For many residents Second Life has indeed become their second life. Meeting friends at the local cafe, shopping with family, walk the dog or doing sports are activities soon forgotten. Now it's all about asking a tiny tiger to write a new script for you, rez a beach house or admire the well-dressed neighbour fly by. Life as we know it is over. In the metaverse looks, weight and health are adjustable sizes. But what about our real life ? Has this quest for an alternate identity made us forgot our real life ?
The adult population, and in particular on the western hemisphere, has grown significantly larger over the past few decades. In an effort to reach those who are not doing sports on a regular basis, experts on health and life style are often recommending long walks.
In fact you should walk at least 10 000 footsteps every day. In order to keep the count, the pedometer was invented. The pedometer, a small electronical device the size of a match box, is usually kept in the pocked or fastened to your belt, and it generously counts your footsteps.
For about one month I played with the idea about creating a pedometer for Second Life, and during the easter holidays that dream came through. The law of physics are a bit different in Second Life as residents are able to fly around, and teleport from one end of the metaverse to the other. Thus I needed to establish some ground rules for how the SL pedometer should work.
1) The pedometer should measure the distance between two points in three dimentional space.
2) The two points must be in the same sim
3) The current position will be gathered every 10 seconds, and will then compared with the previous posititon before the counter is updated.
4) There is a 1:1 relationship between meters and footsteps.
5) Wear it on the HUD
After some hours scripting and making a texture on easter monday, the Playn Pedometer was born. Initially I gave away about 20 pedometers for free, and gained usefull feedback from it's first users. Personally it was a great surprise to discoverer that I walk/fly almost as little in SL as I walk in real life, but wearing a pedometer in both world at least keep me constantly focused on my health. When the weather gets warmer, it's time to take some long walks to justify all these hours spent in Second Life:
Playn Utilities
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sea%20Monk/7/170/36