Real Life Cities (12): Rio de Janeiro

Recently I added a blog to my bloglist which I can't read. It's "O Guia do Mochileiro da Second Life", which brings us tales from Second Life from Brasil. This particular blog brings me back to the series on virtual representations of Real Life Cities in Second Life.

I first noticed some Brasilian presence in Second Life in about april 2007 when I first blogged the Fiat Brasil presence. Later on we saw Citroën Brasil enter as well. Meanwhile we had seen a huge boost in Brasilian users in Second Life and had seen a lot of fuzz about the Kaizen Games rip-off. Brasilians seemed to love Second Life, but didn't really speak English so Kaizen Games and Brasil Telecoms prepped up a Portugese Language Pack for Second Life and a registration portal, Second Life Brasil (so far so good) and became Linden Lab's first licenced Global Partner, but were rumoured to take off a large percentage on the transactions. I haven't seen any Brasilian companies enter Second Life over the past years aside from these two automotives, but because my Portugese isn't very good (or almost non existent), I may have overlooked. However, the Brasilian community has grown steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with in Second Life, although they keep to themselves a bit (again, language barrier), but it's time to head to Rio, home of one of the best known landmarks in the world:

Rio de Janeiro ("River of January", is the second largest city of Brazil, behind São Paulo, and the third largest city in the continent, behind São Paulo and Buenos Aires. The city is capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It was the capital of Brazil for almost two centuries, from 1763 to 1822 while it was a Portuguese colony and from 1822 to 1960 as an independent nation. It was the capital of the Portuguese Empire from 1808 to 1821. Commonly known as just Rio, the city is also nicknamed A Cidade Maravilhosa, or "The Marvelous City".

Rio de Janeiro is famous for its natural settings, its Carnival celebrations, samba and other music, and hotel-lined tourist beaches, such as Copacabana and Ipanema, paved with decorated black and cream swirl pattern mosaics known locally as "pedra portuguesa". Some of the most famous local landmarks in addition to the beaches include the giant statue of Jesus, known as Christ the Redeemer ('Cristo Redentor') atop Corcovado mountain, which has recently been named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World; Sugarloaf mountain (Pão de Açúcar) with its cable car; the Sambódromo, a giant permanent parade stand used during Carnival; the famous Brazilian copperfish and Maracanã stadium, one of the world's largest football stadiums.[wikipedia]

There are multiple Rio de Janeiro sims, amongst which a triple sim build called Brasil Rio, but the one that has most resemblance to its real life counterpart is RJ City and obviously, the Cristo Redentor is very prominent in this build as well. As for recreating a virtual replica, this build is not as accurate as say Augsburg or Munich, but rather a loose collection of the local sights set in an athmosphere that breathes the spirit of Rio.

SLURL:http://slurl.com/secondlife/RJ%20CITY/131/132/36

More views from the Forbidden City

As I blogged the newly launched Forbidden City yesterday, I was impressed by the beauty of it. Today I took a bit of a longer stroll to walk the city. I am pretty amazed by the level of detail and the brightness and light in this virtual environment. Here's just a few snapshots.

The Forbidden Cities offers several types of avatars. You can change style later on. These are the available options:

• Imperial Guard
• Imperial Servant
• Imperial Craftsman
• Imperial Boy
• Palace Eunuch
• Civil Servant
• Imperial Woman
• Imperial Consort
• Imperial Girl

The avatars aren't as complicated as in say Second Life in which you can customize them, you just choose one of the above. Also in movement, they're much simpler, more like a gliding motion than actual walking.

Upon visiting the Beyond Space and Time community, currently there's a photogallery with user generated snapshots of the City (you'll see a lot of the same pictures) and a forum. Most of the topics I browsed were in Chinese, so can't tell what it's all about.

The only topic I managed to follow a bit was about the performance of the Forbidden City. It seems as quite a number of users have experienced performance issues, especially in the more detailed areas (i.e. highly decorated chambers). One of the remarks was that the City would be scaled in the near future to solve performance issues.

Real Life Cities (11): Copenhagen - but which one?

When I was looking for the Copenhagen City sim last time I found an empty sim. Today I went for another set of sims: The first sim I went to today was Denmark Copenhagen which has a focus on shopping and is your run of the mill sim, but the bordering sims are a lot more interesting. The second sim is the Copenhagen old town with old woodwork houses and the third sim, called Denmark Int, houses one of Copenhagens landmarks. With a little luck you'll take to right alley towards the Nyhavn and some other well known spots.

There are three things that bother me with this sim. When I first visited this sim, it was well populated with quite a number of Danes chatting at a fireplace down at the Nyhavn harbor. The region's main focus is shopping however, but 9 out of 10 shops are empty which gives the build a rather sad look. The second thing is -common for these places and perhaps the reason for it's failure to attract shops - the time the heavy texturing needs to rez.

The third and last issue I have with this sim is the edges of the build. As you can see in the images top left and bottom left the edges contain a number of builds which don't fit in and give thye build a sloppy mainlain ghetto look with its flashy advertisements and hovering builds.

Real Life Cities revisited: Brussels, Utrecht and Brugge

One of the trends in 2007 was the creation of Real Life Cities in Second Life. Most of these sims were MDC showcases providing a home for their community. Quite a bit has changed though at a few of them.

Brussels

In July I blogged on the Belgian city of Brussels (Bruxelles), which housed a grand casino in the Royal Palace. I needed a clear Belgian sim as a decorum for a machinima and went back to Brussels to find it completely changed. Probably this is due to the gambling ban Linden Lab imposed, but the current sim is an assorted mess of prefab homes.

After a bit of a search I found another Brussels (Capital of Europe) replica in a quarter of the Edmond sim, which looks a lot like Brussels, but is of a far less quality. It mainly is a sim full of basic square prims laden with textures.

Utrecht

For the same machinima I went in search of Utrecht, but found it taken down. The MDC Evident evidently has overplayed its hand on this one.

Brugge

In July I also blogged Brugge, another Belgian city which at that time was at the early stages of construction, but had a promising look. Now it's finished and looks marvellous:

The only problem I have with these sims is that they're so heavy on textures that it takes ages to render the graphics at high resolution. So forgive me for a couple of snapshots of bad quality when I grew too impatient to wait for the screen to fully rez.

[UPDATE]

I received an update on Brugge:

Hallo Veejay, ik merk dat je op je blog over brugge spreekt. Er zijn namelijk 2 sims met Brugge. Virtueel brugge heb je besproken de eerste keer (sim = Belgie), nu heb je een "ander" Brugge besproken. Het klopt dat Virtueel Brugge
voor mij een showcase is als MDC. Meer info op www.louisplatini.com en www.virtual-bruges.be

which reads: There are actually two sims that are Brugge builds. This one is one the Brugge sim, the one in the older blog is Virtual Brugge, build on a sim called Belgique and is build bij Louis Platini

Real Life Cities (11): Copenhagen

Huh? It's empty!

I really was under the impression that somewhere someplace I read something about Copenhagen having it's virtual counterpart. Am I getting clairvoyant?

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Copenhagen%20City/128/127/28

Googlemap pinpoints locations in SL

Today I stumbled upon the Sunverse blog which happens to have a really nice gimmick up.

A google map with pinpointers to RL locations in Second Life.

See more at: http://www.sunverse.net/resources.html

Baseball hits SL

It's baseball time, big time as Major League Baseball finds it's hometurf in Second Life. Near the Electric Sheep Island you will find the sim inspirationally called 'Baseball' and is the virtual home to the Yankee Stadium. The NY Yankee's are the main course of this sim, but there's promo room for the Boston Socks and a few others.

Sport is something people can look forward to, enjoy. Everyone's got its favorite team or player, whichever sport you may like. Sports generate gazillions in merchandise. Sport is big business, and no wonder the focus on the Baseball sim lies on merchandise, T-shirts, trainingpants, tops, caps, hats 'n bats and gloves, as well as the hip bling bling medallions.

The stadium itself has a few chairs less than it real life counterpart to keep within server limits.

Leave base, touch air

I can't really see much added value for baseball to come to Second Life except for merchandise. Fans would like to wear their teams' colors even in virtual life. Why not take the game to another level, chance bats to broomsticks and organise a true Quidditch game.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series are immensely popular and its final episode, the Deathly Hallows just broke every thinkable sales record, so I won't get into explaining what Quidditch is, but Second Life is the platform in which you can break away from gravity and really can script broomsticks.

I know this would probably mean a huge copyright row(ling) if you'd just started building a Hogwarts courtyard with a Quidditch field, but it would surely look better than our gravity-bound real life attempts, such as this one by Reuters.

Real Life Cities (10): Brugge

Second Life is getting busy. Many new sims and companies from all over the world. Sometimes it looks like some countries are lagging. This seems true for the UK and Belgium, with very few companies and 'official' sims compared to the number of Brits and Belgians active in and blogging on Second Life.

