Episode: 4395
Title: HPR4395: Second Life
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4395/hpr4395.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:13:49

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4395 for Friday the 6th of June 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Second Life.
It is hosted by Lee and is about 27 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Lee talks to Ellsbyth about a persistent online virtual world.
Hi, I'm Lee.
I'm going to be talking to Ellsbyth about Second Life today.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to be using Second Life?
I have been using Second Life for 20 years, maybe poster to 21.
It was really early on to when Second Life originally started.
My very first avatar was a tiny little, they call them tinies then, they call them
dinkies now.
It was a little lame.
Yeah, and I started there and I've been playing often on since.
What introduced you to it?
How did you get the idea there was something that you wanted to do?
I saw some information about it and I had some friends that were playing it that started
out then.
I was part of the tiny crowd back in Raglanshire.
It's still a thing, Raglanshire is still a location here that dinkies now still use and
it used to be like a whole community.
I'll be honest, I know it exists but I don't know if there's homes and stuff there but
it was a whole community back then.
She, whatever animal you could imagine, they had them.
So you really were looking like the animal?
Compared to anthropomorphs, the day they're nowhere near the same but they are a bit anthropomorph
and it's interesting because there is a furry community that does anthropomorph.
My avi does have that in second life currently but I also have an alt that's another avi
that has a dinky which is the tiny and it's different.
It's not the same so most morphs are usually human size and dinkies are tiny.
What sort of games would you be playing and what sort of interactions would you have?
It was very social.
It's mostly they had little clubs that you would go and listen to music and you know back
then back when I started it started on little round pose balls like I showed you when
we went to that one region.
So those are the orbs that when you interact with them they let you dance in a certain way.
With those you would have two balls if you wanted to dance with someone else.
So one person would sit on one, one person would sit on another and each ball was designed
to coordinate and have them dance together.
In the 20 years since that happened there is far more advanced more.
There's even HUDs you can just put on and offer to dance with somebody and you'll just
slow dance.
A HUD is a head up display, something that will appear in front of your screen.
Actually maybe we should backtrack.
What actually is the experience of being in second life like what you're able to see?
Oh wow, the sum it up that you can see whatever you want to see, you can do whatever you
want to do in second life, you can build or create whatever you want to.
So my experience of second life is you running it on your PC or you're gaming console and
you're in a 3D world and you're controlling what's called an avatar and that represents
you in the 3D world.
And this avatar can interact with other avatars and other objects in the 3D world.
And it can move and explore the landscape, it can walk or it can even fly or it can be
in a vehicle that's fairly immersive 3D world that's been generated and you're interacting
inside.
Yes, very much so.
Well recently the only way you could play second life was on a computer and so you
would have what we call a viewer and a lot of people will start out with this original
base second life viewer which has come a long way since I started.
People that are a little more experienced with second life want a little more.
Not that the second life viewer can't do all these things but there are just some options
on the firestorm viewer.
Five storms in name with the most popular viewer.
I would say it's probably the most popular non-second life viewer.
People that are a little more advanced and a little more technical might use Black Dragon
or not people that don't have as good of graphics on their systems they can use something
called Genesis or Alchemy.
There are a lot more gentle on the graphics and then recently you can do the social aspect
so really the only thing you can do is move around teleport to destinations and talk with
people is the second life mobile viewer which is pretty handy if you're on the go or you're
running a business and need to communicate but yeah.
Those second life works in the client server model right so you've got a client running
on your local machine but it's connected to a server where the shared 3D world and its
mechanics really exist and this is rendered on your viewer.
Oh yeah yes yes there are a lot of servers each region will be run by a server and a region
or a sim depending on who you are.
Mainland regions or sims are generally called regions.
Private sims like what we're at right now are usually called just sims but it's basically
a square grid and each one of those square grids is on a server and there's several servers.
Data-based servers to be able to navigate everything.
And who's running the service?
It's Lyndon Labs hosts the servers.
