Second Life Machinima Used to Demonstrate California High Speed Rail Proposal -- And SL Machinima as a Cost-Effective Tool for Real World Work

The Second Life machinima below will be featured in a July 29 exhibit put on by railLA, an LA-based private/public coalition supporting high speed rail solutions to serve the Los Angeles area. Conceived and created by Bay Area-based metaverse developer Avatrian, it shows off a clever solution for one of high speed rail's biggest problems: Time-consuming local stops take the speediness out of high speed rail. Avatrian vividly demonstrates how a pod system keeps the speed and the local stops:

The pod solution is similar to a project already in development by the Chinese; but, as you can see in the machinima, and as Avatrian's Rodion Resistance points out, "We added a twist: the pod actually goes downtown." (A great idea, though I'm personally skeptical if even that will work in a place as intractably sprawly and car-centric as LA.)

In any case, the video is a perfect example of what I just wrote last week, that Second Life machinima is the only real world application of Second Life that can work as a mass market application. I doubt anyone involved with RailLA needs to know or care the demo video was made with Second Life, to benefit from this video. And consider how Avatrian made it:

Rodion said Avatrian made the video in just three days, mainly working with assets that already exist in Second Life's massive collection of user-generated content: "The train itself, the station(s), and the other [elements] are off-the-shelf SL content," as Rodion puts it. (Though the first ten seconds of the opening train footage are not from SL, but Trainz, a train simulator called Trainz.) And while Avatrian would probably like to see its ideas put into practice, they volunteered their time to shoot the demo video as a way to demonstrate Second Life as a platform. "We want to promote the use of the metaverse to expand visions, particularly SL," he tells me.

Comments

[J Ballard]

That is awesome demonstrations in machinama!

[Ann Otoole]

Good use of the medium!

Can i drive my armored Escalade up into it, leave it running for the air filtration system and A/C to keep going, and listen to my Dead Can Dance dvd collection as it whisks me into town?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Well done and a good "serious" use of SL that the mainstream can get.

Only caveat: "Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dogs." /me reaches from the Tums.

You Californians need some of those great fish-taco stands near the stations :)

Seriously, I'd love to see your state shame the rest of us with a system like this. You owe us: LA gave us the car-culture that is choking the planet :) Oil depletion is coming, and we'll need to get around our huge metro areas somehow. Sleek trains like this and virtual worlds may be one way to keep us all moving and working when easy oil is a distant memory.

Ann, that Escalade might make a good microhouse in such a world. "Mother-in-law suite" would be the old engine compartment.

[Hamlet Au]

I once ordered a bacon-wrapped hot dog in downtown LA and as I was taking my first bite, the vendor lady screamed "POLICIA!", and in seconds, her and her vendor buddies had pushed their carts off the main road, just before the cop car passed by. Which does not instill confidence in one's bacon-wrapped hot dog.

But I still ate it, and it rocked. Though I did wish for Tums an hour or so later.

[Little Lost Linden]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLis6jWc05M

[Rodion Resistance]

Thanks for the post Hamlet! Just some clarifications. The inworld train itself (seen in wireframe mode near the beginning of the video, and the docking/undocking sequences), the skypod, the wavelike Union Station, the buildings in some of the scenes, and the wave-roofed platforms are all designed and built from scratch by Avatrian--they are not "off-the-shelf".

[daryl lynn]

omg that was so funny the very very end. When the next train hooks up and grabs the pod you just KNOWWWWW that everyone goes flying like bricks inside at the speed it shows! I laughed my ass off. Other wise it was a pretty nice use.

[Chenin Anabuki]

@Ignatius, we were going to create the aluminum foils over the cart where bacon-wrapped hotdogs are cooked. But, just totally ran out of time. I take full blame for losing authenticity on the Los Angeles hotdog vending scene.

@Daryl, it was not mentioned by the narrator. But the skypods come equipped with inertial dampers. No seriously, the scene did not demonstrate it well enough. But the departing skypod is supposed to start accelerating forward even before the HSR arrives at the station. That way, by the time they link up, the velocity of the high speed train passing through and the departing skypod is about the same. This facilitates a "safe" merge with minimal discomfort to passengers. One of the differences with this proposal and the Nanning train concept is that the skypods have independent mobility. Hence, not only can it reduce the travel time by avoiding station stops, they can take passengers further out, eliminate/reduce the need for transfers, and also foster more social interaction among passengers of similar destinations.

[israel schnute]

I wonder if the sets are still around on some sim. I would like to see small representations of the places in LA like this.
It is a perfect use of SL. However the pod's wouldn't run from a dead stop, i think the two meet at closer speeds whilst moving so there isn't a bad reaction. I never heard of this concept, but it seems to solve the big issue with HSR. Stopping adds a LOT of time.
And as a proponent of HSR, I would have to say LA looks a lot less car centric as the sunbelt. Take the commuter train in Miami for example. 60 or 80 miles and it's still one county short of reaching the end of the sprawl. Measure 60 miles from Disney. Tampa. 60 or 70 miles from NYC. You're in a completely new state and city.

[Rodion Resistance]

Hi israel, yes the scenes in this machinima can still be found and visited in SL (Region Capucine). However, like the studios they have in Hollywood, they are "broken up" into separate sets all around the sim--there's no physical connection that leads from one set (i.e. "Art District") to the other, so it's not really a presentable build for "live" visits.

As to the pods standing still, they actually don't stand still when "grabbed" by the HSR--the resulting mega-jerk from that would certainly be catastrophic for the passengers inside the pod :) The following is how we envision the process to be actually feasable (as seen in the Chinese version of this idea)--Since the actual operational HSR would be a lot longer (more coaches), once it arrives at the station and starts running under the pod, the pod actually starts moving slowly forwards from the point of view of the platform (but backwards from the point of view of people already riding on the HSR), and accelerates until it matches the speed of the HSR, which realistically should also slow down to a certain "catch" velocity. This is one of those events that's more difficult to describe in words, but easier to understand when seen in action.