Recently the Grid Safari took a trip to Stagecoach Island. In part we were interested in seeing how Wells Fargo is benefitting from having a world of their own, but a critical comparison between this and Second Life couldn't be helped. We were going to have to rough it without sliders to tweak our avatar's appearances, but it was nice to run a client that didn't eat up massive system resources. The lack of Alt-zoom felt awkward at first, but we soon found our feet and began exploration. "lostpoet", one of the local residents, soon discovered us and treated us to a whirlwind tour of the place.
It was a lucky thing we ran into him. It turns out that the newbie experience here wasn't half as bad as it is in Second Life, but it was close enough that we might have missed some really great stuff if we hadn't had help.
Stagecoach Island runs on the Activeworlds platform which is pretty old by Internet standards. It was born way back in 1995 and started life as a collaborative space called AlphaWorld. They've been developing it ever since, and have conquered some serious challenges such as fast-loading textures, smoothly streaming video, quick-loading audio, and an integrated scripting language.
The Stagecoach Island implementation has an in-world currency system, and while you can buy a plot of land, you can't script. Seemingly everything on the "official" builds is scripted, but the homes we visited were simple set pieces. One significant detail, however, really made a statement: since there is no limit on the number of shapes (or "prims" in Second Life terms) a person can use on a property, people have tended towards more realistic houses. The one place we went to had an elaborate kitchen and bathroom; two items missing out of most SL builds. Usually people just shrug it off as an avatar not needing those things, but this shows that the truth may be simply that people WOULD build these things anyhow if they thought they could afford it.
One other thing really struck me about the world was the lighting. I stared at this picture of me on the snowboard (click it to enlarge) for the longest time, trying to put my finger on why this looked so much better than when I did the same kind of thing in Second Life. Then it struck me: the mountain and the clouds were casting shadows. You could increase texture resolution, attach particle effects to the board, or even make neat flexible hair that flows in the wind, but if the lighting is off the whole thing falls flat. This one small tweak of having the shadows cast properly, no matter how primitive, makes a world of difference to the sense of immersion!
The avatars, unfortunately, have a way to go. That's the only real fly in the ointment here. There are extensive wardrobes to chose from, but you can't easily change the way your avatar looks as far as I could tell. Still, that one issue aside, and Activeworlds is a serious contender for the Second Life Grid.
Be sure to join us on future safaris! Join the Google group now and have fun with us as we discover new worlds.
The Next Safari Is This Friday!
That's tomorrow, September the 6th, returning to vSide due to popular demand. Next week will be Entropia Universe, with the exact time and date to be announced through the Grid Safari group.
Following on from our 