You have to purchase if like we purchase this region from Lyndon Labs and as long as
we pay on it it's ours.
We can do whatever we have full estate rights we can do whatever we want.
There is an area of second life called Mainland that is owned and run by second life.
So you can basically rent, call it paying here so whatever amount of land you want to
pay for you can pay for there but you don't have the right to make looking at the area
that our region is at right now there's a lot of hills and valleys and stuff like that.
You don't have the freedom to make the land work the way you want to on Mainland.
How much does second life cost to play to just start playing it?
It doesn't cost anything to start playing it but just like in real life if you want to
buy clothes you have to shop for those clothes and those clothes are made by creators in
world.
Lyndon Labs when you start second life you'll get a base avatar and that avatar will
be clothed but it's not well we just recently updated your avis.
You set up for me something called a bento avatar skin if that's the right word.
That sums it up I guess a little bit so we got you an avi that does bento animations.
bento has to do with the animations the avatar itself you can change the shape and you
can make it look whatever way you want to by adding skins by adding tattoo layers by
adding hair we have you in a blazer with a top and a paired khaki pants and some kind
of Doc Martin looking shoes and then on my Abby I have a full body tattoo so I have
stuff that I put in my hair too.
I seem to remember that these different components were coming from different creators and they
were brought separately in the marketplace and then combined to make an overall appearance
for the avatar.
Yes when we did your avi we did go mostly marketplace except for items like the body and the skin
and the head basically to get your body to look natural and to move naturally you have
to buy a head that is programmed or coded or scripted to have your face move and you
know move naturally and then you have to have an animation override to get your body to
act naturally you know what you don't just stand stiff in one place like a you do all sorts
of posture and fidgeting and that kind of thing and it just looks natural.
Right and there's tons and tons of options to choose from I just picked one random one
for you to start out with my AO is definitely more detailed than yours so I do tend to shift
and fiddle and fidget and my fingers move a little little more than yours do.
Sorry the AO stands for animation override.
Yes so there's a lot of components to creating an avi that looks the way you want it to.
Out of the box very first avi has come a long way they call them sendra avis now they
used to call them roof avis the original avis were called roofs but almost everybody who
sticks around in second life for a while winds up upgrading their their avi because the
newbie avis which have improved a ton are still very much newbie avi.
You can spot them in my life or at least the experience second life players will know
that they're using their basic one that came when they started the game and I think it's
fair to say they might be a little bit of snobbery about people are very new to the game.
There is and it's not intentional either it's just we have lived like my best friend
and I in real life and then that I met in second life she and I will openly admit we're
a bit snobbish and it's not because we're trying to be rude it's just because we have
spent so much real life money to create our avis the way that we want them to look.
You say avis you implying that you have more than one isn't that the case?
I have more than one avi but we just shorten avatar to avi.
Any time you control one avatar but the avatar can have many different appearances and you
can choose from those appearances by swapping out various options.
Yeah you can have one avatar that looks as many different ways as you want to so I on
this particular avatar that I'm on right now this is my main avatar I have my human avatar
I have a panther avatar I have a wyvern avatar I have and a wyvern is not even remotely human
like it's a creature yeah you have to use a deformer to get it you know to shape your
avatar the way the wyvern looks.
So second life is a program for human light avatars and so it takes some sort of a process
to happen to map that humanoid shape into something that's not humanoid.
You know how we were talking about the dinky's earlier or the tiny avatars earlier those
if I dropped into a dinky which I don't have on this avi it would completely distort
and deform my body into that small little package it'll just take the human avatar and
just crunch it down.
So if I were to put clothes on that fit my human avi they wouldn't fit right if I were
deformed.
This is like you can imagine a film where someone turns into a werewolf and they completely
distort our shape.
Yes there are werewolves in second life too there's actually a whole game system called
bloodlines where you can be werewolf or vampire.
Okay that brings us on something else so what are the different activities that people
do on second life?
