Avatar Island is a new sim being built by Virginia-based Cranial Tap, on behalf of CyberExtruder, a 3D imaging studio with interesting plans for residents. Utilizing their proprietary software, CyberExtruder will take a resident's photograph and turn it into a wearable skin for their avatar.

It's not clear whether this will be a free or paid service. CyberExtruder is also planning on offering free space on their island to graphics artists who are willing to partner with CE to offer residents a wide range of avatar customization services, including animation. I've tried to make an avatar that looks like the RL me, but got too frustrated with the puzzling texture mapping required for customization. I imagine I'll make use of this service when it launches.

(Thanks, Jack!)

Mitch Wagner of InformationWeekly has written an article which poses the question "Are virtual Worlds really the Next Internet?" One chief proponent of the 'yes they are' theory is the article's other focus, Corey Bridges, co-founder of MDC Multiverse Network, perhaps most famous for its announcement to create a Firefly MMOG.

Bridges' main point appears to be that the current generation, growing up as it is playing World of Warcraft and enjoying their Second Lives, will come to think of a 3D Internet as the Next Thing simply because they expect that it will be. Given that a percentage of these users will likely go on to develop applications for such a platform virtually guarantees such a vision.

At the same time, take a look at the money and time that big companies like IBM and Cisco are investing in SL alone, and it seems pretty clear that we're headed toward the next wave of Internet browsing standards. VRML, anyone?

In an earlier post, we pointed you toward an excellent essay on the nature of reality. Today I'd like to bypass that discussion and ask instead whether we actually desire reality in SL.

There was, for a while, a trend toward 'photorealistic' skins and textures in SL. While prettier than the default, they still occupied the polygonal avatar form, and were subject to the animations those avatars displayed. Regardless of how real-seeming those textures were, they mode no in-roads toward the true appeaarance of reality, given that the models they existed on still looked 3D-ish; this is to say, slightly blocky, with awkward animations. Similarly, the buildings constructed all around the virtual world utilized many different textures, from flat to highly detailed, commonly within the same visual space. Likewise, the hundreds of user-built objects, from vehicles to furniture to toys all possess widely varying visual qualities, with very little continuity between them. Our brains would never accept these things as 'real'.

But do we really play SL because we expect a realistic model of life? I don't believe we do. Personally, I enjoy being a werewolf, with its overdeveloped musculature and dramatic howling animation. I prefer the 'heightened reality' of SL over RL sometimes, because it accomodates my need for fantasy. In the same way that David Mamet's writing accentuates the attention to dialogue, which in turn accentuates the emotions felt by the audience, the appearances of avatars and objects in SL are an acquired taste. We learn to love them for what they are, rather than hate them for what they're not. Certainly, those who cannot accept them don't stay in SL for long.

If you'll allow a gaming reference here, it's like playing a videogame of tennis. You can model a player down to the pores on his nose, and make the ball as fuzzy and soft as it can possibly look, but that doesn't change the game of tennis one bit. In fact, too many details might be distracting, calling focus to the wrong elements of the game.

It's probably inevitable that graphics will evolve to a point where there may be no discernable difference between a 3D mesh and its RL counterpart, but will that make our enjoyment of the SL experience any better? I leave it up to you to ponder, Constant Reader.