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Halting of Online Gambling inworld triggers mass hysteria

Following the decision to ban online gambling by Linden Lab, a friend in-world told me of wide spread demonstrations and protest. I went around casinos and banks to check out the seriousness of the situation and to take some shots of the demonstrations.

This sudden decision to apply ban to inworld gambling should be based on the US government's decision to restrict online gambling, hence triggering Linden's decision to impose a ban on the numerous casinos site that had sprouted out all over the world.

Casinos who were once experiencing high traffic and hit rates had by now become grounds for protest and demonstration gathering places. Casino owner hastily put up notices on ceasing and halting of operations. Overnight, these once value 3D assets became virtually worthless empty shells.

I had a chance to interview a casino owner on this issue. No doubt virtual commodities and assets are one of the profitable area in the virtual world, he feels that the economy in Secondlife is propelled by the online gambling and pornography industry. Hence the clamping down on one of such pillar will defintely affect the virtual economy. Well, for what I see in world, I can't help but to agree with him on the last statement. The virtual economy in SL is definetly powered by the 2 pillars that he mentioned.

With that in mind, I went off to my favorite virtual investment bank site, JT Financial, to have a glimpse of what is going on. Wow, by the time I got to the location, there were many avatars congregating around the bank lobby. The shot that I took only covers a small section of the crowd.

The owner of the virtual bank was there answering angry questions and trying to pacify the crowds. It seems that there was a mad rush by the crowd to withdraw money from the bank's ATM machines. While I was there I saw avatar teleporting and walking into the scene and headed towards the numerous ATM machines in the lobby. They were withdrawing their investment funds from the machines. I caught up with one such avatar who withdrew every linden dollar he had from his investment account. He was phobic that the virtual economy may crash pretty soon and was afraid that the virtual banks might be affected, and hence imposed some kind of restriction on withdrawal limits.

Personally I feel that Linden's decision to halted all inworld gambling may be a little too extreme as any such sudden decision will defintely affect other areas of the virtual economy. Although I am not a gambler, casinos in SL are some of the most innovative and interesting virtual places to visit. As in online gambling sites on the internet, casino owners and developers are pretty innovative in how they use the lsl scripting language, with account connection to servers out of the virtual world and simulation of slot machines, etc. The degree of innovation by these developers is simply amazing.

However from a much higher view point, I am quite impress with how the virtual economy had developed to. Over time, this virtual economy had began to mirror the real world economy in most aspect and industry, and how each industry becomes interrelated with each other.

One night in Bangkok makes the hard man humble

So much for virtual sims in far away Austria.

Flying around and visiting other people's sims can be much fun, and I managed to find something closer to home, ... Bangkok!

The street texture is fantastic, the creator must had visited the old city, taking shots of Tuk-tuk taxis and the crowded and untidy city scape, with its massive amount of signboards and high flying, criss-crossing wire cables all over. Nothing bad about that, as this gives Bangkok that authetic genuine feel and smell of a old city. The characteristics that is unique to that city by the river.

Notice the textures for the streets are pretty well done, with the some of the buildings in Bangkok's Chinatown textured to simulate buildings of the distant past and some textured to simulate godowns and warehouses of the non so distant past. The creator throws in a mix of billboards with labels such as Ajisen and KFC. A distance down this street, the creator even simulates a broken telephone post, with the sparking electic shoot-out and the zipping sound.

Towards a corner of the sim, took some shots of the royal palace. The palace comes with the distinct multiple roof that ends in sharp pointer corner unique to Thai architectures.

The interior of the palace.

I can see patience in the creator as he or she tries to create this statue.

Overall, I'll give this sim a very high rating, as I feel that the look and feel of Bangkok is recreated in this sim. Very well done indeed.

Österreich! Austria Island

Since my travel to Salzburg in the fall of 2005, I have such a pleasant impression of the country. Needless to say, I was quite delighted to visit the virtual Austria sim and took some photos of the places inworld.

