All 1 entries tagged Imvs

Lively seems a bit deadly

Just gave Lively another go. It’s been touted as another rival to the immersive virtual worlds out there, but frankly I can’t see it. The load time is incredibly long – and there is very little choice as far as avatar looks are concerned – perhaps they want to shorten the period between taking your first look and deciding to hand over some dosh to make yourself a bit more individuated. But that’s a policy that will backfire if people get bored before they get hooked, which they will.

Other things that seem very weird. People just stand around, or sit around doing nothing. You occasionally get a bit of chat (usually moronic – not the platform’s fault but maybe it’s just not encouraging people to interact more deeply). I got a “hellooooooo” and a “do any girls in here have webcams”. Deeply sad (and that’s from someone who spent around 12 hours in SL over the last weekend.

In order to move your av you have to click on it – it then zips all over the place – there seems to be no weight to anything, or resistance. Environmental kinesics is the key to making these things feel right. I read that in this month’s Xbox magazine so it must be true.

But the weirdest thing is that all of the arrows move the camera in the opposite direction, hit the right arrow key and the camera moves to the left, hit the forward key and it moves backward. Who would design something that works back-to-front – unless theyre having a laugh at our expense.

Still one good thing is that it shows that Google arent as smart as they think they are. Good! All these billionaires in their twenties were making me feel inadequate.

Talking of inadequacy – just time to get to that beach party in SL ….

: 17 Jul 2008 22:13 |  Tags: Imvs PhD |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem