Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Second Life Viewer on Playstation3

Takeshich Nakamura succeeded in compiling a Second Life viewer and ran it on Playstation3 (with ubuntu7.10 linux).

It works, but the performance isn't too good yet (about 0.4 fps).If you have any ideas to remove bottlenecks here, please let him know.Thanks.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Early Homeys: Red Bull, Diesel

Sony tried to drive home for christmas and released the long awaited PS3 Home last week (blogged here) and it will be interesting to see it develop. Unfortunately I don't have a Playstation 3, so I won't be able to keep you folks up to date on business in Home first hand, but already a number of articles are appearing on brands in Home.

Red Bull

First to boost out of the gates was Red Bull, who had a shortlived experience in Second Life, but probably did find it a waste of energy, or a mismatch with their objectives. To be honest, gutfeeling says they fit better at Home.

Red Bull was inspired by an energy drink from Thailand called Krating Daeng. Red Bull is the literal translation of Krating Daeng in Thai. (Krating = Bull, Dang = Red) The logo of redbull is even the same as logo of Krating Daeng. Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian entrepreneur developed the Red Bull Energy Drink brand. [Wikipedia].

Red Bull is more suited to Home than Second Life as it is a more logical step for gamers, and Red Bull brings its famous Air Race as a playable game to their Home room.


(Red Bull screenshot from Kotaku)

Massively Sponsored.

It was to be expected that Home would be subject to all sorts of sponsoring, but as Luke Plunkett rightly says at Kotaku:

We always knew Home was going to be heavy on advertising and corporate sponsorship. But this heavy this soon? It's a little unexpected.

Even the December 10 press release announcing Home to finally open it's door had its commercial break:

SCEE today also announced the first partnerships with some of the world’s most respected lifestyle brands for the Open Beta. Fashion leader Diesel, contemporary furniture designers Ligne Roset, energy drink Red Bull, film studio Paramount Pictures and video content providers Hexus TV and Eurogamer are the first on board. They will offer resident’s virtual clothing for their avatar, virtual furniture for their PlayStation Home apartments, exclusive video content and a virtual flying challenge: the Red Bull Air Race.

I'll try to do some more blogposts on these shops. Speeding up things would of course be one offering me a sponsored PS3 to explore myself or find another guest blogger.

(Diesel screenshot from Kotaku)

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

PS Home goes Open Beta

After lots of rumours and delays, Sony finally pushes PlayStation Home to open Beta today. BBC News reports:

Sony's long awaited next-gen social networking site for PlayStation users goes into open beta today.

PlayStation Home will let gamers create their own avatar -a virtual representation of themselves - and then interact with other users in a 3D environment. Players can chat to other users, invite them into their own "home", and will soon be able to stream music and video.

PS Home will be available free to all registered PlayStation Network users.

Read the full article here.

It's hard to keep in the loop about this virtual world, as it is intended for Playstation users, which excludes me. However, the screenshots available on the web look excellent. Below is a collection of screenshots from the PlayStation 3 Home Forum.



I must admit, the graphics look very good, of a higher quality than that of Second Life. For instance you will find the avatars far more realistic than those in SL, as well as the lighting.

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