SL Architecture: quaint, conservative, boring?

So, do you think that SL architecture isn't living up to the high-falutin' promises of the holy land (ie: the Metaverse)? What would you like to see in SL buildings and spaces that you don't already see? What types of buildings and spaces would you enjoy?

Discuss!



LF

Architecture, as with most stuff in Second Life, is constrained to the limits of the system. I think my want for mesh-based builds should go without saying by now... so I'll park that point at the door.

Instead, the problem with architectural "vision" in Second Life is the need to be prim-efficient, combined with the limited types (and sizes) of geometry that prims offer.


All of this is why I'd like to see more events like Burning Life, as well as a way to build structures offline, with prims limited only by the speed of one's machine.

I know when I first picked up my Game Dev land, my first impulse was to go crazy with the new number of prims offered to me. By contrast, most sandboxes make this increasingly difficult now, with the number of people all competing for space.


Not to downplay those of us that flourish under these constraints. I just think offering more outlets to just "go crazy" would do us all a lot of good.

PS: As for the sort of architecture I enjoy, my personal favorites are the amazingly surreal (as with many of the Burning Life builds), to some of the amazingly realistic structures, like the ones in Rose.

Why, Medieval Bavarian naturally.

~Ulrika~

Architecture I enjoi sometimes has to do with the phase of the sun and moon. No kiddin'... ever seen Midnight City with force daylight on? Ever been to Transylvania in the broad daylight? Mehehehe. That light and shade makes a difference for me.

I'd enjoy seeing a cathedral like the Event Horizon, in a suitably Mature sim. Among many, many other things.

It seems like the 10m prim limit and the desire for low-prim building are the most limiting factors. After i cut my teeth on a few low-prim build, i imagine i'll just throw caution to the wind and build as i like. To overcome the 10m limit it becomes necessary to build the size i need from smaller shapes. This adds up in a quickness.

Of course, building for tinies could be a fun solution.

Second that. But there's a deeper issue, IMO. Second Life itself is conceived with unnecessary limitations - including, for example, the concept of ground, sea, and sky. This and other factors discourage SL residents from exploring the real potential and meaning of a virtual world. So we see a lot of technically-proficient copies of real life structures and styles that are largely irrelevant to the SL experience - where people, for example, can fly.

And that is dull.

the buildings in SL are just props. When viewed from that perspective, the quality of the architecture can be judged by it's contribution to the scene to which it belongs.

So, my answer would be that the stories, myths & legends, heroes & villians of SL give value to the architecture.

To be honest, I love the architecture on our grid. I don't want some crazy abstract place. No one is ever critical of the world of HL2, Halo, WoW, GTA, etc... now granted our place isn't a game, but games are the original virtual worlds...

I think the more important aspect of virtual world architecture is creating public spaces that are shared by people of all cultures from around the world. This architectural platform to create truely global communities is more important than re-imagining a place with no physical laws.

You could build the most fantastic, surreal build, and if it's only inhabitant is the creator... then what is so interesting about that?

Building with something other than recognizable architecture would be like trying to have a conversation in a made up language.

Houses, buildings, piazzas, stadiums - this is our alphabet, our vocabulary. Yes, let's try to say something new and interesting, for sure, but if you don't spell out your words and use a recognizable grammar, you're not going to be understood.

Yes!


"stories, myths & legends, heroes & villians of SL give value to the architecture"
It's only a few years old - it doesn't have myths and legends. And the architecture frequently has the lifespan of a kleenex.

We need more buildings designed to jump from roof to roof, more networks of curved ramps for skating and jumping from ramp to ramp. Ability to control solidity of roofs so they can be stood on or flown or jumped through as needed.

Since when does the Second Life limitations force people to build endless strip malls and purple boxes? I have seen many great builds and some even actually have trees around them! I know it's hard to believe the tree part...

I'd like to see more detailed and realistic builds...

I suppose what is needed most to make the places and buildings interesting is people in them doing interesting things. At the very least having interesting conversations.

One thing that might be nice would be to have the buildings controllable by the people in them, so that you could change the building layout or coloring or texturing.

Also buildings could change depending on conditions such as time of day or number or location of avatars in their vicinity, or if one was tracking the music that is playing the buildings could change to reflect the group, CD, and track that is playing.

A rotating restaurant type building is always good once you step onto the rotating part.

While there's definitely a lot of sprawl, I think a few things are important to understand:

1. Many amateurs come to SL and are learning 3-D tools
2. What people build depends highly on purpose. These may include very non-avant garde purposes:
- desire to have a nice quiet house and park where the senses can relax
- a build meant specifically to present simulacrum experience to RL structures where people cannot visit in RL
- design of RL spaces
- other themes fore roleplay or entertainment that people simply enjoy

I agree we need more realistic detailed builds. Good architeture is much more than the ability to put prims together and a mastery of the Second Life building system. A great build looks great because it is located in the right place (ie: not a beautifully built strip mall in a residential sim), has detail that makes it look real and contains objects that fit in with the whole picture.

I could mention several that meet this criteria but will only mention my Forest Preserve (Sand 98,6). Not only are the buildings historically accurate but you can almost smell the woodsmoke coming from the campfires and fireplace.

Hah, I think of a bookstore where you walk into the Physics section and that part of the bookstore changes into atoms and when you walk into Self Help it changes into hearts.