Oh wow there's so many you can there's several different farming systems there's DFS
the digital farm system which I have that system and I enjoy it quite a bit and currently
not doing it because it does take up a lot of time.
But then there's the you and there's the funny farm and my story are all farming living
systems role play systems Akasha has she's made her own system where you can do chores.
She has little mesh chores like what do we have she has a garden chores set where there's
like ten different garden plants that you are harvesting and you get stars for it there's
a whole bunch of different things that you can do.
Mad P has actual escape rooms and hunts.
So those are like gaming experiences where you enter into a simulation within a simulation
to play a game.
A game within a game.
The best way to describe second life is literally that it is your second life it's just
virtual.
You know there's a monetary system there's an inventory system so you know we're looking
out over my house over here I have a house here that has furniture and it's decorated and
there's eating systems where you can eat as if you were eating in real life and those
farm are living systems that I was talking about before they track stats kind of like
any role playing game that has stats hunger thirst and these are all optional things that
you can embellish the basic second life with and they're created not necessarily by Lyndon
Labs who run the thing they're created by users who use second life.
The whole point of second light is that it's user directed.
Second light is like the shell they're like the host.
They do maintain mainland for people that don't want to invest to have your own personal
region you either have to rent it for someone.
There's actually a real estate company in second life that makes millions a year off of
real estate they were the first virtual millionaires in the world.
To have a million Lyndon dollars is the currency of the world.
No million USD.
Ah million real dollars.
Cap.
Okay.
They make a lot of money in second life and in fact recently they announced that they
do about five billion dollars a year.
The total real world revenue associated with second life.
It's all in USD that's users from all over the world.
So we were talking about how you've decorated your houses you've decorated the landscape
what's that process like what is the world like to begin with then what have you done
to transform into something that you want to live in.
This square if you look at your mini map this square was a flat piece of lamp.
Right.
We put a terrain hills valleys rivers ponds the hills and valleys and then the actual
ponds and rivers are user created the tree everything everything is user created now.
Most of the stuff is stuff that we had in our inventory because we've we've been collecting
items over the years the decades at this point.
But there is the marketplace and in world stores to buy other items and anyone can sell
and that marketplace if they create things that they want to share of others.
Yes.
I mean the answer to that is yes however the caveat to that is you cannot sell something
that is not your intellectual property or you haven't made a significant change to the
item to make it something unique.
So there is something called full perm or full permission objects that you can buy on
the marketplace that you can make your own by changing the textures adding scripts you
know making it look different you know.
So these would be like you get the full source code you can make whatever you like out of
it but not all the things are like that a lot of the things that just for you to use
yourself you're not able to duplicate them or will so that they maintain the value to
them.
Right exactly.
So like you and I have been working on the SL read which is basically like an e-reader
in second life.
That mesh is creative commons mesh.
I did not create the mesh but I did free texture the mesh.
We've added a script that you have created and that is your intellectual property and
then we're adding this all together to make it combine to look different than the original
item.
It operates uniquely and that's what creators do is they make stuff that people would want
to purchase that has some value.
Like officially starting my business the business was last year.
I have been dabbling in creating since I started because it's very artistic by nature
and it's very creative by nature for instance.
If I were to want to add something to the area that we're standing in right now I would
need to raise a box.
So it literally just go in your viewer click on build and then click on the cube and then
click on the cube it pays in the world.
Yes but I do have to be careful because this area is already decorated.
If I wanted to res something out here I would have to put this cube out and make it big
enough to res on and then I could put like say look in my inventory for a rock and then
I could res out a rock.
Well that's going to be a process in itself because I'm just going to res something out
here and it's probably going to blow up in your face just so you know.
Right so we see a big bow that's appeared on top of that square.
Right so if I want to put this here I would have to adjust it and make it fit.
So you're changing the size and the shape and the position and the new orientation you
can change.
