I'm now a beta tester for There

I got the acceptance e-mail today a month after putting in the request, so I decided to go through with it and set up an account. So far, all I've really done is wandered around the main public areas and bummed some vehicles off strangers, but here's my main thoughts.

1. You have to choose your avatar's gender at registration, and it's not changable. Then, once you're in There, you have to pay Therebucks (from now on, referred to as Th$) to further customize your appearance, lest you want to look like a Gap model in white shirt and slacks.
   
2. There is flat-rendered, making it look a little cartoony. Its GUI is a Windows XP-style "candy" interface, with lots of soft edges and bright colors. Everything you can interact with is marked with floating icons. It's designed to be pretty user friendly.
   
3. The current exchange rate is USD$1.00 = Th$1787. You start with about USD$5.50 worth of Th$, which doesn't get you very far, especially since things seem to be priced in Th$10K increments. (Inflation is an issue in an economy where you effectively mint your own money, I gather.)
   
4. Hoverboards and dirt buggies are fun. I want a dirt buggy in SL, one that bounces around and screeches when you turn.
   
5. There seems pretty lag-free, but that's only because everything is pre-cached on your hard drive when you install. The environments are pretty, but sparse and static.
   
6. Chat pops up word-by-word in comic bubbles over your head; if you care to, you can wander through an area and read bits and pieces of other people's conversations. When you do get into a "chat group" with other people, the camera shifts around and gives you more interaction options.
   
7. Making objects requires you to go through a big hullabaloo; there's no way to do it There itself.
   

so would you come to the conclusion that SL is way better??? From what you have wrote.. I would!! YEY SL ROCKS!

I have also tried There, and agree with your comments. The main thing that turns me off is the fact that you cannot change the resolution. I *think* it's a fixed 800 x 600, or maybe even 640 x 480 (yikes!)

There doesn't seem to be as many ways to be creative since you can't build things. I was actually hoping There was not going to be better than SL because I already signed up as a lifetime SL member. Phew!

Better in different ways.

SL has the edge on allowing creativity and dynamic content; There's interface is more polished, and I prefer its chat system slightly.

This thread has been hi-jacked!!!!

New Topic:
Make up funny puns about "There"

Would you rather be here, or there?
Don't go there!
I've been there, and I don't wanna go back!
There is no way I'm going back.
There is nothing to do.


I know for a fact that there are certain employees of a certain company who have made a list such as this one, only theirs is actually funny. Please post if you can

how about "There's no place like home"?

"There you go."

Or is it "There, you go."


+ + + + + + + + + +
"Soy muy pituca"

I'll tell there, where it can go . They accepted me as a beta tester too, hmmm only been waiting 2 months, luckily i discovered SL in that time, I may go check it out anyways....

Lindens, want me to spy on the enemy? j/k

I can't believe they expect buying money to work, they bragged in an article about how their economy was so real, well then the morons should have known that in a real economy if you just coin money endlessly it causes inflation!! lol

Maybe i'll just recruit people for SL

JV

I became a beta tester for THERE quite awhile ago. I logged on once to see what it was like, i think it almost about a week after i started playing SL. I thought the graphics were kind of cute, but getting money, and buying items, and all the silly windows it used to get around, i didn't really find it very creative or fun. However!!! There was this adorable little dog that would come up and play with you lol. It was so cute!!

I wasn't that impressed So i came back to playing sl.

Oh! And i didnt like how you couldn't customize the avatars (you could to an extent, but SL is so much better).

There seems to be a problem.

There's no problem

My only first hand experience with "There" was a startling phone call from the CEO one morning, followed by an inability to contact him after that. I've seen several formal and informal evaluations by beta testers. Most of the reviews have been good, or at least positive, but it seems pretty clear that "There" is not nearly as ambitious a product as SL. There is another product being developed in France (the name escapes me) that looks a lot more like SL in scope.

It looks like SL will be "first out of the gate" though, which is pretty important. It has also gotten much better PR, which I'm sure is no accident.

As a "true believer" in the future of 3D-VR technology I think there will be a variety of products to choose from. Furthermore, none of these things will be "finished" products any time soon. The true test of these things will be their ability to improve as the underlying technologies improve. Somewhere in the PR for SL I read where the target architecture for SL was 5 years out. Maybe that was a year ago.

In 4 more years we could have households starting to get fiber optic internet connections to replace their "broadband'. Multi-gig memory won't be uncommon. Multiple processors might also be the norm, and video cards, which seem to be able to operate at miraculous speeds will still be getting faster somehow. Only a couple of years ago the typical PCs bus speed was 33 MHz. In 4 years 500 MHz will be common, or maybe on the way out!

Most importantly, I haven't heard any other company claim to be planning support for Apple (OS X) or Linux AT ALL, whereas SL is planning support for those platforms in the near term. If they can pull this off, I predict there will be a significant number of sign-ups from people who really have nowhere else to go for a similar experience. I can hardly wait to be asked "ASLP?" (Age, Sex, Location, Platform?)

heh what is There?

Tsk, you guys forgot "Been There, done that.."

Maybe I should go sleep now. ^.~

Now There is one way to highjack a thread!

Your other predictions all sound reasonable to me, but I'm not expecting fiber optic any time soon. People were predicting widespread fiber optic years ago, but the difficulty of installing the "last mile" is why we have cable modems now; houses are already equipped for cable.

I think it's more likely that, in the next few years, higher bandwidths will be enabled through the use of better signal processing over conventional coaxial cable (or twisted-pair copper wiring).

I saw the screenshots of it and it looks really cartoony. Also I don't personally think that using real money would work very well. Who is gonna shell out real hard earned money for PIXELS? Dumb, and I heard that at one time Second Life was considering this, glad they didn't cause I would have not even continued with application to be a Beta Tester. What do I think of There? dumb, cutesy game, that won't really appeal to real men. Ok that's my opinion about it, don't wanna be a beta tester, thank you drive through.

You're paying US$15/mo (or the equivalent) for >SL$4,000.

Yeah but we have the liftime option which many of us took.

Plus in Sl you can make more money, from what i have heard about There you have to keep sending them cash when you want money? and that major inflation has hit so its like 10,000 for a shirt.

THERE SUCKS, SL RULES ! GO LIVE ROCKS!