The Belgians are getting upto speed though, SL-wise. Last month I blogged Belgacom as one of the first major Belgian companies to arrive in Second Life and last weekend I've blogged on the Brussel sim. Today's Brugge time.

Here are some snapshots, taken by Pieter Bosch of the SecondLife Crew blog, an excellent Belgian SL-blog.

The city of Brugge is still under construction, being build by Belgian content creators Metacon.

I've seen more and more professional content creators build Real Life cities as a promotional and community creation platform, and indeed this sim is aimed at creating a Belgian community and will be a mix of commercial and residential buildings.

Real Life Cities (9): Brussels

Officially it's past midnight here, so 7-7-7 is gone. I was just looking at my recent blogs and officially my blogcount for today is (somehow) 7. My last visit today was the Brussel Sim. To stress the fact it's 7-7-7, Earth Day, I've started with an image I took at the casino there.



The Brussel sim is advertised as meeting place for the (appr. 7000 active) Belgian SL residents, and it is dominated by the Royal Palace which - in this case - is an enormous casino. When I arrived, the sim was bustling with activity - 78 residents on site - but I doubt they were all Belgian. Casino's do draw crowds.








The second floor of the casino does show some Belgian Royal Hineyness and acts as a museum.
The rest of the sim (which isn't much because the palace really dominates it) consists of a few shops and two other noteworthy Brussel Landmarks: The atomium and 'manneke pis' (the pissing guy)

SLURL

Holland SL: Groningen

My last gig tonight was a party at Groningen Centrum -though I barely stayed long enough to flash a few pictures. Last week I blogged on the content creators Evident building the city of Utrecht, today it is DMA studios that are building Groningen.

Groningen is the capital of the most north-eastern province of the Netherlands (by sheer happenstance named Groningen as well) and has several landmarks, such as the Martini Tower.

This build doesn't really try to put a 'best effort' to real life likeness, so it seems, but focusses on the old Groningen Town hall which now is a neat Disco (which off course is better than Amsterdam's palace being a bordello)

DMA studios is a Groningen based media company that specializes in Streaming Media.

SLURL:http://slurl.com/secondlife/Groningen%20Centrum/152/125/28

The Virtual Dutch

Here's a few spots coming from the Netherlands;

Utrecht

On a satelite skim I came across a new sim called Utrecht. The town and province of Utrecht is...well... where I slow down twice a day due to traffic jams.

It's still empty, except for some "under construction" elements. The build will be done by Evident, a Utrecht based communications and design company. It appears that Utrecht will be their SL showcase.


Here's a little teaser I managed to get hold of:

Then there's some news from Second Life Blogo, a few tidbids that flew by these past weeks

Viva

One of the Dutch lady-mags organised an introduction to Second Life for its readers. The event took place june 15th and is said to have been very succesfull. After a short introduction to Second Life (basic movement, editing appearance etcetera) everyone received a goodiebag with clothing designed by Barnowgirl Sinatra. The Dutch Randstad corp gave everyone a makeup bag with several types of skins so everyone would be good looking if they went out jobhunting in Second Life

[picture taken from Second Life Blogo]

Theatherplay by "The Empty Space"

The rather small town of Assen is capital to the Dutch province of Drente. Nothing much is happening here (most of the time), except for the yearly Grand Prix races, the TT (today).

The 26th saw a nice event though as theater group "The Empty Space" performed Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Him" in Second Life.

The theater was build by students of the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences based in the town Zwolle - which happens to be where I got my Bachelor.

Virtual Tourism: Chichén Itzá

Today's Things to Do outing is a trip to virtual Mexico, commissioned by the Mexican Tourist board and opened up yesterday. The Sim's landingpoint is a platform on the New Wonders of the World election, and it's website new 7 wonders is also a good point for some basic background on the build.

Chichén Itzá, the most famous Mayan temple city, served as the political and economic center of the Mayan civilization. Its various structures - the pyramid of Kukulkan, the Temple of Chac Mool, the Hall of the Thousand Pillars, and the Playing Field of the Prisoners – can still be seen today and are demonstrative of an extraordinary commitment to architectural space and composition. The pyramid itself was the last, and arguably the greatest, of all Mayan temples.

And a great temple it is. Usually I take pictures with the time set at noon to get clear and bright images, but somehow this build made me use the sunset timing (from the recently released Firstlight viewer), giving the sim a somewhat romantic or mysterious feel.

