Dimitri - SL Week 2

For my second week in Second Life, I decided to check out some of the popular destinations and came across a sim called Once Upon A Fairytale in the 'What's Hot' destinations category. It is an island with various fantasy-esque areas that one would expect to find in a fairytale.

It was also a map with my first experience of seeing other people. There were three other people on the map, though one seemed to be having the same idea as me in that that were sitting in interesting areas and not moving. The other two were moving around the map and chatting together in typed chat, clearly exploring the sim together.

Meanwhile, I found my usual habits of posing for screenshots from other games as came in handy in this particular sim.

At the top of a crag, I came across this strange creature surrounded by small dragons. It occurred to me how the sims of SL could be used to both create RPG style maps (whether it be for original stories or for other ways to visualise tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons). 

This strange dragon tamer also reminded me of merchants and quest givers in RPG video games, so I felt inclined to stop and take screenshots as if it were from a game.

 Further along the path, I found this dragon skeleton.

At the top of the ladder was a small village being attacked by the dragons. Using the free movement camera, I was able to move around and take photos. It inspired me to look more into the use of Second Life as a photographing and art platform.

With this in mind, I began to move around the map looking for the sorts of shots I would normally look for in real life when I'm out with a camera. I found that Second Life offers two advantages that real life photography doesn't offer: the freedom to change lighting as I need it, and the ability to reach angles I wouldn't otherwise be able to accomplish.

One of my favourite aspects of many games that I play is that they offer the ability to take 'photos' of your player character. Since that is what I spend a lot of my time doing in games that I play, I decide to pay around with the camera around my avatar.

However, I found that while Second Life offers more freedom in camera position and in lighting, it is lacking in a lot of other aspects.

In Second Life, the avatars are rather static, and the lighting only has four options no matter where you are, offering very little variance. The gestures are also rather awkward in ways and most of them are very short. It is also hard to make non-human avatars feel more natural in their positioning.

In comparison, Guild Wars 2, a MMORPG I regularly play, is focused around the story of the game as well as fighting and progression. It doesn't have a free camera function, but it has enough control of the camera including Field of View, horizontal position, vertical positions and collision sensitivity settings to make up for it. On top of that, the character avatars are a lot more fluid and responsive, even in the non-human characters. Different worlds also offer different lightings, setting different moods and making it possible to find the exact lighting you want to work with.

Another video game I played, Overwatch, is a first-person PvP shooter. It is even less than GW2 focused on being able to take screenshots, so there is even less control in the camera. However, due to the character models animations, it is still possible to accomplish some decent looking screenshots. Like GW2 as well, the maps offer different lighting and settings, perfect for whatever look you're going for.

Because of my experiences in these other games, taking avatar focused shots in SL feels lackluster and unfulfilling. However, take photos as I would take in them in real life (of landscapes, scenes, etc. around me) feels more natural, so I will probably continue to focus on that aspect of the viewer.