Yeah and that makes the land unique so if all we did was put hills and mountains on
the land it would and we just did a terrain it would look boring we were just talking
about putting grass out earlier before we started this.
The grass creates that realism you know that.
And although the grass is in the unique place and is unique bit of grass it's based on
like a template that you know that you've bought and so you can apply that same piece
of grass in hundreds of different places across the terrain and you can slightly change
its style.
Is that right?
Yes so the grass that we're using here there's three different styles of it and I'm just
going to walk down here real quick because I want to show you that if all you do is put
grass then again you're just creating almost the 2D effect.
So this stream here has ferns it has reeds it has water it has rocks and all of it is
one piece well it's a bunch of pieces put together to create this stream but this one piece
that I'm holding on to there's a bunch of different pieces to it to make it look like
this is a little stream that you would run into in real life and then over here I have
more grass.
And so these are common objects so interior anyone in second life could buy and own and
possess these or perhaps not own but buy and possess these objects and they could res
out these objects wherever they like the fact that you're coordinating many different
objects along with the terrain and styling objects makes every single place that you've
worked on unique in its own way.
Yes, yes and that's the goal is to make to give it more than just a mundane look.
Like recently I replaced a tree with a weeping willow because I wanted to add some dimension
to not just having the same tree out but I also added some 3nance lace and a little
log with mushrooms you know it's greater than some of its parts right and it seems to
take a lot of artistry as well as some technical skill to really make a nice scene or a nice
building or a nicely decorated room or wherever else you're creating or coordinating or
putting together.
Absolutely, I am not as good as Akasha is.
I did pretty well I'm not trying to to my horn but I did pretty well here but it used
to take Akasha coming in to help me redirect my artistic vision to add and subtract things
as necessary.
What do you think you get out of having created a landscape, a building and decorated it
how you like and then you're actually playing inside that environment compared to another
game or another experience?
Um okay so for me it's a feeling of home.
I'm away from home wherever you are, you're home when you're locked in.
And it creates a little bit of dynamic to the social environment for instance you know
this region has four areas you have the shopping district you have Nami's Jurassic Park
in her home and then you have Akasha's area in her home and then you have our area and
our homes and they're all kind of connected that they're all unique to us.
So what's in my area is not going to be the same as what is in Akasha's area but I can
also take and walk over to her area and talk to her like I would go talk to my neighbor
you know same with Nami.
So it's almost like you're really living there there's so much detail that it takes
on the life of its own the environment the interaction of the people it takes on its
own life.
Absolutely it is again it is a second life it is a virtual life.
I can do all that I can go and do all the things that the world has to offer in second
life that I could do in real life.
If I wanted to if I wanted to go to London I could search the area search and I could
probably find someone's replica of London.
Yeah I know I know for a fact that there is an area that does the pyramids for Egypt
there's there's replicas of anything but you you can search it or you can go and see
and do anything that you could see in real life it's just going to be on a screen.
Okay thanks very much Elspur for sharing your experiences of second life just for full
disclosure would you like to explain or your relationship is with Lyndon Labs who run
second life.
My relationship with Lyndon Labs is that I use their client I use second life.
I over the years I have volunteered to help out with some different areas in second life
whether it be welcome hubs or the second life birthday bash or what you know those type
of things.
So you're the use of the environment their platform as it were okay let's wrap up here
is there anything that you'd like to say that you might have wanted to say but not said
or that comes to mind.
People should know about second life second life can be done free but you're not going
to want to and that costs real life money so be aware of what you're getting into if
you're going to play a game like final fantasy you're going to pay a monthly fee you know
to be able to play the game if you want upgrades you're going to pay for that second life
is the same but there it has its own economy so I want everybody to know that you can do
it free but you're probably not going to want to so come explore it see if you like it
and then see if you actually want to spend your hobby time hobby money on that.
Oh hobbies almost always cross money some money exactly that's the way I chalk up my my
expenditures for second life is this is my hobby.
With that thanks again and bye to you and our listeners.
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