The text in typeface courier below are descriptions from the notecards available on the island.

It was common practice in Mesoamerican cities to periodically build larger and bigger temple pyramids atop older ones, and this is one such example. Archaeologists discovered a doorway at the base of the north stairway that leads to a tunnel, from which one can climb the steps of the earlier version of El Castillo inside the current one up to the top room where you can see religious Jaguar Throne, carved of stone and painted red with jade spots. The design of the older pyramid inside is said to be a lunar calendar, with the newer pyramid being a solar calendar.

The Temple of the Warriors was built by the end of 800 A.D. It is located on the eastern plaza of the central plain of Chichen Itza. The Temple of the Warriors is flanked by 1000 carved columns depicting fallen warriors. Near the Warriors is a large plaza surrounded by pillars called "The Great Market."
Vendor stands featuring replications of ancient Mayan artifacts and traditional Mexican goods thrived near the base of the pyramid.

Cenote (say-NO-tay) is the Spanish equivalent of the Yucatecan Mayan word for a water-filled, limestone sinkhole. In Mexico's northern Yucatan Peninsula, where there are few lakes or streams, cenotes provided a stable supply of water for the ancient Maya people who settled there. The great city of Chichen Itza was built around a cluster of these natural wells, including the one known as the “Sacred Cenote.”

The sim is impressively detailed and a lot of attention has been put to make the landscape look natural. The trees are among the best I've seen in Second Life. Again, I'm impressed, there was just so much to see and explore, much more than I've written and shown in this post. I'd suggest you'd better check it out yourself.

Two members of the Things to Do group immediately decided to don the Mayan Princess and Mayan Warrior outfits which were really cool freebees.

Finally, we knew the Mayab's were an advanced culture, but we didn't know they had HDtv as well.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Visit%20Mexico/200/67/39

Real Life Cities 8: Manchester

My friend Al, who's from the UK, blogged yet another Real Life City coming to Second Life; the city of Manchester, from his hometurf. He was rather disappointed.

The thing is that Manchester launched a 4 sim representation in SL during the Big Chip 2007 awards that took place in RL Manchester. Real Life Cities in SL are an excellent stage for simulcast events, promoting tourism around the globe. In this case I can understand Al's disappointment though, since the sim is not complete.

The centre of the sim holds several stages for live events which are surrounded by representations of several of Manchesters eye-cathing builds that liven up the town's centre.

From my time in England I remember most Northern cities to be dull and gray industrial towns with very little monuments. I certainly have no recollection of Manchester possessing great architectural builds from ages long past (correct me if I'm wrong).

The awards were used for a softlaunch, but nearly a month later they're still building so I can't really tell which way they are heading. I think it would be in Manchesters best interest to come up with a kick-ass event list to liven up the crowd and invite us all back in when the build is finished. I will go back, just out of curiosity to see what it will look like when the build is finished.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Manchester%20UK/128/128/0

Real Life Cities 7: Munich

The Germans are coming! Second Life is hot in Germany, where it currently sees the fastest growth in registrations. This also reflects on the arrival of a of new german builds. The great city of Munich is such a new sim under construction.

It still is under construction, but already interesting enough to blog it, although the first sight didn't trigger that idea. The first thing I saw was a stand with the well-known German beer pot.

The sim is covered with a simplified map of Real Life Munich and it seems to be the intend to build an exact copy.

In the second sim work is actually being done. Rough outlines of the buildings are quite decently build and also the texturing is coming along on various buildings as well. This will sure be a sim to visit when it is complete.

The detail and complexity of this build will be challenging and the possible showstopper in this build will be the time needed to stream all textures to the SL client.

Developments can be monitored at the website Muenchen-SecondLife.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Muenchen/101/98/63

Real Life Cities 6: Augsburg

In Real Life, the german city of Augsburg was founded in 15 BC "in the reign of Roman emperor Augustus as a garrison called Augusta Vindelicorum." and opens up in virtual Second Life may 29th. Upon teleporting into the double sim I immersed in sight of the Augsburg Town Hall.

From upfront it looks quite decent, but from aside it looks a wee bit out of proportion. Around this landmark are several typical German houses of varying quality.

Throughout the center are stands and stages set up for the coming opening party, with a line-up of (to me) unfamiliar German artists. As with most virtual city replica's (or if you like VCR, since that term has become obsolete) the majority of the sim is reserved for shopping to get some return on investment (ROI).

