What frelling immersion?

It's good to see that the Lindens are still as attentive and thoughtful as ever. This explains that flushing sound I hear whenever Philip talks about the investors.

OMG That starts in January!! The little pilot show was so good and Starbuck is such a cutie.

-aimee

> It's good to see that the Lindens are still as attentive and thoughtful as ever.

I'm quite happy to see Lindens join in the forums just like anyone else. Seems more honest than posting as an alt.

Azelda

If you don't find SL immersive, maybe you're just not really into it.

Hee hee... that was deep.

You know what kills my immersion? The massive gaping holes in LSL. Grrr.

-Ansi

Are you calling me dishonest??? Just because I am Ryan's alt?

of course he's not. just like i would never say "you own far too much land" to pituca. but i would to ryan.

i imagine jarod really wanted to talk about this and isn't happy that the only linden response he got followed the pattern of hijacker silliness. it's a more pleasant tactic than name calling, our only other response to people who want to use our playground for serious dialogue. but it's still kinda depressing.

Aimee,

Here in da UK we're well into the first series. It rawks. And yes, Starbuck is waaaay cute.

What's to be said? No game is perfect, immersion is in the eye of the beholder and features continue to develop. To get upset it about it seems rather silly to me.

PC

Haven't you noticed that MOST of the stuff that gets whined about is silly?

I like the SL marriage system just fine. Plus I was able to get my green card, so now I won't be deported to There.

Feel free to require "context". However, don't blame me or other societies of discourse that your "opinions about SL" adhere to when you end up expecting an apple to taste like an orange. That's the main problem with comparison. It's easy to lose sight of how something truly is when you expect it to be something else because of "comparison". I mean, the only thing MMORPGs and SL have in common are they are online businesses for entertainment purposes. You won't see anyone creating anything in CoH. You won't see anyone developing their own clothing line in Everquest. So I'm not sure where the context really connects.

Take it for what it is then expand upon it within its own realm.

For me, I would not tend to view weblinks as ruination of my immersion. My immersion is suspect when I am trying to do something intuitive and SL crashes, or when I am trying to sit inworld -- which is an amazing challenge. The right kind of weblinks pointing me to further info -- for example, when the SL Public Library becomes fully operational like a battle station, I do not believe simple notecards alone without elegant typographic formatting will suffice. It would be way cool if by then, there was some further interoperability with the web.

If one talks about "suspension of disbelief" like SL is an interactive movie and more on a grand scale, then well, one could similarly argue in hindsight (years from now) that gestures are mortar-and-pestle, compared to the nanoscale mocap tech. of many tomorrows. Soon, we won't sweat it out over 4096 x 4096 textures, nor will we question why transparent shiny doesn't go over well, nor will we really make a big deal about typing on a keyboard when there are improved methods of data-entry (and I don't necessarily mean speech-to-text). A far stretch, but in hindsight, it looks all so easy. Things continue to improve and I am grateful to be here... looking forward.

I think it depends on your definition of immersion, as has been said.

Personaly I don't think any software has been truely immersive to me, because I define immersive as all around me, the closest example of this in real world currently is something like a VR helmut, or a little farther from the concept an IMax movie, where its "all around" and immerses you into the world its presenting, closing you off from the real world around you. This mainly comes from uses like "I was immersed in water", were the water is completely around you in all directions, etc. I doubt we'll ever see this much immersion untill either its simulated via VR, ala something like The 13th Floor/The Matrix/Existenz or we have something like nano-tech rooms that can change shape and reality around you, there was a book that described nano-tech like this by Ray Kurzweil, called The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, interisting read if you ever want to check it out.

But thats my definition.

Other notes:

- Hasn't peacekeeper wars already begun? I thought I saw some episodes of it on sci-fi? I've never watched Farscape before then however, so could of just been something else dealing with peacekeepers.

- I personaly hate TerraNova, for nothing more than their dreaded use of "2L" for Second Life. (feel free to dig up my old rant about that somewhere on these forums)

- Web interfaces, and for that matter, *any* program on a prim would be awsome to have. Something simular to how Croquet works, but less Squeak (sp) based, and more cross platform. Yes, extremely hard to do I imagine, but also would be awsome. To be able to access my desktop or a program from within Second Life, or to play Unreal Tournament or even to play Second Life, from within Second Life, would be very neat. Of course a web browser on a prim is more likely to happen sooner than applications, heh.