what does ActiveWorlds have that we don't?

I remember trying it waay back in the days of Dialup.
I didn't have that much free time.

OMG make that perminent! I just tried it and WOW! XD

We can do this in SL too ;0

hehehehe, it is fun - I've had it up for about a year now.

dang i never knew about it XD

Been THERE done that, its a really cute game, the avs are a bit cartoony, they do have an active economy for clothes, hair, vehicles etc. The main thing THERE has going for it is the wonderful way that vehicles work..dune buggies, motorcycles...is a huge business THERE. They have drag racing parks, hover board courses, motorcycle clubs etc. Is truely a shame that SL hasnt done more with vehicular scripting and enabling here. However no pose balls (omg) and or too much weapon usage in THERE (last i was THERE, has been awhile), but its not a bad little proggy in its own way. Its worth a look at for a lil vacation to another world..lol

If sl did have decent vehicles, you wouldn't be able to use them because of all the security scripts.

Neither ActiveWorlds nor There have a Linux Alpha Client to have fun with

A few things that There has over SL (I've been in There a total of twice, but here's what I remember):

- Extremely simple user interface (SL's is all over the place)
- Almost no learning curve (SL's is fairly steep - I'm still learning new stuff!)
- Will appeal to a more casual user (SL has a maniacal fan-base, but I can't imagine mom logging in any time soon)

Regards,

-Flip

One thing I've noticed about SL is how non-intuitive it is.

When I have, say, a simple attachment such as a cigarette in my inventory, I have to select to "wear" it to smoke it. But then if I want to put myself in my speedboat, I have to sit on it - wearing it makes it attach itself to my head. How will a new user work that out?

Well, in real life, do people normally wear speedboats or do they sit in them?
Wear is for clothing. Fashion accessories, armor, things that normally go on your av.

You don't wear a fag, you smoke it. So why not have a customisable "action" option in the inventory - you've got a boat in there, right click it and select ride and it automatically rezzes and sits you in it. Right click "smoke" on the cigarette and it attaches it in the relevant place, applies the animation and does the gubbins.

Also,

-vehicle physics that actually work
-"forcefield" option allowing the user to become no-push
-simple, central way to shop for user-created content
-voice chat with (IIRC) linked avatar face animations

Just to point out:

SL's vehicle physics are actually pretty good, the problem tends to be the inability for the sim to track the avatar's location at high speed well... and the dreaded sim border crossing issue. Either way, for vehicles to be fun in SL (well, any that travel at a decent speed), work needs to be done.

I've seen "anti-push" in SL for years - anchors you can turn on which won't allow you to be orbited. It's a fairly simple script.

Central way to shop? SLB/SLEx. And as you know, I prefer user-created solutions to centralized ones from LL, but let's not go down that path again, heh.

Voice: That voice chat demo was pretty damn cool - I'd like to see SL moving in some directions soon with voice. There are options out there which work pretty well - a combination of something like Ventrilo with voice modulation options and a text-to-speed option with a selection of voices could start to create a whole new side to characters. I want a Peter Frampton option!

Regards,

-Flip

While SL's interface is rather arcane, I was able to move around and adjust the camera rather well after two days. I've been in There around seven times now (including last night during the SL shut-out) and I still struggle with simple things such as seeing myself from the side. (I want to see what my ponytail looks like and I simply can't figure out how to do it.) The There camera seems unnecessarily constrained, and offers you several fixed-angle views with very little wiggle-room for panning around.

And casual users, yes. Basically when I'm in There, I'll be standing around trying to navigate the awful shopping inteface in the in-game browser. Some guy will walk up to me and start throwing emotes at me (pummeling my chest with little hearts and whatnot). It's amazing how even apparently skilled There players can endlessly amuse themselves firing off the same emotes over. and over. and over.


The central place to shop is a nice concept, but it's not as fun as actually shopping. And don't get me wrong, I'm a regular SLX/SLB shopper, too... and I have a much easier time finding what I'm looking for on either of those sites than There's silly thing. Their whole auction-based system for player-created items really sucks, in my opinion. It results in this jumbled, ephemeral inventory.

I think Activeworlds has... soul. Even with all the midis.... there is something I can't put my finger on. Maybe it's just the memories.

Of course AW compares to SL--anything compares to anything else. Comparison isn't limited to just similarity but also includes difference. The problem is when someone can't think relatively enough TO see the similiarities AND differences to make a TRUE comparison...

You build in AW more modularly and LEGO-like than in SL (although its prims are modules and LEGO pieces too). There are many basic shapes available in AW but since it doesn't support built-in scaling (or vertex-polygon editing--but neither does SL) each piece must be created outside of AW and uploaded to the world's object server individually, which is a pain and very inefficient. However, it's trivial to add a 10,000-polygon Mac truck vs. having to make it from scratch in SL. And, AW models are convertable to other formats, unlike SL objects which are COMPLETELY propietary and specific to SL. Unless someone comes up with a way to export an object and remake it in another modeller (3DS Max, Maya, etc) all your work is screwed should SL go under...

Psst, AW, Worlds, and SL aren't games.

Try defragging your hard drive. I've found objects blip in and out of view as much in SL and AW.

Stay tuned...I don't remember if I read it in the forums or one of the Linden (Robin?) blogs but, supposedly, LL is working on making avatars much more malleable--whatever that means--most likely more intimate contact without having to rely on animations and pose balls.

AW Has, SL Needs:

- Better particle controls. Theres alot more things you can do with "particles" in AW than you can in SL.
- Built in Bot support. Although the lib project for SL is going strong some built in support would be nice. Bots in AW are done by using an AW API, but each user is limited to a "bot count" which is a limit of how many bots they can have in a world at any time.
- More "world" controls. AW's world controls make SL's island controls look like nothing. The level of customization you can do for AW worlds is pretty deep. Gravity, custom skyboxes, an all that fun stuff.

There Has, SL Needs:

- Simplified interface. I agree with Flip on this. Hopefully if SL opens up to more UI customization, users can take care of this issue.
- Avatar kenetics. There avatars are very amazing in terms of kenitcs, with each limb being weighted and properly accounted for.
- Vehicles. Our vehicle physics still suck!
- This is a bit hard to say in short, but I'll try. There has alot of good work done in the way that your attention is on the world and the people around you and your interactions with them. Jeffrey Ventrella wrote an awesome article on this, how There has you looking at the world most of the time, not at an interface (i.e. chat history) but rather at who you're talking to and such (with the help of the chat bubbles). This is something thats hard to accomplish though, but There does deserve credit on it because its really well done. The interface is, most of the time, transparent and the main focus is on the world itself.


Something to note though, from what I've read the AW "Scenes" sounds cool, but it seems like you can currently do that in SL right now using the somewhat new camera script functions. You can have someone enter a "scene" or room and have the camera go to a certain place and such.

Heya,
my last post was based off an older AW client.. I have since visited AW to see how they have progressed...looks like they're coming along


eh, whatever you want to call 'em.


I wasn't talking about objects blinking in and out. I meant the antialiasing of the textures/meshes etc... but AW seems to be looking a lot smoother.


Awesome thanks for letting me know, will be looking forward to hearing more about this