vSide Is Cool, But They Tricked Me
So I logged into the freshly opened vSide, created a new avatar, and took a look around… and it turns out it’s the same old Doppelganger space, just revamped. Crap. Here I was passing on the hype that they were building something new, when it’s really something old dressed up with new ads. Ah well.
[Edit: I should explain that - vSide locations like "PCDLounge" and the "Tyra Banks" club have been around for a long time. Existing users of the old worlds were just rolled over into this new one. A few of them are bitter about the change, but hey, everybody's always bitter about change.]
I gotta say though, the place is HOT.
One thing that wasn’t exaggerated was the animation. Everything was smooth, easy, intuitive, and fun. The first club was right next to the welcome area and there were plenty of people adding you as a “Friend” to game the respect system. You get locked out of content if your respect score is too low, and you start at zero… so it’s understood that it’s a system to be abused.
The streets themselves were only semi-realistic. While the textures are just awesome and they do recreate the urban “feel”, this is a city that doesn’t support vehicles. It’s all catwalks and walkways, with no streets. I mean, I don’t care, but it seemed a bit odd that there wasn’t a faster way to zip around the city. Still, at least everything is gorgeous while you walk through it and the water is nice.
I have a personal test for all 3D environments: how do they handle camera angles in close quarters? Second Life is horrible in close quarters, as is … well… almost everything. But just look at this:
Gorgeous. You could hang out with five people in this narrow hallway and have absolutely no problem.
Anyhow, apart from that it loads fast, streams a pretty good variety of music everywhere, and you can get apartments… an area that deserves MUCH further investigation! I’ll keep you posted there on possible meta-economies. I’ve already run into prostitution.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:58 am
It’s when you bump into it repeatedly at hip level you need to worry
September 3rd, 2007 at 5:10 am
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