is the land of confusion, as a line in a song says.  Yeah, it is.  

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by FairreLilette