In this particular case I doubt a ROI will be met, because the build itself doesn't attract me enough to come back since most of the sim is made up of the usual mainland ghetto-builds, and especially the second sim, Augsburg City II is entirely reserved for gaming and rentals with some luxury homes and casino's.

In short, I would have liked to see the Augsburger Dom (cathedral), the medieval Fünfgratturm tower, or I would even have settled for the Machinenfabrik Augburg which merged with the factory in Nurnberg to form the MAN factory where mr. Diesel himself pioneered the Diesel engine.

In short:

+ The Townhal is a decent build, though with few detail in interior decoration
- Missing a consistent theme and no other Augsburger landmarks
- Too many ready made, cheap builds scattered over the sim


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Augsburg%20City/128/128/0

Real Life Cities 5: Salzburg

Upon entering the virtual representation of Salzburg I ended at the side of the sim, showing a row of houses build next to a little stream. I intended to fly to one of the landmarks to start shooting snapshops and start bloggin, but this is as good a point as any to start.

The city of Salzburg is one of Austria's best known towns, and
"... is on the banks of the Salzach river, at the northern boundary of the Alps. The mountains to Salzburg's south contrast with the rolling plains to the north. The closest alpine peak – the 1972 m Untersberg – is only a few kilometers from the city center. The Altstadt, or "old town", is dominated by its baroque towers and churches and the massive Festung Hohensalzburg"

Well, the Wikipedia entry is in line with the sim's build. The little stream I started near is the Salzach and the castle Hohen Salzburg is dominating the far end. On the other end of the sim, across the town, snowcovered mountains rise, hosting one of Austria's most touristic attractions: Skiing and Snowboarding ramps.

One of the good things of this sim is the festivity calendar, giving a good overview of ongoing and special events. The town is primarily dominated by the Salzburg Cathedral
"The Salzburg Cathedral (German: Salzburger Dom) is a 17th century baroque cathedral in the city of Salzburg, dedicated to Saint Rupert of Salzburg. It is the site of Mozart's baptism."

Throughout the sim statues can be found, and though they are part of Salzburgs RL view, these could have been left out. Like most trees and other statues in Second Life it's made of two texturized prims with a lot of tranparancy, but it is hard to get a good view of this. A suggestion would be to try and replace them with sculpted prims, a feature added in last weeks release.

Finally, as with most real life cities in Second Life, there's a lot of shopping to be done. Aside from the cathedral, the rest of the old town is set up as shopping center.

A short wrap up:
+ The sim represents most of Salzburg's best known features
+ A lot of events are organised in the sim, as well as hosting a number of ongoing events.
- The statues are too 2D and should be replaced with sculpties as soon as possible.
- The build is quite crude, especially the castle.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Salzburg/128/128/0

Real Life Cities 4: Paris 1900

As I blogged about the new real life cities coming to SL I mentioned that I'd forgotten to blog Paris, so it's high-time to correct that omission. Browsing through my snapshots I noticed I also forgot to snapshot the Moulin Rouge, so I decided to go back, which was a good thing. The first thing I noticed was that it is expanding. I now noticed it is a 4-sim build, with the humoungous Eiffel Tower spread over all of them, neatly joint in the corners.

Technically this is a very hard thing to do, builds overlapping sim borders usually need to be quadruppaly reinforced to ensure you're not falling through at the edges. The other thing I noticed was that a sim called "Champs Elysees" is added... Seems like they're expanding.

The first thing I saw when entering the sim was a lot of ground. It took a while for the textures to stream, and then I saw I was at the metro station. The build here is a little primitive. I walked up the stairs, leaving the metro station and walked into the "Moulin Rouge", the fabled Parisian nightclub from the early 1900's.

Since it spreads four sims, the Eiffel Tower needs quite a bit of time to render, as well as the rest of the sim, though the build is a lot less detailed than that of Venice, at times even a bit crude. The sims top attraction is the parachute dive from the top of the Eiffel tower, but there are a number of nice shops to be found as well, especially on the Champs Elysees extention, which end in Paris' dreaded roundabout at l'Arc the Triomphe.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Paris%201900/128/128/0

Real Life Cities 3: Venice

Today I got back just in time to visit the Venice opening party at Venice island. After typing Venice into the map I TP'd in... and went down the drain immediately. The teleport ended in a closed cellar, filled with water. There was barely room for me to keep my head above water and breathe...

At first I thought it would be a grand entry, like at Paris 1900 (which I forgot to blog, so soon to come), where the TP hub is set in an underground /metro station. But it wasn't. It was just a cellar, and no way out. People above my head were talking Italian so I couldn't make sense.

