c


p
 (p) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23,
2003, and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life
Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars.
Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group
activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel
throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life is for people aged
18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.

Built into the software is a three-dimensional modeling tool based around simple
geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in
combination with the Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality
to objects. More complex three-dimensional Sculpted primes (colloquially known as
sculpties), textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures can be
created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users
retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple
digital rights management functions.

x 







There is no charge to create a Second Life account or for making use of the world for any
period of time. Linden Lab reserves the right to charge for the creation of large numbers
of multiple accounts for a single person but at present does not do so. A Premium
membership (US$9.95 per month) facilitates access to an increased level of technical
support, and provides a stipend of L$300/week.

Avatars may take any form the user chooses, human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or a
combination thereof, they may choose to resemble the member as he is in reality, or they
may choose even more abstract forms, given that every aspect of an avatar is fully
customizable. A single Resident account may have only one avatar at a time, although the
appearance of this avatar can change between as many different forms as the Resident
wishes. A single person may also have multiple accounts, and thus appear to be multiple
Residents.

Avatars can communicate via local chat or global instant messaging (known as IM).
Chatting is used for localized public conversations between two or more avatars, and is
visible to any avatar within a given distance. IMs are used for private conversations,
either between two avatars, or among the members of a group, or even between objects
and avatars. Unlike chatting, IM communication does not depend on the participants
being within a certain distance of each other. As of version 1.18.1.2, voice chat, both
local and IM, is also available on both the main grid and teen grid, using technology
licensed by Vivox, a provider of similar services to other MMO worlds.
Instant Messages may optionally be sent to a Resident's email when the Resident is
logged off, although message length is limited to 4096 bytes. If a message is sent to a
offline Resident it will also be saved to be viewed when they log on.

 
   

Residents engage in a many activities, just as people do in real life. Unlike real life, there
is no biological need to seek nourishment or shelter. Thus some activities that would be
necessary in the real world are purely voluntary leisure pursuits. People still often live in
houses, and enjoy food and drink.

Residents explore, interact with one another, and create new "content." Î
 is
like travel in the real world. One searches for places which might be interesting, and then
goes there, sometimes even at random. Individuals explore alone, but often small groups
explore together. Some exploration is spontaneous, but there are also more-or-less
organized tours, and there are even travel agents.


 occurs via text , text  
, or 
, not unlike the popular
Internet applications, except that full 3D visuals are usually included. Interaction is also
behavioral, such as when friends and strangers assemble at a club to dance or flirt while
listening to recorded or live music.


 is changing the appearance and behavior of the Second Life virtual world
including the avatar itself. Building a house, gardening, creating new clothes, and
creating a new dance are all examples of creation. Some advanced examples are
publisihng a magazine or making a movie or TV show all within Second Life.

p
  

Second Life comprises various diverse, user-driven subcultures. There are few pre-
determined structures, so what organization that exists has evolved to meet the wants and
needs of the residents. Some residents will have an avatar that is clearly human male or
female, and some will have an avatar where the gender is less obvious, or entirely
androgynous; it is easy for a user to change the appearance of the avatar to either gender.
Also, there are many non-human avatars, like "furries", neko (cat-girls), robots, and
fantasy creatures such as dragons.

Some residents choose to re-enact some specific world, such as medieval Japan or ancient
Rome. They choose to act out this world like real life historical re-creators do. As usual,
residents are free to move in and out of these worlds as they see fit. a



 come into play here, since the property owner can choose to expel residents who
don't abide by the property regulations, which in these case might include dress,
language, and behavior. There are also areas that re-create worlds from literature, such as
Frank Herbert's 
or John Norman's  or from video games such as the 
  series.
Some of the subcultures in Second Life revolve around events. Events include many
activities related to arts, culture, charity, support groups, commerce, discussion,
education, games, contests, nightlife, entertainment, pageants, and sports.

There is a built-in mechanism for organizations called the 
 A group can be created
by a resident for a fee of L$100, who then has three days to recruit an additional member.
A group must then maintain a membership of at least 2 members at all times in order to
remain active. The groups, that each Resident belongs to, are displayed in that user's
profile. Group membership provides a means of self-identification and self-expression,
and facilitates member to member communication in a number of ways. A group
comprises officers and members, with titles determined by group leadership. The Owner,
Member (referred to by the client as


) or the title for any custom roles may
appear superimposed above the name of the Resident's avatar. Residents may participate
in up to 25 groups, and may choose which group's title to display at any given time.
Group activity is usually centered on a particular interest, so creating groups can give
people a common ground for discussion and provide an easy way to break the ice. Some
groups maintain websites to bridge the gap between real-life (referred to as "first life", or
abbreviated to "RL" for "real-life") and Second Life (commonly abbreviated as SL, but
2L is also used) interests.

