other virtual worlds - share your experiences

www.justleapin.com have a nice look to me. You need either Firefox or IE7. It supports both Mac and PC.

Never tried another....

Before SL I played a lot of PC games.....still love em.....things like HALO and FEAR and Half Life......but they are games with specific goals and limitations based on what one is 'supposed' to be doing in the game. It used to drive me batty that I couldn't just wander off and explore & ditch the battle for a while

I had always wanted to see something like SL and kept my eyes open for info on virtual worlds.......then one day I read a little blurb in PlayBoy (yeah I know, of all places right lol) about SL and it sounded exactly like what I'd imagined a virtual world to be. I got an account and never looked back. Nothing I've heard or read about seems to have anything near the appeal and flexibility that SL has (for me) So, I don't even bother.

Now....it's all about graphics and performance....so if/when the day comes that someone does it better.....and I can create my avatar, dress it up and create and explore at my leisure in a way cool cyber world....well yeah, I'll try it. But so far, nada.

I just tried Just Leap In... I recognised names from Second Life.

On my Mac it was OK at max quality, the first-person-only interface made me feel like I was a bodiless viewpoint floating around the world, I wasn't really "in" it. It seemed more like a higher quality version of Google Lively (complete with some similar backdrops).

I couldn't get online fully from the office, when I got home I tried on my Wintendo and, OMG, even at the lowest quality I was getting about one frame every ten seconds. . . on a computer that completely blows away my Mac in Second Life. I didn't bother trying to find people after that.

It really does remind me very strongly of Lively. It's a virtual dollhouse chat system, not a virtual world.

Two virtual worlds I have not joined but did look at the websites just out of curiosity are:

Twinity, a German world based on virtual Berlin. Though the graphics are not unlike SL, the emphasis is different in that you have to use your real name and provide photos so they make your lookalike avatar, which can then shop in the virtual Berlin. Perhaps their motto should be 'Our world, our imagination'!

The other one is Red Light Centre (or something similar) which is openly there for the purpose of sex, sex and more sex and nothing else! Perhaps that's another reason why LL created Zindra and brought in the 'adult' classification!