Over 2 million people have seen Second Life machinima being shown in the Madrid pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, Spanish curator Cristina García-Lasuén (Aino Baar in SL) recently told me. Thanks to Cristina's intense lobbying, SL machinima was made a centerpiece in Madrid's contribution to the massive fair. Which means since it was unveiled this Summer, millions have seen fantastic machinima like the above, by metaverse artist Bryn Oh. General public reaction, Aino tells me, ranges from astonishment ("I cannot believe what I am seeing") to nervous laughs, to wonderment and wanting to know more about the medium. Another data point to my belief that machinima is the best real world, mass market application for 3D worlds right now. Read more on Cristina's Facebook fan page.
Well, machinima are like a video of a stage play ... you get the visuals but lose out on the atmosphere.
Posted by: soror nishi | Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 10:57 AM
By "atmosphere" I have to wonder what you mean. When I attend a play the atmosphere is the little quirks of the cast interacting with the audience and that audience responding to the live cast in real time.
I get little of that from a performance in SL. The people around me might be making annoying typing sounds or using "woooo with backflip" animations, but I rarely feel that as a positive.
Instead I get lag, draw distance issues, actors appearing as clouds (used to be grey) or missing costume pieces (that my wife's machine are clearly showing), etc. Machinima allows the *use* of SL while avoiding many of these problems. Control over the environment is achieved by limiting the number of avatars, pre-loading everything and doing a re-take if needed (say, because that sculpty was a giant sphere in the last take).
I think machinima places SL in an unrealistically *positive* light and find live SL attempts to perform infinitely more clunky. Machinima has placed 3D animation into the hands of anyone with a decent broadband connection and that is a fine thing.
Posted by: John Lopez | Friday, September 17, 2010 at 08:28 AM