Groups are allowed ownership of land and resources, so they comprise the closest thing
to a corporation within the Second Life environment.

Second Life blogs are also appearing where Residents detail their second lives,
sometimes more extensively than their first:

x
 


The majority of the content in the Second Life world is Resident-created. Linden Lab
actively promotes the concept that Residents retain the intellectual property rights to
objects they create (although they are required to offer Linden Lab a limited license for
the purposes of promotion and marketing.

Only LSL scripts, wearable, images made from in world snapshots, and the basic 3D
objects, called "Primitives" or "Prims," or composites of scripts, images and prims, can
be created solely with the client (although a future release promises to be able to create
animations, as BVH files, within the client).

Animations can be made with various softwares; such as Qavimator, Avimator, and
Poser, or they can be acquired via motion capture. Animator is a simple, open source tool
for creating and editing avatar animations just for Second Life. It is available for
Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Animations can be triggered by scripts and used in hot-
keyed gestures.

Textures can be uploaded as TGA, Bitmap, JPEG and PNG, and are made in applications
such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, or The GNU Image Manipulation
Program (GIMP). Textures can be applied to the surface of any 3D object, land, clothing,
an avatar's skin (including tattoos) and can be used as scripted particles.

Sounds can be made using any piece of software capable of creating WAV files, ranging
from an Operating System's basic sound recorder, media players such as foobar2000, as
well as dedicated audio editing packages such as Audacity and Pro Tools.

Every resident has access to a library of textures, animations, sounds and objects, found
in the 
 folder. Textures, animations and sounds cost L$10 to upload. JPEGs,
although smaller in file size, are not recommended since they will be converted to
JPEG2000 file format on upload regardless of original file format. TGA files have the
added advantage of alpha channel transparency. Images are sized to the next smallest of a
series of defaults, with the largest being 1024x1024.

  

A male human avatar.

A female vampire avatar.

Residents of Second Life are represented in the environment by an avatar. The basic
avatar is humanoid in shape which may be customized in a variety of ways:

d A series of GUI controls, modifying every aspect of the basic mesh (body shape, skin,
hair style etc.)
d -reating clothing or buying clothes made by other Residents
d Attachments Ͷ 3D objects intended to supplement or replace body structure, clothes or
hair
d Animation Overriders (intended to supplement or replace the stock set of animations)
using LSL to trigger BVH format animations.
d Sonic Overriders Ͷ using LSL to trigger sounds such as footsteps, or emotive cues such
as laughing, crying and orgasms.

The result can either be faithful to the original humanoid avatar, or can result in a
completely non-humanoid representation of the character. These customizations can be
packaged up into a single outfit, with common applications of outfits including animals,
robots, mechs, furries, Clone Troopers and "tinies", which are just "folded up" (via a
static animation ² a "pose") regular avatars.

D


Second Life includes a built-in 3D Modeler that allows Residents to create complex
objects out of a set of basic building blocks known as prims (short for "primitives") -
parametric models supporting dynamic scalar level of detail. Second Life uses Havok for
simulated physics, though not all objects in the world respond to physics. A future update
will include Havok 4[7] support, an improvement that Second Life residents have awaited
since it was first announced by Linden Lab before June, 2002. All objects and 3D
information are streamed in real-time to all clients. This allows for real-time editing of
3D objects so any Resident can view what is being created as it is being created.

The 3D objects can be used to make avatar attachments, vehicles, buildings, furniture,
sculpture or anything else the user can think of. Attachments can be something as simple
as a pair of glasses, or a complex series of objects in order to make the avatar look like
something else entirely. Vehicles can range from a small pair of roller skates to a car,[8] to
large and full scale replica of fictional vehicles from Sci-Fi and Anime[9][10][11][12]

In the first half of 2007 Linden Lab added a new feature to Second Life: the possibility to
create sculpted prims. Whereas prims are based on simple geometrical shapes, as
cylinders, cubes, or spheres, sculpted prims are based on an special type of displacement
maps, where the red, green and blue components indicate how to position the vertexes of
one of the 4 base shape topologies (sphere, cylinder, torus and plane).

p  

Residents can apply scripts to created objects, thereby controlling the behavior of the
objects within the environment. Second Life uses its own scripting language, called
Linden Scripting Language (LSL). LSL has a syntax similar to C or Javascript, and
allows objects to interact with the Second Life world, as well as the Internet via email,
XML-RPC and HTTP.[13]

LSL is used to drive all interactivity in Second Life that isn't provided by the interface.
For instance, while it is possible to sell an object by leaving the object out with the
correct attributes set via the interface, it becomes increasingly difficult the larger a single
object is, the more numerous a collection of objects are, or for objects that are updated on
a regular basis. Textures, scripts, animations, gestures and notecards cannot be sold by
themselves (although they can be transferred between Residents in such a manner),
requiring them to be held within a containing object. Games, doors, flashing lights, and
basically anything that is seen in Second Life that is interactive is scripted.

