I am Venkat Chinniah and also known as Unniyan Gears in Second Life, A seasoned web designer coupled with knowledge and experience in multimedia, animation and graphics. 20 years experience in IT industry as a consultant and coordinator in various fields such as DTP, Multimedia, CD publishing, Web designing etc, focusing on internet concepts which have a higher level of automation resulting in self supporting applications.
I've been using Second Life for about two years,
so I have some basic understandings about it.
So what is Second Life?
Second Life is a three-dimensional interactive virtual world !!!
I've been using Second Life for about two years,
so I have some basic understandings about it.
So what is Second Life?
Second Life is a three-dimensional interactive virtual world !!!
Second Life appears to be the biggest online community to hit the Internet in recent times. It's a 3D digital world, imagined, created, and owned by its residents, which number more than 18 million from more than 100 countries at the time of this writing.
When I was a newbie, I wondered what the excitement is all about and decided to explore. What I found was that reading about Second Life and actually experiencing it are a world apart.
Second Life is a place, just like our real world, except it's simulated on thousands of computers. We can create virtual worlds and virtual self !!! Avatars !!!
There are lots of things that are good and bad about Second Life. My second life avatar name is Unniyan Gears my alter ego!!!, my digital self !!!.
After 2 years in there, I'm still finding new good and bad things every day. Is it a game? Well, it's a game in the same way that life is a game. Second life at first glance, it appears to be one of those massive multiplayer online role-playing games, minus the aspect of winning or losing. This is an online social interface that allows people to interact socially and economically in a 3D virtual space.
Imagine in a virtual theater viewing a movie along with your friends across the globe with a feel of being together through their digital self. A virtual party where you dance with your friends and of course live DJ is going on. Go to a church or temple and pray, or a beach side to be in peace along with your intimate friends hearing the waves or in to a deep forest hearing cuckoo and birds chirping along with the noise of the water falls.
When I was a newbie, I wondered what the excitement is all about and decided to explore. What I found was that reading about Second Life and actually experiencing it are a world apart.
Second Life is a place, just like our real world, except it's simulated on thousands of computers. We can create virtual worlds and virtual self !!! Avatars !!!
There are lots of things that are good and bad about Second Life. My second life avatar name is Unniyan Gears my alter ego!!!, my digital self !!!.
After 2 years in there, I'm still finding new good and bad things every day. Is it a game? Well, it's a game in the same way that life is a game. Second life at first glance, it appears to be one of those massive multiplayer online role-playing games, minus the aspect of winning or losing. This is an online social interface that allows people to interact socially and economically in a 3D virtual space.
Imagine in a virtual theater viewing a movie along with your friends across the globe with a feel of being together through their digital self. A virtual party where you dance with your friends and of course live DJ is going on. Go to a church or temple and pray, or a beach side to be in peace along with your intimate friends hearing the waves or in to a deep forest hearing cuckoo and birds chirping along with the noise of the water falls.
Second Life allows users or 'residents' to come together to interact, play, learn, do business and communicate in an online environment which is 100% user owned and created.
The platform provides tools which allow residents to build their own environments, create highly personalised avatars, clothes, vehicles and all sorts of amazing virtual objects.SL as a tool for communication, clubbed with new stuff along with the existing ways like text chat and VoIP.Second Life supports video and audio streams in-world, like NASA TV or Internet radio stations.
We can also build 3D objects, write note cards, create gestures, run animations, import images and more.It is so powerful because of the ability to frame a meeting's context and tone using architecture. Like how, people behave differently in churches than they do in pubs. The ability to control overall body language of the avatars. You can sit or stand at a formal meeting. Facing people each other and speak or move around while talking. Control our appearance as avatar in the in-world.
All of these new things lead to a greater sense of other people's presence and feels like they are with us in the same space, even though they may be on the other side of the planet. With these new elements, Second Life, is a qualitatively new tool for knowledge transfer and collaboration.Second Life is growing and developing every moment of every day.
