Attached Link: http://secondlife.com/

You must apologise me, as an absolute addict to Second Life, if I seem too overexcited about that platform - that's one problem we addicts have. Things just seem to be too bright when you're on the "other side", and I'm afraid my judgement is completely biased and partial. So take all my words with a pinch of salt, and better still, install Second Life (the trial needs a credit card to join, but you may use it for 7 days for free and then cancel your account before you're charged the US$9.95 for a lifetime account...) and try it out for yourself to make your own judgement.

The first thing many people will notice is that Second Life is to overeagerly pushing both your CPU and GPU to the utter limits - causing performance to slow for almost any computer, except top-of-the-line double-CPU machines with super-fast buses, 1 GB of RAM and 128 MBytes of RAM. So the first thing to do before logging is to click on Preferences and greatly reduce all settings, and only after the first few days, tweak with the settings, one by one, until you get a good trade-off of performance vs. quality.

So, what exactly is Second Life? It's very, very hard to explain, because it's something completely different for everyBODY. It is a virtual world (and definitely not low-poly, as some have suggested - some views are rendered at 30 fps with 4-6 million polygons, and all content is streamed in real-time, so be prepared for a surprise...). All content has been developed by the users, not by the company, who basically charges the lifetime US 9.95 to give you a 3D client "browser" for either Windows or the Mac (a Linux version has long been promised as well) and runs about 1,000 servers where you can store your content in a persistent manner - by charging you for "disk & CPU space" (similar to a Web hosting provider). The only difference is that this "3D content hosting" is called "virtual land", and is traded just like land - it has a physical dimension in square meters, and the amount of land you own also decides how much content can be brought into Second Life and stored permanently (you can also store content for free, inside your own personal "inventory", which is not visible to anybody, until you drop it on the ground).

You may bet that content is traded in Second Life! According to the statistics (and they aren't much exaggerated), around US $40,000 switch hands every day. Don't be too surprised - there are around 43,000 users of Second Life, so this means that on average you're just exchanging one US$ per day, but that's fine.

Perhaps for Poser users this is not so interesting - all 3D content (as well as the programming language that enables people to interact with objects) is created using the 3D modelling tool inside Second Life (so, the 3D browser also doubles as a 3D modelling tool and a programming tool - as a matter of fac t, you can't use an external tool). Unlike any other platform I've seen so far (well, at least usable platforms - there are several "experiments" and "works in progress" and "academic developments", but they really don't have a "serious" user base), content is created collaboratively. Say that 3 or 4 users wish to build a castle and create several figures (avatars) dressed according to the setting. From an outsider visiting the place, you would watch, in real-time, the "construction team" working together. A few would create cubes and cylinders, change them dynamically, stick them together, move some sections here and there and join them, while others would be dropping textures over those building blocks, and a few would be standing around changing their clothes. It looks like watching a silly animation about people magically building castles :) In the mean time, this "outsider" can interact with the whole group, by talking to them, even offering some help...

Only textures, sounds, and animations are created outside Second Life. While most people will use Photoshop/PaintShop Pro/GIMP to do textures for walls and furnitures, Poser is used to do all animations, as well as often to do finishing touches on the clothes (you don't need Poser for that, but it helps). Some top-of-the-line creators, wishing perfectly textured environments, usually also use Poser or some other 3D modelling tool to create very complex lighting effects, cutting them out as textures, and then reproducing the same environment in Second Life, and uploading the textures. It's only for animations that Poser is a requirement - most people simply design clothes from Photoshop templates, and textures never get that degree of realism that you expect on other platforms. Remember, Second Life is not an environment for professional 3D designers, but willing, creative amateurs - like myself! - who enjoy creating content without needing a degree in graphical design and 5 years of professional experience. Creating content in/for Second Life is very easy and straightforward for amateurs, and it is also very rewarding to see your things working so well after such little investment of your time.

Now the next point is - where is money to be gained in Second Life? Through several money exchanges, you can exchange US$ for the in-world currency (as mentioned above). Although the richest people in Second Life, dedicating perhaps 60-80 hours per week (!) to the platform, are able to make around US$10,000-40,000 per month, most people are definitely not that successful. Myself, by giving classes and selling a few programmed items using Poser-uploaded animations, I just make US$ 4-5 per week, but I'm very lazy - success in Second Life is not just placing things for sale, but actively (and agressively) marketing them! The best content creators - very often doing buildings and clothes - easily earn US $1,000-2,000 per month, but it's not that they are the best designers, they are just the ones that can market their services best. You'll see that Second Life's economy is pretty much like our own - the key to success is being a good salesperson and having adequate skills.

This by far doesn't explain what Second life is and I'm aware of that. For some, it's an edutainment tool, used for teaching classes. For others, it's a virtual marketplace for content, where one million US$ is exchanged every month. Others simply look at it as a 3D chat room, where you meet people, go out with them to listen to music or watch a movie together, or simply hang around in each other's homes to chat - and once in a while, attend a discussion on any theme. Others still view it as a game, since you can build vehicles and weapons and shoot at each other (there is a separate "grid" just for teenagers, but there are young adults very eager to shoot people around in the "adult grid" as well). And of course, many use it for cybersex - not surprisingly, because beyond the chatting abilities, you can supplement it with attractive avatars, appealing (or revealing!) clothes, and Poser-created animations. :) So it's hard to say what exactly is the most striking feature of Second Life - every person you ask will give you a different answer.

While the world is based on "primitive objects" for buildings (it's the only way to deal with the physics engine, which make things like gravity, impulse and momentum work), avatars are fully meshed, and based on old Poser 2 figures. You can create all sorts of "attachments" to improve the style of your avatar - for instance, shoes are usually very detailed objects made of primitives and attached to your feet, since the only alternative is doing tricks with textures. All clothes (and the meshed hair) flow with the wind and with your movements, although, for you who are used to Poser 5 or even Poser 6 figures, even the very detailed textures you can apply as "skins" on the avatars, will certainly seem to be a return to the past. It's not unusual that many people recreate their avatars in Poser (using a Poser 5 figure, for instance) just for making impressive ads; although I have seen very amazing pictures taken from avatars inside Second Life where I needed to ask the creator if it was done in Poser or in Second Life. It really depends on the quality of your graphics card, the quality of the texture you've got, and the luck you have capturing a picture (or a short movie) in the proper lighting.

Second Life grows slowly (quadrupling size every year or so, but I guess it won't be able to do that for 2006), and it takes an enormous amount of time to get improvements (although bugs are fixed every other week or so; expect many updates and patches) - we expect a move to Poser 3 avatars just in 2006 or so.

Also, the ratio of content creators to avid consumers is perhaps 1:10, but among those content creators, the vast majority are just amateurs seeking niches where they can sell low-quality things before a professional moves in and does a product with superior quality. There aren't much more than a few hundred top quality content creators - and they're in great demand (specially on buildings, clothes, and animations - Second Life is really lacking in good animations, there are only a few thousand around, and most are simple poses that aren't even high quality. Contrast that to about 6 million items already developed!). So, yes, there is a market there for someone who is really interested in investing their free time in doing high quality content (the company behind Second Life, Linden Lab, routinely outsources several of their "commons" structures to the users - like the Welcome Area, the Job Office, some train stations, etc. And they also promote art festivals for people to show off their skills, creativity and imagination).

Actually, if it weren't for Second Life, I would have never started to use Poser or even notice the Renderosity site... :-)

While sadly most areas of the Second Life site are closed to non-users, there exist several third-party sites, like, for instance, http://www.sluniverse.com, where you can get a feeling on what people are currently doing with the platform.