Î  




The largest external influence is Linden Lab itself, which ultimately controls the virtual
rule. Thus, it has been argued that one way to improve ones chances of success in a
Second Life endeavor is to gain the ear of Linden lab. Linden Lab runs the "economy" of
second life, and has Ginsu Linden in charge of economic policy. Linden Lab also has
business ties with other companies, and these are sometimes seen as having
disproportionate influence by Second Life residents.

Another external influence on second life is the self-selecting nature of Second Life
residents. What influence this has been a matter of debate in the Second Life Community.

However, in Second Life itself, the most controversial external influence is "Real Life" or
"First Life." This is often abbreviated as "RL" or "FL" by Second Life residents, just as
the "SL" abbreviation is nearly ubiquitous. RL's influence means that activities are
interrupted, schedules changed and projects are delayed to accommodate the demands of
"RL," particularly in reference to work and relationships that have to be done RL. Many
Second Life residents refuse to connect their "RL" with their "SL," and argue that their
Second Life existence stands or falls on its own merits, including Gwyneth Llewelyn and
Sophrosyne Stenvaag. One way that this influence shows up is in the contact points
between a Second Life identity and a Real Life identity, including, but not limited to, the
use of voice in second life, the payment of taxes and the various moves to "verify" that a
particular avatar is associated with a particular real world individual.

Linden Labs and Real Life often combine to produce pressures on residents to pay the
usage fees on Second Life virtual land, which requires earning money through selling of
goods, virtual land itself, or services, or other activities which are intended to accrue
Linden Dollars.

A growing external influence is the list of real world corporations, including IBM,
General Electric, Sun Microsystems and Cisco. These corporations hire builders, recruit
residents and have a presence in Second Life for a variety of goals and objectives. In
addition to the money they spend on second life, their employees have varying degrees of
commitment to VR as a whole, for example IBM has an evangelist whose in world name
is "ePredator Potato." What this presence means for Second Life as a whole is also a
matter of discussion among residents.

Finally, the international nature of Second Life, and its generally individualist bent,
means that fear of government meddling or interference in activities in Second Life,
including bans on gambling, sale of equities, enforcement of differing laws on obscenity
and pornography, particularly age play, as well as imposition of taxes such as the Value
Added Tax, is a very present concern as an external influence. While there have been
some court cases involving Second Life, in general, it has not been established how much
actual influence has been exerted in Second Life by RL governments, though the
gambling ban by Linden Labs and the imposition of the VAT are widely blamed by
residents on government interference.

One of the particular fears is the loss of the anonymity which many residents use to
conduct activities that they do not wish to have associated with their real life identity,
which means that moves to verify identity are often met with stiff resistance.
 References

Culture of Second Life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). c






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secondlifedotcom-tos_3-0

Linden, H. (2006, June 10). Snapzilla Snapshot - Harry Linden - I'm completely

invisible with my camouflaged hogger!. 


 



. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=76526&sort=PictureID+desc&Searc

h=Harry+Linden

Linden, S. (2007, August 2). The Second Life Voice Viewer is Live!. 

.

Retrieved November 16, 2009, from

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/08/02/the-second-

life-voice-viewer-is-live

LlEmail - Second Life Wiki. (n.d.). 


c. Retrieved November 16, 2009,

from http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlEmail

Milena, L. (2006, November 28). World of SL. c. Retrieved November 16,

2009, from http://planet.worldofsl.com/

Singer, S. (2006, July 13). Snapzilla Snapshot - Scarlet Singer - pssstt...can I drive

you?. 

 

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from
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Terms of Service | Second Life. (n.d.). ac ! 

"


  

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http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

Urbanist. (n.d.). Second-Life Avatars and their Real Life Users | Art & Design on

WebUrbanist. c
$$ %!

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a 


&'
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http://weburbanist.com/2007/06/17/top-3-look-alike-avatars-and-people-from-

second-life-to-real-life/

Vivox. (2007, February 27). a ()

*
a
#

&a

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releases-detail.php?id=17