On Nissan's new Altima Island, residents in the virtual world of Second Life can jump into a high tech hamster ball, launch themselves into orbit or befriend a loyal pet bumblebee. These are just three of a total of six (well, seven if you count the actual replica of a Nissan Altima) objects that are being given away free of charge as part of the Altima promotion by Nissan, who now operate at least four islands. What's more interesting though, is that they intend to give away the "codes" as Open Source, so that any resident can learn from the scripting of the objects that were designed by Kage Seraph, Kanker Greenacre and Calum Clifton of the Electic Sheep Company. A quick inspection and play with the gadgets didn't reveal how this worked, but apparently it's so.
Above, you can see me test driving the "Avasphere"
The six gadgets available all relate to an aspect or feature of the Altima, some only loosely, but it's a pretty neat tie in and an imaginative way to promote in Second Life. Let me run through them, you'll see what I mean. They are...
- The Xtronic CVT Avasphere - a kind of high tech hamster ball you can (barely) drive around. It's actually pretty good fun, but like most vehicles in SL, really hard to drive. This gadget is supposed to represent the Altima's "virtually gearless transmission"
- The Intelligent Bumble-Kee - a cute but pointless bumblebee that follows you around, or apparently "lets you hitch a ride" (i didnt work that bit out). This represents an itelligent key system.
- The AVA-NAV HUD - A graphical bookmark type system for landmarks inworld that stores your last 10 hops representing the Nissan's GPS unit.
- The Push Button Avapult - a mordern looking version of some kind of medieval siege engine that you can use ot catapult yourself or friends into orbit with. For the life of me I just don't get this one, and it's relationship to the Altima is flimsy at best. It's supposed to represent the push button ignition, but in my opinion they'd have been better off with only five gadgets.
- The Hands Free Grappling Hook - Again this is a little out there, but it's more fun than the catapult at least. This gadget lets you shoot grappling hooks like a maniac then reel yourself in. It represents a bluetooth hands free phone system, obviously...
- The 270-HP V-Questrian Ava-Suit - a suit that enables Avatars to travel super fast across terrain in Second Life - this one I didn't try. It represents the Altima's engine.
With all the problems with logins after Second Life was upgraded today, there weren't more than a half dozen people there when i wrote this report, but it was fun, and I like the idea of providing the code as open source so that others can learn and of giving away gadgets that represent different aspects of the Altima.