Second Life residents have near unlimited freedom to create and experience whatever they want. Just like in our real-life, we can hear the wind blowing, waves crashing the shore, the call of birds, horses whinnying, people talking, and music playing.
I discovered the sun goes down at night, and you see the stars. However, if you don't like moving around in the dark, you can force the Sun to come up.
You can have fun with games, puzzles, and contests and hang out with friends in casinos, dance clubs, shopping malls, or movie theaters. You can attend special events like fashion shows or art openings and even go to a space station or vampire castle.
If everything is set up just right, we can talk with others just like in Real life. We can also communicate by text chat. Everyone within 20 meters will see our text chat. For private conversation, private voice or instant text messages are available.
A more serious side of SL takes place in the section for business and education, where there are opportunities for collaboration, training, distance learning, media studies, simulation, and marketing. There is a full working economy with transactions carried out in Linden Dollars. So there's real money to be made in the Marketplace.
People actually earn part or all of their real-life income from such businesses as party and wedding planning, tattooing, auto manufacturing, fashion and jewelry designing, real estate development, architectural design, DJ, compeering, publishing, teaching, counseling, private investigation etc.,
Major businesses like Adidas, American Apparel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Warner Bros. have established their presence in Second Life with virtual office spaces to show off images of their products and hold virtual meetings. NASA has a presence; so does Major League Baseball with its virtual stadium
The platform provides tools which allow residents to build their own environments, create highly personalised avatars, clothes, vehicles and all sorts of amazing virtual objects.SL as a tool for communication, clubbed with new stuff along with the existing ways like text chat and VoIP.Second Life supports video and audio streams in-world, like NASA TV or Internet radio stations.
We can also build 3D objects, write note cards, create gestures, run animations, import images and more.It is so powerful because of the ability to frame a meeting's context and tone using architecture. Like how, people behave differently in churches than they do in pubs. The ability to control overall body language of the avatars. You can sit or stand at a formal meeting. Facing people each other and speak or move around while talking. Control our appearance as avatar in the in-world.
All of these new things lead to a greater sense of other people's presence and feels like they are with us in the same space, even though they may be on the other side of the planet. With these new elements, Second Life, is a qualitatively new tool for knowledge transfer and collaboration.Second Life is growing and developing every moment of every day.
Second Life residents have near unlimited freedom to create and experience whatever they want. Just like in our real-life, we can hear the wind blowing, waves crashing the shore, the call of birds, horses whinnying, people talking, and music playing.
I discovered the sun goes down at night, and you see the stars. However, if you don't like moving around in the dark, you can force the Sun to come up.
You can have fun with games, puzzles, and contests and hang out with friends in casinos, dance clubs, shopping malls, or movie theaters. You can attend special events like fashion shows or art openings and even go to a space station or vampire castle.
If everything is set up just right, we can talk with others just like in Real life. We can also communicate by text chat. Everyone within 20 meters will see our text chat. For private conversation, private voice or instant text messages are available.
A more serious side of SL takes place in the section for business and education, where there are opportunities for collaboration, training, distance learning, media studies, simulation, and marketing. There is a full working economy with transactions carried out in Linden Dollars. So there's real money to be made in the Marketplace.
People actually earn part or all of their real-life income from such businesses as party and wedding planning, tattooing, auto manufacturing, fashion and jewelry designing, real estate development, architectural design, DJ, compeering, publishing, teaching, counseling, private investigation etc.,
Major businesses like Adidas, American Apparel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Warner Bros. have established their presence in Second Life with virtual office spaces to show off images of their products and hold virtual meetings. NASA has a presence; so does Major League Baseball with its virtual stadium
Here's a clip of BBC's Visions of the Future where Michio Kaku spends quite some time talking about virtual worlds and the world of Second Life.
Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist specializing in string field theory, and a futurist.
He is a popularizer of science, host of two radio programs and a best-selling author.
He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.
He is a popularizer of science, host of two radio programs and a best-selling author.
He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.
