Ever on the look out for innovation in how to present sims for business, I've been scouring the grid lately to see if anyone has done anything different than the usual recipe for a marketing sim -- that huge, modern, glass-and-steel build costing a young fortune, surrounded by that gigantic cement semi-circle stadium for avatars to perch in for events.
Milan Brynner, the concept director of Virtual Starry Night, an art sim designed to show the work of Vincent Van Gogh, has gotten hold of an idea that you wish more people had tried in the history of Second Life: make a large, 3-D rendition of a 2-D painting that you can actually get up inside of and feel a part of. And just like the promised description, you will experience the thrill of actually seeing a 3-D interactive version of popular paintings like Cafe Terrace at Night , and sit at a table and imagine yourself, too, as a troubled poet drinking absinthe and tugging at your ear in Paris in the '20s. I loved the texture jobs on this sim, which were soft and painterly without looking cartoony and blended well into the SL landscape. You can also buy objects that are in the painting, and put them in your home, like a vase of big yellow Van Gogh sunflowers or a rustic chair and create your very own "Room at Arles" at home.
Where this sim fell down for me, however, was in the failure to enable "fly," so that I couldn't in fact fly up into the painting experience I wanted, and sit on a roof or examine a boat detail -- I had to keep hearing the "thunk" of a no-fly zone. And the designers have placed clear-glass walls and builds slightly up in the air everywhere, which I kept bumping into, part of an anachronistic modern build to house the displays of the paintings in 2-D as well as the "live-in-it 3-D" experiences. These wound up throwing off the mood as you tried to navigate from one to the other -- it was really a shame. I also kept looking in vain for the star attraction -- Starry Night -- itself -- which appeared to be merely a painting displayed up in the sky with some stars and a modern living room on a see-through foundation.
To be sure, space on a sim is limited, as everyone who gets their first whole sim suddenly realizes after the initial new-sim smell wears off. But you can solve this problem by scaling down your ambitions or moving things into the seemingly limitless levels into the sky so that they aren't visible on the ground or to each other, adding teleports from level to level. In any event, visit this sim for a sense of just what the potential is for rendering 2-D paintings and data representation in the 3-D world and making it "habitable", something that there is far too little of SL -- surely puzzling, given its potential.
The New Business Horizons (NBH) sim also displays a concept not often used in the world of "advertislands" (as the SL Herald calls them now) in SL -- an installation on a mere 640 meters or so, instead of the giant 65,336 experience that is costly and sometimes hard to do well (SL is always about having too much or too little it seems!). BH has made it their business to provide the metaversal services all on the sim in smaller, bite-sized compartments that probably offer a better cost advantage than the whole island and thus represent less risk and possibly better management.
Imagine, a star act like Oasis can do as much in a 640 m2 as on a huge company sim just by setting the mood and putting out enough content for people to click on. This build has a preview of "Lord Don't Slow Me Down," a DVD that is coming out soon, links to the My Space page for Oasis, some t-shirts and most importantly, the trailer itself of the song, on a kind of movie kiosk. You can chill out in the groovy lounge and contemplate whether you want to lag out your game just yet to go order the DVD -- this is where the "fourth-wall" of these experiences always breaks down for some, because there is no HTML on a prim, and I have to get yanked out of my immersive avataric world and go goggle at a webpage. One other problem is one that perhaps no one else is troubled by -- I couldn't find the name of the record company -- the brand behind the band -- anywhere on the build -- but for that matter, the My Space page didn't have it readily visible, either.
Frankly, rather than have something shipped from UK Amazon.com, I'd much rather buy a DVD or CD for my avatar I can play inworld on my land -- and yes, we have those in SL and they sell like hotcakes, and yes, they work, and yes hundreds of thousands of real people spend hours on end with their friends actually watching tiny TV and movies (!) inworld and listening to music within SL -- things you'd think they'd do much better, and with less lag, and with better food and drink, in the real world. But sooner or later, these companies will get it about the avatars actually being people who *do* stuff in this world, and not just treat us and our avatars as glorified webpage browser attachments. Unfortunately, the NBH people turned off "fly" too -- possibly to force people to the ground to walk through the exhibits and be exposed to their content more thoroughly -- but that's always annoying.
The biggest lament for the business sims in general is that nobody's home. Tumbleweeds blowing, ominous boarded-up mines, and a cattle skull. OK, but that's not the problem at NBH, where I was not only greeted, and chatted up, I was then asked, "Could you explain the purpose of your visit?" Startled, I asked the gal if this was something all the visitors got asked, and whether the build was open to the public. She said it was, and said she was merely trying to get me on the tour. But...I imagine I'm not different than a goodly chunk of the SL avataric population that doesn't *want* an obtrustive salesperson in my face hustling a tour; I want to take time for the world to rez, to see what's up, and to see if it's for me. It's a fine art and science, getting the balance between no presence -- the lion's share of business sims -- and obtrusive presence.
Another pro tip: get rid of these cumbersome drop-down clunky blue menu teleporters that also require a second step to try to situate the beam and "sit" to move -- there are better teleporters now with just one touch that deliver the avatar in a click, instead of torturing him with gymastics.
While at New Business Horizons at the Oasis display, nearby you can also check out a non-profit project called Macmillan Cancer Support which is offering a coffee cup sort of thing that is involved in a big cancer charity drive. You donate to the jar, it gives you a huge spoon you wear and it makes a big stir -- and you can, too, evidently, by putting in your little Linden pennies.