Austria sim seems to be made up of several islands that are joined together. I didn't really visited the entire sim, and spent most of my time on the most eye catching island. Here we have the largest ferris wheel, that I had seen inside SL. The carriage are very well modelled and textured. This island contains some built-up with store fronts, and exhibition halls, a corporate like building and of course, what sim can be complete without an auditorium. The ferris wheel sits right in the middle, and provides a good and attractive landmark to whoever that flies near to this sim.

The outlook of the auditorium is very well designed. With the some of the sitting space half in the open and half inside the building. Err.. at least that is the feel I get when I sat inside. I like the architect's visualisation of the building. The colours of the building takes into consideration the colours of the Austrian national flag... and again, it seems like most building designers in SL incorporate the use of glass panels quite extensively in their design.

The entrance to the Auditorium.

With the holiday mood still in full swing, I did a search and found that there is a Salzburg sim as well. Ah! I'll cover that on another day then. The sound of music can wait a while...

Time to take a rest.

working... digging... building... texturing... scripting...

Not much updates these days, since I spent quite a huge amount of time working in RL, and building inside SL. Project development is coming up to a most interesting peak... and I spent most of my non-working time inworld, creating contents for groups and organisations that are using the virtual world for branding, hubbing and product development. Cool... new concept new world, new frontier, just like when the internet had just started. Most organisations at that time, didn't really know what to do with the internet.

But precisely it is these few weeks of hectic work in RL, and then on returning home, the tight deadline work inworld (plus the assortment tasks of house chores), that impressed on me the interesting combination of working in a real world and at the same time, to inter-persed the free time in between the real world life and work with more communication, events and work in a totally virtual world. I feel like an expatriate, operating in a totally new environment, and offering my skillsets, creativity, advices, jokes, life, to other expatriates, in this new and strange land. Interesting. It does feels good to be a FT as well. LOL!

Well but work is work, I sneaked off once a while to look at interesting places and what others are building in their virtual islands, back gardens, and countyards. I'll cover these in the coming few posts.


Oh, I actually didn't noticed the comment in my previous post from Ms Ching-Yi Liao who is doing a course in Aston University in UK. She has a survey at http://my3q.com/home2/168/ilmiriam/1201.phtml .

If you have time to, and are a virtual world inhabitant, please visit her survey and help her out a bit.

Thanks. :)

Imperial Russian Power

As I took a short break from my project and flew off to a island to take reference on their design, I accidentally stumbled on this half complete island by a Russian design firm that attempts to model and simulate Russia's old glorious past.

What glorious past can it be for an old imperial power like Russia if its ironclads aren't showcased? The creator attempts to model the ship Bapar, or is it Baprt (can't read the horizontally flipped R in Baprt). Anyway, I thought the modelling and texture wasn't really expertly done. But the final effect of putting everything together in scale, brings the ship up to a certain visually appealing state. The creator can enhanced it by adding lights and lots of signal flags to make more realistic.

And of course, since the Russian Navy is being modelled, how can one missed out the popular Russian sub-surface warriors.

Start of Project

Yes, I am starting on Tropical's first, big time island project. No longer a small, 1 or 2 resident's house or club house, this project will be an island scale project for a local company's island in SL.

From concept to building, to refining, and in the latter part, scripting, the project shall span over a month, and should end sometime in mid of June. This also means that I shall temporary halt the renovation works at the Xin Pa Sat. Interestingly, it is also at this point in time that I have a couple of SL residents, enquiring on the possibility of holding stalls in Xin Pa Sat. Ha! The future seems great for that area.

Ah, as for the current project, I can't really elaborate on the building and the content as it is confidential to the company. But I do believe that this will be big and certainly will put in much effort to create a difference in this project, with respect to the other project I had taken, and also seen others built.

On Sculpture and Monuments

There seems to be an increasing number of sculptures created in SL. With models that take on much more complex and demanding shapes and angles. This statue of a greek or roman or spartan soldier guards the front patio of an office building block. In fact, it seems to be facing (you can see from this camera angle) the main building in this sim.

Most of the sculptures are created with simple elongated, or deformed sphere objects. Some are twisted in a way so as to achieve a spiral kind of effect.