[edited to add] The more I think about this the more I like it. OK if I use this idea Suezanne?

On the one hand, yes, one could potentially do a lot of crazy stuff.

The fact that people don't says something. Not "people are mindless drones", I think, but also that people don't, by and large, WANT to live in a bizarre virtual world; they want Reality 2.0, Now With More Awesome. We're psychologically set up, by and large, to prefer Earth-like environments, and people would have a dislike of massively bizarre environments for more or less the same reason they avoid the snow sims.

That said... I also want more flexibility. My building will continue to be more fantastic than surreal, but I wouldn't mind the option of purple ground or three moons in the sky in my own sim.

Check out my SIM "Response". It's a replica of Hanover, NH. It's a movie set, meaning you can't actually go into any of the buildings, but detailed and realistic to boot.

can you post Screenshots?

I find I have two concurrent streams of thought about this .. and it gives me a headache .. so be patient.

First, and I'd have to dig much deeper in memory for a reference, but I seem to recall either a study or something I read about architecture as a reflection of purpose ... that the most successful architecture met the needs of the purposes of the inhabitants .. something like that. In the case of SL, without very much directed purpose imposed by the environment, the architecture mirrors what people are familiar with, the purposes they bring with them from their familiar worlds.

Second, as a vocabularly, as a language of expression, architecture can be challenging to many people .. maybe even most. Its unfair to deride the efforts of many who are trying to work with unfamiliar tools to express their ideas. And a consequence of that difficulty is a reaching for the familiar. What is wrong with that?

I am afraid Im expressing myself badly .. I guess the bottom line for me is that not everyone can be a Master and create Masterpieces .. and that should be OK. There should be room for everyone.

Sorry I cant be more clear .. maybe tomorrow

for those who don't pop into Building forum too often, interesting related thread: /8/f1/65323/1.html


I agree with many posters here. We have a lot of people here not trying to be architects, but fulfilling other goals. Building structures that fit into a familiar comfort zone might be one, building to fit an RL-seeming environment is another, and building to fantasize about favorite time periods or cultures is another.

Then we have some people who are very into architecture. Some are trying to explore the history of architecture and some are trying to push the boundaries. I've seen some pretty cool builds in SL, some of which are quite retro, some futuristic. Yes our stuff could be even wilder without a landscape around (but some build in the sky) or without prim limitations (go watch maxx crash a sandbox).

A theory on how to win the attention of the critics.
1. Go to 500m in the air
2. Rez 2000 prims of different shapes, sizes, cuts
3. Select all and turn on "physical"
4. De-select

5. Fly down 500 meters and look at the ensuing mess. Put up a sign and call it "The Deconstruction of Neuro-Retrospective Space-Analog"

6. Sit back and feel the hot air blow.

HAHAHA nice one For... OMG... this is crying and laughing out for a SLog post, at the same time!

All of this, really, reminds me of when I was a classical music snob. A chinstroker.

And then I got tired of that, renounced my ways, got into techno music, and found myself surrounded with technosnobs. There's a term for that too, which can quite appropriately be applied to online worlds: digital wankery.

Yep. I asked this question a while ago. You can see Andrew's response here.

I guess people aren't critical of those because, well, they have a more realistic feel because of the way they're built - meshes. I actually think the textures in WOW are pretty poor in a lot of places but the actual structures far surpass anything in Second Life simply because they're not constrained by a few standard prim shapes. Introducing meshes would suddenly allow people to create much more interesting architecture.

To be honest, with all the talk of HTML on a prim, video, blah blah blah, I think that getting meshes working in SL should be a top priority because it will add much more to the entire world than anything else. It's a fundamental. Currently the building primitives in Second Life are really second class, and far far far from state-of-the-art, if we're talking about creating interesting spaces.

I'll approach this from another field that I know LF is familiar with: Music.

Even though we can now produce any collection of audible sounds that we want to, most possible sounds are not even comprehenisble as music without an interpretational tradition. For example, "Western" music is based almost exclusively around the diatonic scale (do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do) and deviation from that is heard as "confusing, weird, or noise". That doesn't mean that there aren't places and people who don't prefer Slendro or Pelog scales or ideosyncratic scales of avant-garde composers, but if all you've ever known is the diatonic, you are going to have a hard time making sense of the music. Hell even the 6th and 13th of the diatonic scales are relatively recent introductions into Western music and just sounded plain wrong a couple hundred years ago. There's even a jarring little 3-4 riff that I first noticed in McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" that is still jarring (which is part of why it succeeds).

Apply this to architecture and you are probably more constrained, sky, earth, and water are way more basal than the diatonic scale and are violated at greater risk. SL architecture affords sky hooks and RL physically impossible builds, but the further you move from the deep understandings we have of the natural world, the harder things become to interpret. there are certainly games that work in ungrounded 3-spaces that people often find disorienting or even nauseating. By why contrain ourselves to that? There is no reason that SL couldn't exist in 4-space, just try to imagine people trying to navigate that. Why not a moibus shaped world? In some ways that'd be more comprehensible than a 4-space as we're a 2.x-space species, try flying an airplane if you doubt this.

So yes, things may be a little conventional, but it is hard enough for people to project themselves into a vSpace in the first place. Violating their conventions is quite possible, but those conventions are useful to most players.