Second Life Exploration

At the beginning of this assignment, when I first realized that I would be creating a Second Life avatar, I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't really understand the premise of the project or why it was important until we started talking about the idea of alter egos in class, which I found particularly interesting. 

When creating my own online account, I contemplated whether I wanted my avatar to be a man or a woman. Initially, my first thought was to create a man. Although I am a woman, I've always wondered what it would be like to be a man, and have often times used male avatars for games. Plus, I figured, I would rather look at something that I find attractive, then to stare at a chic the entire time. However, having just watched MTV's Catfish prior to creating my account, I decided to portray myself as is, and chose a standard tan skinned avatar with brown hair (the one that I believe looked closely to my reality). 

Upon entering the virtual reality, I was placed within a beach like area, where I had no idea what to do. I didn't find a tutorial or any guides for the game, so I took it upon myself to go exploring, and decided to start visiting different destinations. At first, I went along with whatever destinations were offered to me, being a new player and what not, but I found that the areas provided weren't exactly interesting or intriguing to say the least. The entire environment was new to me and the way things were rendering and generating as I was walking through the areas was overwhelming, but I soon found myself bored...until...I realized that I could go anywhere in the world I wanted to be. That's when Second Life became a very interesting tool for me, personally. 

One of the things that Ive always wished I could do is travel and with Second Life, I found that I had that opportunity. I found it very simply to explore different destinations and search the world map for particular locations. If someone hadn't created that world yet, there was always something similar to choose from. With this being said, I started looking at all the places in the world that have interested me. Before I knew it, I was teleporting all over the place and exploring all sorts of different areas. I used my time on Second Life as opportunity to travel to areas of interest. I have included images of some of my destinations below:

Egypt, The Great Pyramid of Giza

In the Egyptian area, I didn't find a lot of users. It was a pretty dead environment, but still, I was fascinated. They only had one large pyramid, but lots of other structures around the area. Included were water areas with ancient style boats, made from wood, which made the environment historically accurate. It was fun to explore the different temples and landmarks within the Ancient Egyptian environment. 

Paris, France: The Eiffel Tower

Having been to Paris France before, I came to visit the Eiffel Tower in the game to compare virtual reality to real-life. I found that the Eiffel Tower was beautifully made, but was having issues generating. I could only see aspects of it, and parts of it were always missing, which took away from the realistic beauty of the structure. The Eiffel Tower is definitely something you're better off seeing in person, or based on online images, because Second Life's version does not compare! The emotional response to the grandness of the whole thing wasn't experienced in the virtual reality. With that being said, I quickly left that destination, rather disappointed. 

Puerto Rico (Random Location)

I tried looking for a Puerto Rico location in the virtual reality, and it pulled up this random Salsa Location in Puerto Rico. The place was beautiful and had great classical spanish music, followed by palm trees and clear blue waters. I explored this area for quite some time, simply because of the music and the spanish culture that it embodied. However, even here, not so many people. 

Lebanon

Next, I visited Lebanon. Me ex boyfriend was Lebanese and I always said that I wanted to visit. The area didn't look familiar at all, from images that I've seen of the area, but then again, I had no idea what part of Lebanon I was thrown into. I was immediately impressed with the arabic music that was playing in the background, it felt inviting and comforting. It's interesting how a virtual reality can create those emotions, because in real-life reality, I can't imagine that the real experience would be as comforting and "familiar" 

Alien Area

The last place I decided to visit was Roswell, New Mexico, in hopes of finding some Alien visitation information or animations. However, it wasn't really coming up with a Roswell crash site, instead Second Life offered me the opportunity to visit this random Alien Destination. When I arrived it had Jackson 5 music, random star walls, and a forrest with flickering lights. I eventually ran into one Grey looking Alien and then got lost in the woods. It was completely random, but entertaining to say the least. The Grey alien looked like light and I was hoping to run into more like him, but my luck fell short.