I TP'd to the neigbouring Veneto sim and flew back in. The Venice sim takes quite a while in rendering, needing loads of custom textures to stream to the client, but it's worth it. The sim is filled with small piazza's and palazzio's that show some of the grandeur of this fabled merchant city of old. Some of the texturing is absolutely beautiful, but in some places it looks a bit too 2D.

The San Marco, the bridges and canals are all very recognisable, just a bit "condensed" at times, as Aleister put it when we discussed it. Hether and tether you'll find some shops and other signs that look a little out of place, and from a commercial point of view I doubt they'll be succesful, being hard to find in the sim. But maybe Italians are used to that.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Venice%20Italy/128/128/0

Real Life skyline

May seems to be the month of Real Life cities coming to Second Life. In the past I've blogged about Amsterdam, Zoetermeer and visited Paris 1900, but forgot to blog it. Last month we saw an excellent Salzburg sim go live and this month is a true avalanche with sims of Manchester, Munich, Augsburg and Venice.

My good friend Aleister wrote a strong piece on the Manchester kick-off, though he was rather disappointed. It seems judging Real Life cities entering Second Life is a little complicated. A businesscase or requirement set that we can put to business sims doesn't work out. Do we have to judge them by innovative design? Certainly not, it needs to be as close to Real Life as possible.
Yet when a virtual representation for RL Companies is a bore, and a must for RL cities, it's not the sole requirement. The Virtual Tourism market needs a little extra, some attractions that make people visit. Sweden and the Maldives have set up their embassy in Second Life, but I doubt that will do the trick. The City of Berlin (new Berlin sim, not Berlin) is hosting a cross reality / simulcast event with the "Festival of Cultures", running may 25th to 28th, which is a good start to show the world what's going on in your city.

Here's a few pics:

Augsburg City:
Opening: May 29 Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Augsburg%20City/128/128/0

Swedish Embassy:
Opening: May 30 Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Swedish%20Institute/128/128/0

Venice Italy:
Opening: May 26 Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Venice%20Italy/128/128/0

Real Life Cities 1: Amsterdam

When in Holland and you want to start a conversation on Second Life, or any other immersive world for that matter, the discussion is bound to touch virtual Amsterdam very soon. Amsterdam is probably the best known sim in Holland, mentioned in almost every SL story.

It usually is referred to as one of the largest sims (forgetting that all sims are created equal), or largest builds. The sim itself encompasses Amsterdam Central Station, the Damrak and the Dam itself with the monument, the New Church and the Royal Palace. Then there are some canals lined with shops. It's hardly a surprise to see half the shops are sex related. When making that conclusion, it's no surprise to see Amsterdam always is one of the favorite places in the Metaverse.


Since I don't dig virtual sex, I judged slamsterdam by it's architectural values. It's true that it is heavily built, and there's an enormous amount of textures used, making the sim very slow to render, which for me is a show-stopper.

The sim was originally built by Strokerz Toy, but was recently purchased by Nedstede, an Amsterdam based real estate firm. The sim was actioned at E-bay and the deal closed at 50,000 euro. I'm not sure the clientele is what they would like to see in Real Life.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amsterdam/128/128/0

If Nedstede is willing to spend that amount of money, they should call Lordlfy who did an extremely good impression of Amsterdam for SL's 2nd Relay for Live event in 2006. Though the sim is no longer live, its contents can be found somewhere in the deeps of Lordfly's inventory. Here are some impressions:

Real Life Cities 2: Dublin

If we're talking about virtual recreations of real life sites you have to visit Second Life's version of Dublin. Many people who have visited Dublin in meatspace will recognise the virtual version.

Dublin in SL also hosts one of the most popular meetingpoints in Second Life, the Blarney Stone pub. Aside from meeting the regulars and dancing. The sims media url usually streams real life Irish radio, but the Blarney Stone is a regular site for musicians to simulcast. Many young artists perform on the small stage behind the dance floor. Due to its popularity the pub was one of the first places used by Diageo to promote their virtual bar.

The heavy build urban sim and the popularity of the Blarney Stone have a downside; the sim is usually very slow to stream and at happy hour many teleports are rejected because of this.

Next to old fashioned Dublin a new sim was added recently, shaped like the traditional Irish four-leaf clover. Unfortunately it is not open to visitors yet.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dublin/128/128/0

WEB: http://www.dublinsl.com/