Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Terminator Salvation

Nothing to do with the metaverse or the forseeable future, but still one I'm looking forward too.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Quantum of Solace in Twinity

Just when I was about to switch off my pc and go to bed, an email came in which I'd like to share. It's a mailing by Twinity on a promotional action for the latest James Bond movie. Go check it out at Twinity.


Click Image for large version

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Sunday, October 05, 2008

Opening the Gates to Stargate Worlds

When the motion picture "Stargate" came out in 1994, starring Richard Dean Anderson, the personification of MacGyver, most of us did not take it very seriously. If you're hardcore Science Fiction, travelling between worlds doesn't work this way. Stargate was not SciFi, rather a mix of fantasy, nordic mythology and quasi religion.

Quasi religion? Yes. The basic premises of the movie is the discovery of an ancient device in Egypt which allows you to travel between worlds. This has been inspired by Erich von Däniken's theory of a godlike race visiting earth at the beginning of time with their spaceships being the pyramids.

Von Däniken founded his theory upon loosely interpreting three biblical passages from the Book of Genesis. Firstly, the creation of mankind is told two times, leading him to believe we have been created in a laboritory by genetic manipulation. The second attempt was succesfull and we're now clones of the 'gods'. The second verse he refers to is in which he sees the Aliens walk the earth.

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. " [Genesis
6:1-2
]

Well, it's not exactly rocketscience, but good enough for an adventure series and the Stargate SG-1 (1997) and Stargate Atlantis (2004) tv-series proved immensely popular. A Third series now is in production.


Now finally there's a fully 3D MMORPG coming out dedicated to the Stargate Worlds. It's been long in coming, but it is a very logical step to bring the series to the web. The series offer a wealth of worlds, scenario's, cultures and plots - and the means to go there through teleporting through the stargates. Last year I build myself a stargate in Second Life to let it act as teleport hub, but playing the real thing is of course a lot better.

Here some screeners from the official game by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment which announced that Stargate Worlds will go into private Beta on October 15th. Already over 200,000 people signed up for Beta Testing this cool-looking MMORPG.

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Immersive Shopping at Weltbild.de

Purely by accident I landed on a sim called 'Weltbild'. Not only the name is German, also the style of the build: A surplus of white. Every German build in Second Life seems to display an absense of color. A color which is used as support-color for the build is a deep red, a combination which reminded me of the Avastar build.

The island is owned by the Weltbild Publishing Group, which is a major German publisher and media retailer, owned by the dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church of Germany, based in Augsburg (see also Augsburg in SL) and now in Second Life as well.

"As of 2006, Weltbild claims to be Germany's largest media and mail-order company, with a market share of ten percent. It also says it is No. 2 among online book retailers (presumably after Amazon.de). Weltbild employs some 4,500
employees and has a revenue of 1,4 billion EUR. According to the enterprise, some 5,5 million customers in the German-speaking countries buy Weltbild books by mail order, in one of the 300 Weltbild shops or over the Internet. Its
mail-order catalogue has a print run of four million.".
(Wikipedia)

The island is another tropical beach setting, like many builds from the rainy North-European continent, today I don't mind however. The weather outside is indeed shitty and I can use some sunshine.




The Avastar association is perhaps more than coincidental, as the islands auditorium is showing a movie auditioning contest in cohoots with the Avastar newspaper.

The main venue of the island consists of three shops:

  1. Film
  2. Books
  3. Music

The thing I like about these shops is that they're not only plain links to the Weltbild website, but also offer trailers you can watch with your friends so it really is a first step towards immersive shopping.


Immersive movies:



Despite my prejudice about German builds I like the quality of the build. There are a few unnecessary things, like a telescope pointing to nowhere and a totally lost 3D tetris game though.




I wonder if the build will be revamped with the new html-on-a-prim technology, making direct interaction with their webshop possible.


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

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Friday, January 18, 2008

The Last Legion

Today no Second Life for me, but for the first time in ages another night on the couch watching a movie. This time it was The Last Legion, a motion picture about the Goths invading Rome and the child emperor fleeing to Brittanica, seeking the Last Legion; the 9th, stationed at Hadrian's Wall.



It was not a historical accurate movie, but a very entertaining prequel to the Arthur Saga. Probably the most entertaining part to watch was the Indian warrior, Mira (Aishwarya Rai)... Sorry, can't help it.

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